#venezuela-boat-strikes — Public Fediverse posts

New Year’s Eve Reads

Good Day!!

The endless “holiday season” will be over soon, and it will be 2026. Nothing will have changed. We’re still stuck with Trump and he is still a psychopathic  malignant narcissist with dementia. Here are the stories leading the news on this final day of 2025.

Trump and Venezuela

Trump blabbed about a secret CIA strike inside Venezuela. He just can’t keep his mouth shut.

The Independent: CIA carries out first drone strike on Venezuelan soil in latest escalation of Trump admin’s attacks on ‘narco terrorists.’

The CIA reportedly carried out a drone strike earlier this month on a dock in Venezuela that the United States has alleged is a port for trafficking drugs, marking a major escalation of the Trump administration’s military actions in the Caribbean.

The U.S. government believed the site was used by members of Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua to store and ship drugs overseas, according to CNN.

No one was present at the port at the time of the strike, according to the network’s source. Still, the operation allegedly destroyed the facility, even if it represented just one of many such docks along Venezuela’s coastline that might be used by smugglers. The strike is the first known U.S. operation inside the country.

President Donald Trump appeared to acknowledge the operation during an interview Friday, saying U.S. military assets struck a “big facility where ships come from.”

Asked again on Monday, the president said American forces had attacked “the dock area where they load the boats up with drugs.”

“So we hit all the boats, and now we hit the area,” the president added. “It’s the implementation area, that’s where they implement, and that is no longer around.” [….]

The episode marks the latest escalation of tensions between the United States and Nicolas Maduro’s regime after the Coast Guard seized a second sanctioned oil tanker last week and pursued a third, following months of deadly strikes on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific that have killed more than 100 people.

Read more at the link.

So the President did disclose a CIA drone strike inside Venezuela.And this does cross a red line of violating the UN Charter — where the boat strikes on high seas had not.https://www.cnn.com/2025/12/29/p…

— Ryan Goodman (@rgoodlaw.bsky.social) 2025-12-30T01:46:35.134Z

Analysis by Stephen Collinson at CNN: CIA strike brings Trump closer to grave new year decisions on Venezuela.

President Donald Trump has thrust the country into a significant new phase in his showdown with Venezuela with a CIA strike on a port facility.

But as he approaches grave new decisions on even greater escalations, his team has not yet spelled out a clear consistent public rationale for its actions.

Nor has it prepared the country for what might come next.

Top officials haven’t explained how long the massive naval buildup in the Caribbean will last or what US service members will be asked to do in an operation that is already raising legal and constitutional alarms.

Neither Trump nor his top foreign policy aides have sketched a preferred endgame for the confrontation, which has climbed a ladder of escalation: from diplomatic pressure to strikes against alleged drug-trafficking boatsin the Caribbean to a blockade against oil tankers to, now, a land attack.

If the goal really is to overthrow President Nicolás Maduro, as recent comments from top officials and the logic of the deployment imply, there’s been no White House effort to show Americans the administration is planning for the aftermath. This is an especially relevant point given the quagmires that developed after US military action to topple the rulers of Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya.

Trump doesn’t recognize any responsibility to inform the American people of is plans, if there are any. He sees himself as a dictator.

A bit more from Collinson:

Rep. Adam Smith, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, told CNN’s Brianna Keilar Tuesday that the CIA attack was a significant sharpening of US pressure and raised a knot of thorny questions.

“Where it goes from here, I think, is the thing to be concerned about, because Trump clearly wants to drive Maduro from power,” Smith said, arguing that boat strikes and other means of duress didn’t seem like they would have the intended effect. If they don’t, Smith continued, “What is Trump prepared to do next? How far is he willing to take this effort at regime change in Venezuela?”

Perhaps Trump’s fogginess is deliberate. If the buildup and steady escalations are part of a psychological operations campaign to wrong-foot Maduro or to persuade his regime cronies they’d be safer without him, confusion and disorientation could act as weapons. Even from the outside, it’s obvious the CIA strike on the port facility — in which, sources said, no one was killed — is a performative warning that far greater US capabilities can be brought to bear.

Yet the more serious the situation gets — especially now the US has crossed the threshold into land attacks — the more acute is the obligation to inform Americans of the administration’s plans. The founders never envisaged presidents being able to wage war on a whim. And large and intractable conflicts have sometimes started with discrete actions that mushroom into consequences that can cascade out of control. Take Vietnam as an example.

