The glaring ‘hypocrisy’ behind Trump’s war on drugs

 https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/12/02/trump-honduras-president-pardon-drug-boat-strikes/

For weeks, the Trump administration has demonstrated its zeal in taking on supposed “narcoterrorists” in the Western hemisphere. The United States bombed numerous boats in the Caribbean and Pacific that Trump officials claimed were transporting drugs to U.S. shores, while also rattling the saber at the regime of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, whom the White House has cast as both an illegitimate tyrant and a thuggish cartel boss. On Tuesday, President Donald Trump held a Cabinet meeting on potential U.S. plans for Venezuela, during which Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth hailed Trump for “taking the gloves off” and declared that “we’ve only just begun” sending drug traffickers to “the bottom of the ocean.”

According to Justice Department documents, Hernández once allegedly bragged to a drug kingpin that he was going to “stuff the drugs right up the noses of the gringos.” He caused “untold damage” and “unimaginable suffering” in the United States, U.S. prosecutors wrote in the government’s sentencing memo, recommending life in prison plus 30 years. “The defendant engaged in this egregious conduct while publicly posing as an ally of the United States in its efforts to combat the importation of narcotics that destroy countless lives in this country. But behind closed doors, the defendant protected the very traffickers he vowed to pursue.”

“It just shows that the entire counter-drug effort of Donald Trump is a charade — it’s based on lies, it’s based on hypocrisy,” Mike Vigil, the former Drug Enforcement Administration chief of international operations, told the Guardian. “He is giving a pardon to Juan Orlando Hernández and then going after Nicolás Maduro. … It’s all hypocritical.”

Top Jewish donors take stock of GOP infighting over Israel and antisemitism

 https://www.politico.com/news/2025/12/01/jewish-donors-gop-israel-and-antisemitism-00670406

Top Republican Jewish donors are beginning to confront a growing antisemitism problem in their party, but have yet to find consensus on how to respond.

The discomfort among top pro-Israel donors, who steer the Republican Party’s fundraising apparatus, signals the complexity of this political moment for conservative U.S. Jews. Many of them feel the Democratic Party allowed antisemitism to seep into its mainstream in recent years. Now, they fear the same could happen to the GOP.

“Anti-Israel, antisemitic — that gets conflated. A lot of them hide behind anti-Israel, and it’s very hard to prove because you truly should be allowed to be critical of Israel. I’m Justice Potter on this: I know it when I see it. They’re not just anti-Israel,” the donor added. “I think they hide behind free speech, they hide behind isolationism. I think there’s a fair amount of just classic antisemitism going on.

Nicolle Wallace calls out White House for blaming military admiral to cover for Pete Hegseth

America has become a rogue nation. U.S. allies are looking elsewhere.

 https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/11/25/europe-canada-nato-trump

Europeans and Canadians are now talking about making their own security arrangements. What would a post-American NATO — or NATO 3.0 (NATO 2.0 was the post-Cold War alliance) — mean? It could ultimately lead countries such as Germany and Poland to acquire their own nuclear arsenals. It is likely to lead to greater levels of defense integration among some NATO members — notably the Nordic-Baltic Eight — than in the alliance as a whole. It is also likely to lead U.S. allies to buy weapons from each other, rather than from Washington. And it is already resulting in greater cooperation between NATO members and the like-minded democracies of Asia: Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Australia.

No wonder Trump is outraged by warnings about illegal orders

 https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/12/01/pete-hegseth-military-orders-boat-mark-kelly

Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard law professor who headed the Office of Legal Counsel in the George W. Bush administration, wrote online: “If the Post’s facts are correct, it appears that Special Operations Forces committed murder when the ‘two men were blown apart in the water,’ as the Post put it.” A working group of former judge-advocates general also weighed in: “Orders to kill survivors of an attack at sea are ‘patently illegal,’ anyone who issues or follows such orders can and should be prosecuted for war crimes, murder, or both.”

Fears grow inside military over illegal orders after Hegseth authorized follow-up boat strike

 https://thehill.com/policy/defense/5628685-service-members-boat-strikes-orders-hegseth

Service members’ uncertainty over whether they will be asked to carry out an illegal order or pressured to go against their training is likely to be exacerbated after The Washington Post and CNN late last week reported that Hegseth authorized a highly unusual strike to kill all survivors aboard a boat allegedly carrying drugs in the Caribbean Sea this fall. 

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed Monday that on Sept. 2, Hegseth authorized Adm. Frank Bradley to carry out a follow-up strike on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean; the strike reportedly killed two people who were hanging onto the burning vessel, having survived an initial strike.

Deporting Dangerous criminal illegal aliens?!

5 Polls That Spell Trouble for Donald Trump and the Republicans

 https://www.newsweek.com/5-polls-trouble-donald-trump-republicans-11131436

A string of new polls paints a challenging picture for President Donald Trump and the GOP: His approval rating has plunged to a second-term low, cracks are widening in his MAGA coalition, Hispanic support is eroding, Democrats are competitive in deep-red districts, and national polling averages show Trump underwater across every major survey.

These polls paint a portrait of declining approval, rising disunity among Republican voters, and significant inroads for Democrats—even in historically conservative districts. The unfolding trends could reshape congressional control and influence the GOP’s prospects in 2028 and beyond.

