The impact is huge and serious
The Washington Post’s explosive holiday report — that the U.S. military intentionally killed survivors of a lawless high-seas raid by the Trump administration on suspected drug smugglers on orders from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth — may have finally galvanized Republicans in Congress into at least a show as Article I lawmakers.
From a legal perspective, it is important to reiterate the bottom line: there is no legal basis for a sea attack. period. period.
The Trump administration has found a justification for the attack that remains largely secret, but reports suggest it is weak, unconvincing, ahistorical and self-justifying.
While the scenes described in the Washington Post report are grim and disturbing, the main legal implication of the events of September 2 is that it violated the laws of war, even in the government’s self-defense way of describing its actions as an armed conflict with “narco-terrorists.”
Hegseth’s order was reportedly a “kill them all” order before SEAL Team 6 launched the attack, and when a special operations commander ordered a second attack on the crippled vessel, the survivors were killed, according to the Washington Post.
President Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One last night that he did not want a second attack: “I don’t want that. There won’t be a second attack. The first attack was very deadly. That’s okay.”
Trump also said he was “very confident” that Hegseth would not issue a verbal order to kill all crew members on the ship, saying Hegseth told him “he didn’t say that and I believe him 100 percent.”
In short, the president and the defense secretary deny they were responsible for the killing order described by The Washington Post. Assuming the Washington Post’s reporting is accurate, their position means that service members on the ground exceeded their orders or otherwise failed to adhere to rules of engagement. The fact that this is the best the White House and Pentagon can come up with at this stage of the scandal is a good indication of how bad the situation actually is.
Key Republicans on the Hill have openly and publicly expressed their concerns about the Washington Post incident, a major move that is deeply inconsistent with this term so far. Former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Turner (R-Ohio) told CBS News: “Obviously if this happened it would be very serious and I agree it would be illegal.”
The House and Senate Armed Services committees have launched bipartisan investigations into the reported attacks.
As we adjourn for the Thanksgiving holiday, the Trump administration and the Pentagon are leading a retaliatory campaign against Hill Democrats, accusing them of treason and raising the possibility of their execution after they released a video urging service members to do their duty and obey the law, refusing to comply with illegal orders. By the time we returned from the holidays, the script had completely flipped, with Hill Republicans struggling to defend the administration’s wrongdoing in the strike.
In other Venezuela news…
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According to the New York Times, in most cases, the Trump administration did not know the identities of the more than 80 people who died in an anti-drug smuggling vessel on the high seas.
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President Trump unilaterally declared Venezuelan airspace should be considered closed in a social media post on Saturday: “To all airlines, pilots, drug dealers, and human traffickers, please consider a complete closure of airspace over and around Venezuela.”
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President Trump had a phone call with Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro the week before.
Boasberg wants Noem on record
In a contempt inquiry in the original Enemy Alien Act case, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg set a Dec. 5 deadline for the Trump administration to submit declarations “from all individuals involved in the decision not to halt the removal of class members from physical custody in the United States on March 15 and 16, 2025.”
In ordering the release, Boasberg highlighted documents the administration filed earlier this week claiming to have identified the highest-ranking official involved in defying Boasberg’s order to halt the AEA’s deportations of Venezuelan nationals: “The administration has now identified for the first time the person who allegedly made the March 15, 2025 decision not to recall a plane carrying Enemy Alien Act detainees: Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.”
Note Boasberg’s use of “allegedly.”
As The Morning Memo observed last week: “The AEA deportations were one of the first major steps in the White House’s mass deportation plan, the signature move of President Trump’s second term. But we should believe the buck stops with … Kristi Noem.”
Must read
Sarah Stillman investigates the Trump administration’s brutal third-country deportation practices:
On a Saturday morning in early September, I received a WhatsApp video call from 11 strangers who were being held in a secret detention camp in the forests of Ghana. Their faces were filled with sweat and fear. In the background I could hear birds chirping and insects buzzing. An armed guard monitored the group as they huddled around a shared mobile phone.
Trump lashes out after Guard shooting
President Trump reacted to the brutal shooting of a West Virginia National Guard member and the wounding of another by an Afghan refugee in Washington, D.C., with predictable scorched-earth attacks on immigrants of color:
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Trump vows to stop immigration from “third world countries”.
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The Trump administration suspended all asylum applications and stopped issuing visas to Afghans.
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Trump targeted Minnesota’s Somali immigrant community in a particularly vicious social media post.
For the record…
Fani Willis, the self-appointed prosecutor in a Georgia RICO case involving attempts by Donald Trump and others to subvert the state’s 2020 election, was dropped by his self-appointed successor and dismissed by a judge.
Tina Peters will remain in Colorado custody
Under pressure from the Trump administration, Colorado has refused to transfer convicted former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters to federal custody. After Peters was convicted of tampering with voting machines in an attempt to prove the 2020 Big Lie, he immediately became a darling of U.S. pardon attorney Ed Martin and MAGA.
11th Circuit upholds sanctions against Trump
A three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously upheld $1 million in sanctions against President Trump and attorney Alina Haba for their frivolous lawsuits against Hillary Clinton and former FBI Director James Comey.
The scale of Trump’s revenge
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Reuters conducted the most comprehensive tally to date of Trump’s retaliatory actions, finding: “Since Trump took office, at least 470 people, organizations and institutions have been targeted for retaliation – an average of more than one per day. Some have been singled out for punishment; others have been swept aside in a broader purge of perceived enemies.”
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In recruiting the Pentagon to participate in Trump’s retaliatory campaign, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth crossed a dangerous line that could lead to the politicization of the military. “The best way to stop a politicized death spiral is to never start it,” Peter Feaver, who studies civil-military relations at Duke University, told The Washington Post.
Corruption: Absolution Edition
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President Trump says he plans to pardon former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez. Hernandez is serving a 45-year sentence after being convicted last year of helping a drug cartel transport hundreds of tons of cocaine into the United States in exchange for millions of dollars in bribes.
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President Trump commuted the sentence of private equity executive David Gentile, who had served just two weeks of a seven-year sentence for his role in a $1.6 billion fraud scheme.
Annihilation: Higher Education Edition
In another major capitulation, Northwestern University reached a $75 million deal with the Trump administration to restore frozen federal research funding.
Quote of the Day, Part 1
“New Yorker” writer and physician Dhruv Khullar:
One reason the United States became the world’s leader in biomedicine—indeed, one reason it prevailed in the Cold War—is that democratic governance allows for a degree of self-correction that authoritarianism does not. Bad ideas can be defeated at the ballot box, in the public square, and in the halls of Congress. The country has no obligation to tolerate institutionalized charlatanism or the elected officials who become complicit in it through irresponsible appeals and half-measures. Truly making America healthier requires more than just removing the asterisks. This will require turning pages.
Quote of the Day, Part 2
Paul Offit, a pediatrician and director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, said of how to restore citizens’ trust in science: “I don’t think there’s any way to regain that trust other than to let the virus educate, let the bacteria educate, and then people realize they’ve paid too high a cost.”
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