Read the rest at CNN.

One more on Trump’s illegal Venezuela operations from The New York Times (gift link): Grim Evidence of Trump’s Airstrikes Washes Ashore on a Colombian Peninsula.

A thunderous boom rang out through the windless late-afternoon air. Seconds later, smoke began rising out of the sea as if the horizon were on fire.

Watching from the shore on Nov. 6, Erika Palacio Fernández whipped out her phone, she said, unwittingly recording the only verified and independent video known to date of the aftermath of an airstrike in the Trump administration’s campaign against what it calls “narco-terrorists.”

Two days later, on that same shore, a scorched 30-foot-long boat itself would wash up. Then, two mangled bodies. Then charred jerrycans, life jackets and dozens of packets that were observed by The New York Times and were similar to others that have been found after anti-narcotics operations in the region. Most packets were empty, though traces of a substance that looked and smelled like marijuana were found in the lining of a few.

The assortment of singed flotsam appears to be the first physical evidence of the U.S. campaign, which has destroyed 30 vessels and killed more than 100 people in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific. Every other struck boat is presumed to have sunk along with its crew and cargo. The U.S. military has offered no evidence that the boats it has destroyed were transporting illicit substances or belong to criminal networks.

Remains of a burned boat on the beach near Puerto López on the Guajira Peninsula in Colombia.

A Times analysis matched the wreckage of the boat to the one in a video posted by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on the night of Nov. 6, hours after Ms. Palacio took her video. Mr. Hegseth described the strike as having targeted a vessel in the Caribbean operated by an unnamed “designated terrorist organization.” He said the strike killed three people and took place in international waters.

The Times analysis of Ms. Palacio’s video indicates the strike took place in the Gulf of Venezuela, where Colombia and Venezuela have long disputed their maritime boundary. The analysis could not determine the exact location of the strike.

The shape of the wreckage, a slender design typical of speedboats, matches that of the boat targeted in the video shared by the Defense Department, the Times analysis found, and shows damage to the boat’s hull and interior structure consistent with the impact of an airstrike. The military video shows the boat exploding and on fire beneath a large plume of smoke.

That such rare, tangible evidence is coming to light nearly two months after the early November strike is a testament both to the remoteness of the Guajira Peninsula, where the wreckage was found, and the lack of a sizable presence of the Colombian state in the area. The region is governed semiautonomously by an Indigenous community, the Wayuu, whose more than half a million people straddle the border between Colombia and Venezuela.

So Trump and Hegseth are blowing up boats carrying Marijuana–a substance that is legal in 24 states and more for medical use.

Trump’s takeover of the Kennedy Center

The Independent: More events planned for the Kennedy Center are canceled in protest of Trump adding his name to the building.

More artists have announced they are backing out of upcoming dates at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., in protest of President Donald Trump’s takeover, and recent potentially illegal renaming of the institution as the Trump-Kennedy Center.

Jazz supergroup The Cookers announced on its website it will not be performing across a series of two New Year’s Eve concerts.

“Jazz was born from struggle and from a relentless insistence on freedom: freedom of thought, of expression, and of the full human voice,” the group wrote in a statement. “Some of us have been making this music for many decades, and that history still shapes us.”

“I would never even consider performing in a venue bearing a name (and being controlled by the kind of board) that represents overt racism and deliberate destruction of African American music and culture,” Billy Harper, a saxophonist in the group, reportedly added in a statement to Jazz Stage.

The Doug Varone and Dancers troupe on Monday added that it will not carry out a planned April performance at the center.

The group wrote in a statement on Instagram that while it opposed the president’s decision to replace the center’s bipartisan board in February with a group of allies who later installed him as chairman, it initially still planned to carry out the engagement. That changed when center’s board voted earlier this month to rebrand the institution the Trump-Kennedy Center, according to the statement.

“We can no longer permit ourselves nor ask our audiences to step inside this once great institution,” the statement said. “The Kennedy Center was named in honor of our 35th President who fervently believed that the arts were the beating heart of our nation, as well as an integral part of international diplomacy. We hope in three-year’s time, that the Center and its reputation will return to that glory.” [….]

The wave of cancellations follows the news that drummer and vibraphonist Chuck Redd canceled a longstanding Christmas Eve jazz concert at the center in protest of the name change.

The Washington Post: Kennedy Center changed board rules months before vote to add Trump’s name.