Shorter Days, Signs of Fatigue: Trump Faces Realities of Aging in Office

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/25/us/politics/trump-age-health.html 

Mr. Trump has prompted additional questions about his health by sharing news about medical procedures he has had, but not details about them. While in Asia, Mr. Trump revealed that he had undergone magnetic resonance imaging at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in early October.

“I gave you the full results,” Mr. Trump told reporters, mischaracterizing the summary that was released by his physician, which did not say that Mr. Trump had an M.R.I. scan and contained few other details.

“There will be a day when I run low on Energy, it happens to everyone,” Mr. Trump wrote, “but with a PERFECT PHYSICAL EXAM AND A COMPREHENSIVE COGNITIVE TEST (“That was aced”) JUST RECENTLY TAKEN, it certainly is not now!”

Trump says he’ll release MRI results; he doesn’t know what part of his body was scanned

 https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-mri-physical-white-house-0c66f2f9fca865d842ee94329a210a42

President Donald Trump said Sunday that he would release the results of his MRI test that he received in October

Trump added Sunday that he has “no idea” on what part of his body he got the MRI.

“It was just an MRI,” he said. “What part of the body? It wasn’t the brain because I took a cognitive test and I aced it.”

Noem confirms she approved deportation flights despite court order

 https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5627038-noem-confirms-el-salvador-deportation-flights-order/

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Sunday confirmed that she instructed the federal government to carry out the deportation and transferring of Venezuelan detainees to El Salvador despite a court order halting the flights.

The administration has argued it was not obligated to follow the March directive from District Judge James Boasberg.

The latest DOJ filing states that Noem “directed that the AEA detainees who had been removed from the United States before the Court’s order could be transferred to the custody of El Salvador,” adding that the “decision was lawful and was consistent with a reasonable interpretation of the Court’s order.”

Damning report labels FBI ‘rudderless ship’ under Kash Patel — with he and Dan Bongino more concerned with building ‘personal résumés’

 https://nypost.com/2025/11/30/opinion/damning-report-labels-fbi-rudderless-ship-under-kash-patel-with-he-and-dan-bongino-more-concerned-with-building-personal-resumes/

FBI Director Kash Patel is facing withering criticism from an alliance of active-duty and retired agents and analysts, days after the White House denied media reports that the president is about to fire him.

A troubling new report card on the first six months of Patel’s leadership concludes he is “in over his head” and his deputy, Dan Bongino, is “something of a clown,” according to the alliance, which in two previous reports warned about crippling DEI and politicization of the FBI during the Biden administration.

Patel is described by multiple internal sources as inexperienced, with one source saying he “has neither the breadth of experience nor the bearing an FBI director needs to be successful.”

Another source, a self-professed Trump supporter, said Patel is “not very good,” “may be insecure,” and “lacks the requisite experience” or the “measured self-confidence” to be FBI director.

Doubts Raised Over Mark Kelly’s Illegal Orders Punishment

 https://www.newsweek.com/doubts-mark-kelly-illegal-orders-punishment-pentagon-11130982

According to reporting by The Associated Press, Colby Vokey, a civilian military attorney, said: “Let’s say you have a 100-year-old World War II veteran who is retired with pay and he steals a candy bar. Hegseth could bring him back and court-martial him. And that, in effect, is what is happening with Kelly.”

Patrick McLain, a retired Marine Corps judge, said: “I’ve not seen anything like the kind of wackadoodle thing they’re trying to do to Senator Kelly for essentially exercising his First Amendment right to free speech, which they don’t like.”

Pete Hegseth lashes out at 'kill them all' report on boat strikes

 https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/11/29/pete-hegseth-kill-them-all-caribbean-boat-strikes/87524160007

Since September, the Trump administration has attacked at least 21 boats traversing international waters, killing 83 people. Trump and other officials defend the boat strikes as an attempt to crackdown on illegal narcotics flooding into the U.S., but lawmakers from both parties have criticized the administration for providing no intelligence briefings or other evidence about what the vessels are carrying.

"At this point, I would call them extrajudicial killings," Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said during an Oct. 26 appearance on Fox News Sunday. "This is akin to what China does, what Iran does with drug dealers − they summarily execute people without presenting evidence to the public. So it's wrong."

The commander overseeing the operation from Fort Bragg in North Carolina, Adm. Frank M. “Mitch” Bradley, told people on the secure conference call that the survivors were still legitimate targets because they could theoretically call other traffickers to retrieve them and their cargo, according to two people. He ordered the second strike to fulfill Hegseth’s directive that everyone must be killed.

Late Friday, Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Mississippi) and Sen. Jack Reed (D-Rhode Island), respectively the chairman and senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, issued a statement about the “recent news reports — and the Department of Defense’s initial response — regarding alleged follow-on strikes on suspected narcotics vessels,” saying that they intend to conduct “vigorous oversight to determine the facts related to these circumstances.”

Under the 1949 Geneva Conventions, which are at the center of humanitarian rules and international standards, any wounded or sick combatants are to be retrieved and receive care by either side in a conflict.

But in his Nov. 28 post slamming the report, Hegseth argued that each "trafficker we kill is affiliated" with a terrorist group and the current U.S. operations in the Caribbean are lawful under both U.S. and international law.