The Kennedy Center adopted bylaws earlier this year that limited voting to presidentially appointed trustees, a move that preceded a unanimous decision this month by board members installed by President Donald Trump to add his name to the center.

The current bylaws, obtained by The Washington Post, were revised in May to specify that board members designated by Congress — known as ex officio members — could not vote or count toward a quorum. Legal experts say the move may conflict with the institution’s charter.

Trump took over the Kennedy Center in February, purging its board of members he had not appointed. The months that followed saw struggling ticket sales and programming changes that began to align the arts complex with the Trump administration’s broader cultural aims, culminating with the annual Kennedy Center Honors hosted by the president.

Days later, on Dec. 18, the board voted to add the president’s name to the institution, and within 24 hours it was on the website and the building itself: “The Donald J. Trump and The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.” [….]

The Kennedy Center lists 34 presidentially appointed board members, including Trump himself as chair, and 23 ex officio seats. The center’s president, Richard Grenell, is also an officer of the board.

The federal law that established the Kennedy Center designates specific government and federal positions — including the librarian of Congress; the mayor of Washington, D.C.; the secretary of the Smithsonian Institution; and the majority and minority leaders of the Senate — to serve as ex officio members.

The law identifies them as part of the board of trustees, which it directs to maintain and administer the facility as a living memorial. But it does not distinguish between voting and nonvoting members, which has been a point of ambiguity in the days following the vote to rename the Kennedy Center….

A former Kennedy Center staffer with knowledge of board proceedings, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retribution, told The Post that ex officio members were “always included in debate and discussion” during their tenure, but the person did not recall a time when those members’ votes were counted.

“Theoretically they could vote, but our practice was not to have them vote or count toward quorum,” the person said, noting they were not aware of the new leadership’s practices at the center.

Trump’s secret police force

The Washington Post (gift link): ICE plans $100 million ‘wartime recruitment’ push targeting gun shows, military fans for hires.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials are planning to spend $100 million over a one-year period to recruit gun-rights supporters and military enthusiasts through online influencers and a geo-targeted advertising campaign, part of what the agency called a “wartime recruitment” strategy it said was critical to hiring thousands of new deportation officers nationwide, according to an internal document reviewed by The Washington Post.

The spending would help President Donald Trump’s mass-deportation agenda dominate media networks and recruitment channels, including through ads targeting people who have attended UFC fights, listened to patriotic podcasts or shown an interest in guns and tactical gear, according to a 30-page document distributed among officials in this summer detailing ICE’s “surge hiring marketing strategy.”

Uncle Sam looms large on ICE’s recruitment site.

The Department of Homeland Security has spoken publicly about its fast-tracked effort to significantly increase ICE’s workforce by hiring more than 10,000 new employees, a surge promoted on social media with calls for recruits willing to perform their “sacred duty” and “defend the homeland” by repelling “foreign invaders.” The agency currently employs more than 20,000 people, according to ICE’s website.

But the document, reported here for the first time, reveals new details about the vast scale of the recruitment effort and its unconventional strategy to “flood the market” with millions of dollars in spending for Snapchat ads, influencers and live streamers on Rumble, a video platform popular with conservatives. Under the strategy, ICE would also use an ad-industry technique known as “geofencing” to send ads to the phone web browsers and social media feeds of anyone who set foot near military bases, NASCAR races, college campuses or gun and trade shows.

The document was also distributed among ICE officials in the days after the agency published a request for bids seeking contractors who could use “precise audience targeting, performance media management, and results-driven creative strategies” to “accelerate the achievement of [its] recruiting goals.” The language in the published bid closely mirrored language in the strategy document. That same month, DHS awarded two marketing firms nearly $40 million to support ICE’s public affairs office “recruitment campaign,” according to federal awards data.

It’s unclear how much of the spending and strategy have been carried out. But the plans outlined in the document have coincided with a rush of recruitment ads online seeking Americans who will “answer the call to serve.”

The rapid-recruitment approach is unlike anything ICE has ever pursued, said Sarah Saldaña, a director of ICE during the Obama administration, who recalled the agency filling its open positions through local police departments and sheriff’s offices with appeals to officers’ interests in federal public-safety work.

Use the gift link to read the rest.

Trump wants to cancel the Constitution

Heather Cox Richardson at Letters from an American: December 30, 2025

The hallmark of the first year of President Donald J. Trump’s second term has been the attempt of the president and his cronies to dismantle the constitutional system set up by the framers of that document when they established the United States of America. It’s not simply that they have broken the laws. They have acted as if the laws, and the Constitution that underpins them, don’t exist.

As soon as the 2024 election results were clear, billionaire Elon Musk, who had supported Trump’s campaign both through his purchase of Twitter—now X—and with $290 million in cash, posted on social media: “Novus Ordo Seclorum,” Latin for “New World Order.” Although he won with less than 50% of the vote, Trump announced that he had an “unprecedented and powerful mandate.” Musk would head a new “Department of Government Efficiency” that Musk vowed would cut at least $2 trillion from the federal budget.

Musk and his operatives muscled their way into government offices and gained access to computer systems. With strokes of a keyboard they eliminated jobs and programs, including, as Musk put it, feeding “into the wood chipper” most of the U.S. Agency for International Development, the government agency aimed at combating disease and malnutrition around the globe. That dismantling has caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people.

The Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, recently concluded that while the Department of Government Efficiency did not actually reduce spending, it did cut almost 10% of federal employees, a key goal of Office of Management and Budget director Russell Vought, a key author of Project 2025.

And, crucially, it put operatives in virtually all government departments and agencies, where they gained access to privileged information about Americans, including citizens, legal residents, and undocumented immigrants.

Musk and DOGE also established the idea that the unelected officials in the Trump administration could do whatever they wished, without regard to the laws or the Constitution. The Constitution, judicial precedent, and the 1974 Impoundment Control Act all make it very clear that the power of the purse belongs to Congress. As the elected representatives of the American people, only members of the House of Representatives and the Senate can determine how the nation’s money is spent. Then the president must “take Care that the laws be faithfully executed.”

Democrats objected to the administration’s dramatic usurpation of the power of Congress, but Republicans did not complain. Most backed the administration’s claims it was eliminating “waste, fraud, and abuse.”

Although Republicans controlled both chambers of Congress, meaning that Trump should have been able to get any legislation he wanted, he continued to try to get around the Constitution by declaring nine “emergencies” that would permit him to act without congressional oversight. This reliance on emergencies reflected the ideas of Nazi political theorist Carl Schmitt, whose writings were followed by right-wing leaders, including billionaire Peter Thiel and the man who influenced him, Curtis Yarvin. Schmitt argued that power belongs to the leader who can exploit emergencies that create exceptions to the constitutional order, enabling him to exercise power without regard to the law.

Click the link to read the rest.

Nora Benavidez at The New York Times (gift link): I Counted Trump’s Censorship Attempts. Here’s What I Found.

“We took the freedom of speech away.”

That was part of President Trump’s explanation in October of his executive order that purports to criminalize burning the American flag. Though his words fail as a constitutional rationale, they inadvertently distill many of his efforts at smothering dissent during the past 11 months.

Since returning to office, Mr. Trump and his administration have tried to undermine the First Amendment, suppress information that he and his supporters don’t like and hamstring parts of the academic, legal and private sectors through lawsuits and coercion — to flood the zone, as his ally, Steve Bannon, might say.

Some examples are well known, such as when ABC briefly took Jimmy Kimmel off the air after Brendan Carr, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, objected to a reference in one of Mr. Kimmel’s monologues about the killing of Charlie Kirk. Other examples received less attention, but by my count, this year there were about 200 instances of administration attempts at censorship, nearly all of which I outline in a new report.

Mr. Trump’s playbook isn’t random. It employs several recurring modes of attack.

The president has tried to cow the press. His administration banned Associated Press reporters from certain parts of the White House and Air Force One because the outlet uses “Gulf of Mexico” rather than the term Mr. Trump prefers, “Gulf of America.” It tried and failed to force some of the nation’s biggest news organizations to agree to restrictions on coverage of the Pentagon. He has said critical coverage of his initiatives is “really illegal.”

A journalist from El Salvador, Mario Guevara, was arrested while reporting on a No Kings protest in Georgia; he was detained for more than three months, then deported. At an Oval Office meeting between Mr. Trump and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, an ABC News correspondent, Mary Bruce, asked about the killing of the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi and about the Jeffrey Epstein files. Mr. Trump replied by berating her at length, at one point describing one of her questions as “insubordinate” — a characterization that upends the entire notion of a free press.

The administration has used immigration status to try to suppress political speech. In March, Mahmoud Khalil, a green card holder and a leader of pro-Palestinian demonstrations on the Columbia campus, was arrested and detained by immigration officials for several months. That month, Rumeysa Ozturk, a student visa holder, was arrested by immigration officials and detained for several weeks, apparently because she was an author of an opinion essay criticizing Tufts University for its response to the Israel-Hamas war.

It seems almost no one is beyond the scope of administration efforts to muzzle views or decisions that conflict with Mr. Trump’s agenda: After Federal District Court Judge James Boasberg ruled against the administration in a case involving the deportation of Venezuelans to El Salvador, Mr. Trump called for the judge to be impeached. A trainee was dismissed from the F.B.I.’s academy, apparently for having displayed an L.G.B.T.Q. Pride flag. The F.B.I. also appears to have fired agents for kneeling during George Floyd protests.

Use the gift link to read the rest.

Those are my recommended reads for today. I still can’t see very well, so please forgive any mistakes. Take care everyone!

#CIAStrikeInVenezuela #DonaldTrump #ICEAsTrumpSecretPolice #KennedyCenter #Marijuana #NewYearSEve2025 #TrumpCrushingDissent #USConstitution #VenezuelaBoatStrikes

Lazy Caturday Reads: Everything is Awful, As Usual

Good Afternoon!!

Shared Reflections, by Rebecca Aldernet

I can’t find any good news this morning–what else is new? The “president” is dangerously demented, his cabinet is full of kooks, his economy is going down the tubes, and he seems determined to start a war in Venezuela. Anyway, here are the stories that caught my attention today.

Venezuela Boat Strikes

I’m sure you’ve heard the reports about Pete Hegseth’s campaign of war crimes against alleged drug boats. Yesterday, The Washington Post published an exclusive report by Alex Horton and Ellen Nakashima (gift link): Hegseth order on first Caribbean boat strike, officials say: Kill them all.

The longer the U.S. surveillance aircraftfollowed the boat, the more confident intelligence analysts watching from command centers became that the 11 people on board were ferrying drugs.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave a spoken directive,according to two people with direct knowledge of the operation. “The order was to kill everybody,” one of them said.

A missile screamed off the Trinidad coast, striking the vessel and igniting a blaze from bow to stern. For minutes, commanders watched the boat burning on a live drone feed. As the smoke cleared, they got a jolt: Two survivors were clinging to the smoldering wreck.

The Special Operations commander overseeing the Sept. 2 attack — the opening salvo in the Trump administration’s war on suspected drug traffickers in the Western Hemisphere — ordered a second strike to comply with Hegseth’s instructions, two people familiar with the matter said. The two men were blown apart in the water.

Hegseth’s order, which has not been previously reported, adds another dimension to the campaign against suspected drug traffickers. Some current and former U.S. officials and law-of-war experts have said that the Pentagon’s lethal campaign — which has killed more than 80 people to date — is unlawful and may expose those most directly involved to future prosecution.

The alleged traffickers pose no imminent threat of attack against the United States and are not, as the Trump administration has tried to argue, in an “armed conflict” with the U.S., these officials and experts say. Because there is no legitimate war between the two sides, killing any ofthe men in the boats “amounts to murder,” said Todd Huntley, a former military lawyer who advised Special Operations forces for seven years at the height of the U.S. counterterrorism campaign.

Even if the U.S. were at war with the traffickers, an order to kill all the boat’s occupants if they were no longer able to fight “would in essence be an order to show no quarter, which would be a war crime,” said Huntley, now director of the national security law program at Georgetown Law.

Use the gift link to read the rest. We’re going to need prosecutions if we ever get rid of Trump and his goons.

Phillip M. Bailey at USA Today: Pete Hegseth lashes out at ‘kill them all’ report on boat strikes.

U.S Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is lashing out at a report that he ordered military officials to “kill them all” during one of the Trump administration’s strikes in the Caribbean aimed a boat allegedly carrying drug cargo.

Nataliya Bagatskaya, Echo of the black cats

“As usual, the fake news is delivering more fabricated, inflammatory, and derogatory reporting to discredit our incredible warriors fighting to protect the homeland,” Hegseth, 45, said in a Nov. 28 post on X.

The defense secretary was responding to a Washington Post story citing two anonymous sources that claimed he ordered troops to leave no survivors after a missile struck the vessel, which was traveling off the Trinidad coast, as two individuals were clinging to the smoldering wreckage.

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.”

Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., who shared the story about Hegseth’s alleged order, raised similar concerns about the constitutionality of the strikes in an Nov. 28 post on X.

“If you want to know why Hegseth is panicking about reminders that there is accountably for giving or carrying out illegal orders, it’s likely because he knows he has given illegal orders to murder people,” Murphy said.

Victoria Bisset, Alex Horton, Ellen Nakashima, and Noah Robertson at The Washington Post: Senate committee vows ‘vigorous oversight’ in killing of boat strike survivors.

The head of the Republican-led Senate Armed Services Committee has pledged “vigorous oversight” after a Washington Post report that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave a spoken order to kill all crew members during the first U.S. strike against suspected drug smugglers in the Caribbean earlier this year.

A live drone feed showed two survivors from the original crew of 11 clinging to the wreckage of their boat following the initial missile attack on Sept. 2, The Post reported on Friday afternoon. The Special Operations commander overseeing the operation then ordered a second strike to comply with Hegseth’s directive, according to two people with direct knowledge of the operation, killing both survivors. Those people, along with five others in the original report, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity.

Late Friday, Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Mississippi), the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Sen. Jack Reed (D-Rhode Island), the committee’s ranking Democrat, issued a statement saying that the committee “is aware of recent news reports — and the Department of Defense’s initial response — regarding alleged follow-on strikes on suspected narcotics vessels.”

The committee, they said, “has directed inquiries to the Department, and we will be conducting vigorous oversight to determine the facts related to these circumstances.”

If Trump is so concerned about drugs coming into the U.S. from Latin America, why did he just pardon a Honduran drug kingpin?

The New York Times: Trump Announces Pardon for Honduran Ex-President Convicted in Drug Case.

President Trump announced on Friday afternoon that he would grant “a Full and Complete Pardon” to a former president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández, who, as the center of a sweeping drug case, was found guilty by an American jury last year of conspiring to import cocaine into the United States.

By Louis Valtat

The news came as a shock not only to Hondurans, but also to the authorities in the United States who had built a major case and won a conviction against Mr. Hernández. They had accused him of taking bribes during his campaign from Joaquín Guzmán, the notorious former leader of the Sinaloa cartel in Mexico known as “El Chapo,” and of running his Central American country like a narco state.

The judge in his case, P. Kevin Castel, had called Mr. Hernández “a two-faced politician hungry for power” who masqueraded as an antidrug crusader while partnering with traffickers. And prosecutors had asked the judge to make sure Mr. Hernández would die behind bars, citing his abuse of power, connections to violent traffickers and “the unfathomable destruction” caused by cocaine.

The prosecution stretched across Mr. Trump’s first term and concluded during Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s time as president. In the end, Mr. Hernández was sentenced to 45 years in prison in Federal District Court in Manhattan, capping what prosecutors had presented as a sprawling conspiracy.

Mike Vigil, a former chief of international operations at the same agency, also reacted with disbelief to the news of the pardon. Mr. Vigil said the move imperiled the reputation of the United States and its international investigations into drug trafficking.

“This action would be nothing short of catastrophic and would destroy the credibility of the U.S. in the international community,” Mr. Vigil said on Friday.

Mr. Trump’s vow to pardon such a high-profile convicted drug trafficker appeared to contradict the president’s campaign to unleash the might of the American military on small boats in the Caribbean and Pacific that his administration says, without evidence, are involved in drug trafficking. That campaign has so far killed more than 80 people since it began in September.

There’s probably a bribe involved.

War in Venezuela?

Kelly Rissman at The Independent: Trump tells airlines to consider Venezuela’s airspace closed as US military buildup continues in region.

President Donald Trump told airlines to consider Venezuela’s airspace closed, days after he vowed to take action on land “very soon.”

Following dozens of strikes against alleged drug-carrying boats in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean that have killed more than 80 people since September, Trump suggested to military service members in a Thanksgiving Day phone call that the U.S. would soon take action “on land.”

On Saturday, he urged the clearing of the airspace near the South American country. “To all Airlines, Pilots, Drug Dealers, and Human Traffickers, please consider THE AIRSPACE ABOVE AND SURROUNDING VENEZUELA TO BE CLOSED IN ITS ENTIRETY,” the U.S. president wrote on Truth Social Saturday morning.

Over the weekend, the Federal Aviation Administration also warned airlines to “exercise caution” when flying over Venezuela “due to the worsening security situation and heightened military activity.”

Several airlines cancelled their flights as a result of the FAA’s warning.

By Salah Hefney

Can he do that? A bit more from the Independent story:

Last week, the White House was reportedly considering having U.S. military planes drop leaflets — containing details about the $50 million reward for information leading to the arrest or conviction of Nicolás Maduro — over Caracas, Venezuela’s capital, the Washington Postreported.

For months, the U.S. government has been building up a military presence in the region to curb what Trump administration officials call “narco-terrorists” and has also made it clear it wants to oust Maduro.

Maduro has been in power since 2013, following the death of Hugo Chavez. The U.S. is among more than 50 countries that have refused to recognize Maduro as Venezuela’s head of state, claiming he lost the 2024 presidential election. The State Department has offered rewards for information leading to the arrest or conviction of the Venezuelan president since 2020; the Trump administration raised the reward to $50 million this year.

The U.S. is engaged in an “armed conflict” with drug cartels, which Trump alleges are fueled by Maduro’s government. Last month, the State Department designated Cartel de los Soles as a “Foreign Terrorist Organization,” claiming it’s headed by Maduro and other high-ranking members of his “illegitimate” regime.

There’s more at the link.

Attacks on National Guard in DC

Jenny Gathright, Emily Davies, and Olivia George at The Washington Post: D.C. police to begin patrolling with National Guard after fatal attack.

National Guard troops patrolling in D.C. will be paired with local law enforcement personnel, at least temporarily, in the wake of the Wednesday attack that killed one National Guard member and critically injured another, according to an email obtained by The Washington Post and two D.C. police officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss planning that is still in progress.

“Officers will conduct high-visibility patrols with the National Guard and provide assistance as needed,” said the email, which was sent to D.C. police leadership Wednesday evening. The email said the situation was “fluid,” and adjustments to the staffing plan could be made in the coming days.

Fabrice Backès, Sandie

If enacted on a long-term basis, the change would significantly shift the way National Guard troops have worked with local and federal law enforcement in the District since their arrival in August. Trump administration officials have credited the troops for helping reduce crime in the city — in part, they argued, because the troops’ presence at Metro stations and on National Park Service lands frees up law enforcement to police other areas of the city. Diverting local police to accompany Guard members would do essentially the opposite by siphoning them from other tasks in D.C. neighborhoods.

The email said the new pairing would start Thursday and Friday.A D.C. police official said some officers had been temporarily detailed to accompany the troops, and a more long-term policy change was under discussion.

The official, who stressed that the discussions were still preliminary, said D.C. police, Metro Transit Police, U.S. Park Police and several other law enforcement agencies were having conversations with the National Guard task force in D.C. about pairing the troops with police officers while they are on city streets. Since their deployment to D.C., groups of National Guard troops have largely operated unaccompanied by police, the official said.

 A judge has already said that putting National Guard Troops in DC was illegal, but Trump filed an “emergency appeal.” Meanwhile, two members of the West Virginia National Guard have been shot. One has died and the other is still in critical condition.

NPR: Where things stand with the National Guard shooting in D.C.

Sarah Beckstrom, 20, of Summersville, W.Va., joined the service in 2023. Beckstrom’s father, Gary, called her his “baby girl” and said she had “passed to glory” in a Facebook post on Thursday.

West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey on Friday called for residents to hold a moment of silence for the two victims of the shooting, as both were deployed as part of that state’s National Guard.

Morrisey said in a statement Friday that Beckstrom had made the “ultimate sacrifice” in service to her state and the nation. He added that both Beckstrom and Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe, 24, had stepped forward and volunteered for the mission in D.C.

Morrisey also said that Wolfe remains in “very critical condition.”

“These two West Virginia heroes were serving our country and protecting our nation’s capital when they were maliciously attacked,” Morrisey said. “Their courage and commitment to duty represent the very best of our state.”

Trump’s Attacks on Woman Journalists

Corbin Bolies at The Wrap: Trump Calls CBS News Correspondent ‘Stupid Person’ in 4th Attack on Female Reporters in 2 Weeks.

President Donald Trump attacked another female reporter on Thursday after she asked him about the vetting of the suspect in a Washington, D.C., shooting that killed a National Guardsman, calling her a “stupid person.”

CBS News’ chief White House correspondent Nancy Cordes questioned Trump about reports that Rahmanullah Lakanwal, the alleged gunman who entered the U.S. as part of a Biden-era program for Afghan refugees who fled the nation in 2021, was vetted before he allegedly shot at the National Guardsmen on Wednesday.

By Rebecca Aldernet

Reports indicated that Lakanwal was vetted either through his time working with the CIA in Afghanistan, during the removal process from Afghanistan or during his 2024 asylum application, which the Trump administration approved earlier this year.

Cordes, therefore, asked Trump why he blamed the Biden administration if U.S. officials confirmed vetting of the refugees took place. Trump didn’t enjoy the line of questioning.

“Are you stupid? Are you a stupid person?” Trump asked. “Because they came into on a plane along with 1000s of other people that shouldn’t be here, and you’re just asking questions because you’re a stupid person. And we — there’s a law passed that it’s almost impossible not to get to get them out. You can’t get them out once they come in. And they came in and they were unvetted. They were unchecked. There were many of them, and they came on big planes, and it was disgraceful.”

The attack was the latest in a series of swipes at female reporters. Trump on Wednesday described a New York Times reporter as “ugly, inside and out” over a reported story on his age. He also called a Bloomberg News reporter a “piggy” and an ABC News reporter a “terrible person” for her questioning of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Catherine Bouris at The Daily Beast: Trump’s Niece Exposes Why Her Uncle Keeps Attacking Female Reporters.

Donald Trump’s niece, Mary Trump, says one of the reasons the president seems to be increasingly lashing out at female reporters is because he is “rattled.

Mary, 60, discussed the rise in incidents on the Wednesday edition of her show, Mary Trump Live. She noted the 79-year-old president calling a reporter “piggy” while telling her to be quiet during a gaggle aboard Air Force One, and a Truth Social post in which he insulted a New York Times reporter’s looks.

“His misogynistic attacks against reporters in particular are increasing and that means a couple of things,” she explained. “It means that he’s increasingly comfortable lodging such attacks, as he’s been openly misogynistic, as he’s been openly racist and openly Islamophobic and openly anti-immigrant and openly antisemitic. There’s no hiding it anymore.”

”I think it’s also a sign that he’s a little rattled. He’s also never clearly heard of the Streisand effect,” Mary said, referring to the internet phenomenon where somebody inadvertently draws further attention to something while attempting to hide it from the public.

“When you call attention to the thing you want people to ignore, it’s probably a terrible idea.”

Trump’s Ballroom Obsession

Luke Broadwater at The New York Times (gift link): Inside Trump’s Push to Make the White House Ballroom as Big as Possible.

I posted about Trump’s conflicts with his architects on Wednesday. This is an extension of that story. After he met with architect James McCreary in August,

McCrery Architects got to work on the initial drawings for the project, sketching out a design with high ceilings and arched windows reminiscent of Versailles’s Hall of Mirrors. It would have the latest security features, including bulletproof glass. Gold furniture, known to please the president, was added to the renderings.

Black cat with cat lady, Dee Nickerson

It was flashy enough to impress a man of Mr. Trump’s tastes, while largely matching the style of the historic White House without overshadowing it.

That’s when things got tricky.

In offering up his initial design, Mr. McCrery could not have known that Mr. Trump’s vision for the project was growing. What started as a 500-seat ballroom connected to the East Wing grew to 650 seats. Next, he wanted a 999-seat ballroom, then room for 1,350. Even as Mr. Trump assured the public in July that the ballroom would not touch the existing structure, he already had approved plans to demolish the East Wing to make way for something that could hold several thousand people, according to three people familiar with the timeline.

The latest plan, which officials said was still preliminary, calls for a ballroom much larger than the West Wing and the Executive Mansion. Mr. Trump has said publicly that he would like a ballroom big enough to hold a crowd for a presidential inauguration.

The size of the project was not the only issue raising alarms. Mr. Trump also told people working on the ballroom that they did not need to follow permitting, zoning or code requirements because the structure is on White House grounds, according to three people familiar with his comments. (The firms involved have insisted on following industry standards.)

In recent weeks, Mr. McCrery has pulled back from day-to-day involvement in the project, two people familiar with the matter told The New York Times. They emphasized that Mr. McCrery was still involved as a consultant on the design and proud to be working for Mr. Trump.

Trump has destroyed our government; now he’s working on destroying the White House. Use the gift link to read the whole awful story.

Those are my recommended reads for today. What do you think?

#andrewWolfe #donaldTrump #honduras #juanOrlandoHernandez #nationalGuardInDc #nicolasMaduro #peteHegseth #sarahBeckstrom #trumpAttacksOnWomenJournalists #trumpsBallroomObsession #venezuela #venezuelaBoatStrikes