New York Times:
Lawmakers Suggest Follow-Up Boat Strike Could Be a War Crime
Top Republicans have joined Democrats in demanding answers about the escalating military campaign the Trump administration says is aimed at targeting drug traffickers.
“Obviously if that occurred, that would be very serious, and I agree that that would be an illegal act,” Representative Mike Turner, Republican of Ohio and a former chairman of the Intelligence Committee, said on “Face the Nation” on CBS.
Senator Tim Kaine, Democrat of Virginia, said on CBS that if the report was accurate, the attack “rises to the level of a war crime.” And on CNN, when asked if he believed a second strike to kill survivors constituted a war crime, Senator Mark Kelly, Democrat of Arizona, answered, “It seems to.”
Jack Goldsmith/Executive Functions:
A Dishonorable Strike
Indulging all assumptions in favor of the administration’s boat strikes, killing helpless men is murder
One might also, possibly, stretch the laws of war to say that attacks on the drug boats are part of a “non-international armed conflict,” as OLC has reportedly concluded. This line of argument likely draws on a super-broad conception of the threat posed by the alleged drug runners as well as the expansive U.S. post-9/11 justification for treating as targetable (i) dangerous non-state actor terrorists off the battlefield; (ii) those who “directly support[] hostilities” in aid of the defined enemy;* and (iii) activities that provide economic support to the war effort, such as Taliban drug labs or ISIS oil trucks. I don’t think this argument comes close to working without deferential reliance on a bad faith finding by the president about the non-international armed conflict and much greater stretches of precedent than the United States previously indulged after 9/11. Still, the unconvincing argument is conceivable.
But there can be no conceivable legal justification for what the Washington Post reported earlier today: That U.S. Special Operations Forces killed the survivors of a first strike on a drug boat off the coast of Trinidad who, in the Post’s words, “were clinging to the smoldering wreck.”
Jonathan Chait/The Atlantic in an older piece about the hysteria from the WH and DoD about the ad:
Trump and Hegseth’s Hysterical Reaction to an Ad
For the president and his minions, loyalty is more important than legality.
In light of the administration’s undeclared military campaign in the Caribbean, which has included extralegal strikes against boats that are allegedly smuggling drugs, it might have made sense to let this controversy die down. Instead, Pete Hegseth’s self-styled Department of War took to X yesterday to announce that Senator Mark Kelly, a former Navy combat pilot and one of the Democrats who appeared in the ad, will be investigated for a possible court-martial owing to “serious allegations of misconduct.” The post goes on to remind military retirees that they are still subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which prohibits “actions intended to interfere with the loyalty, morale, or good order and discipline of the armed forces.”
It bears noting that the ad does not call for ignoring legal orders. It’s merely a public-service announcement reminding members of the military and the intelligence community of their right to avoid implication in crimes. The ad can be interpreted as a call for rebellion only if the orders coming from above are in fact illegal.
The problem is that the president seems to think that an action is just as long as he calls for it. Trump ran for office in 2016 openly and repeatedly calling for the military to illegally torture prisoners for intelligence purposes. “If I say, ‘Do it,’ they’re going to do it,” he insisted. Though he later conceded that the U.S. is in fact bound by “laws and treaties,” he regularly pardoned service members in his first term who were credibly accused or convicted of war crimes, often against the advice of his own military leadership.
It’s a reminder of the lawlessness of this Administration.
A video conversation with Joyce Vance and co-founder of Just Security Ryan Goodman:
Understanding The Lethal U.S. Strike On A Boat Allegedly Being Used For "Narcoterrorism"
My Conversation with NYU Law Prof Ryan Goodman
Ryan Goodman joined me this morning for a live chat to help us understand the legal issues and the law surrounding Friday’s report in the Washington Post that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave verbal instructions to “kill everybody” in advance of the September 2 attack on a boat in the Caribbean. The administration has maintained that the vessel was being used for narcoterrorism. Other reports have suggested that people being trafficked were on board.
The report was enough to generate bipartisan support in both houses of Congress for oversight. Yes, you read that sentence correctly.
Washington Post:
Congressional committees to scrutinize U.S. killing of boat strike survivors
In a rare split with the Trump administration, GOP-led panels in the House and Senate say they want a full accounting in the September military attack.
Late Friday, Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Mississippi), the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Sen. Jack Reed (Rhode Island), the committee’s top 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.”
The leaders of the House Armed Services Committee, Rep. Mike D. Rogers (R-Alabama) and Rep. Adam Smith (D-Washington), followed suit late Saturday. In a brief joint statement, the pair said they are “taking bipartisan action to gather a full accounting of the operation in question.” The committee, they noted, is “committed to providing rigorous oversight of the Department of Defense’s military operations in the Caribbean.”
Justin Glawe/Public Notice:
MAGA's Epstein gaslighting is unsustainable
To believe anything they say requires a complete suspension of common sense.
While Republicans have argued that Democrats want the files released to hurt Trump — and that if there was damaging information therein Biden would have already released them — they’ve also said the 50,000 pages of documents and emails that have already been released by congressional committees exonerate Trump.
“The evidence we’ve gathered does not implicate President Trump in any way,” Rep. James Comer claimed on October 21.
None of this has worked, forcing Republicans in Congress to pass a bill ordering the release of at least some of the Justice Department’s materials on Epstein, which Trump has signed into law.
Now, Republicans are adjusting tactics slightly, saying that even if Trump is in the files, it’s not evidence of any wrongdoing.
POLITICO:
Forget Mamdani. New York’s real political shift happened everywhere else.
Democrats flipped over 50 county legislative seats across the state. Republicans flipped one.
Zohran Mamdani’s decisive win in New York City — along with key victories in New Jersey and Virginia — suggested Democrats are headed into the midterms from a position of strength. But they didn’t capture how deep that strength ran.
Across suburbs, rural counties and small towns in New York, Democrats posted electoral gains that rival — and in many cases surpass — the party’s 2017 “Blue Wave.” In a state with enough competitive House races to decide control of the chamber, the outcome amounts to a wakeup call for already-wary Republicans.
New York Democrats once viewed the 2017 elections as among their best ever. The Blue Wave that year was driven by purple suburbs making a hard shift left. This year in New York, that tilt was felt even more widely — with Democrats in every corner of the state pointing to economic uncertainty exacerbated by President Donald Trump’s policies as voters’ top concern.
David Shuster/Blue Amp:
America’s Dangerous Delusion: Pretending Trump Is Fine
David Shuster exposes the fatigue, fury, and cognitive erosion the Trump team is desperately trying to hide.
The New York Times recently reported what all of us with a functioning optic nerve have seen: Donald J. Trump, the once bombastic showman and snake oil salesman, has shrunk his public schedule and limited his appearances to a tight mid-day window.But instead of addressing concerns like an adult, the President keeps raging like a tyrannical toddler. He has denounced the reporting as unfair, sneered at journalists, and bellowed about his “perfect” tests — as if the nation were comprised only of other gullible children distracted by shiny objects.
Whereas previous U.S. Presidents embraced the burdens of office at dawn, Trump appears only after most of the nation has eaten lunch.
And when Trump does appear, reporters and staff keep seeing moments that look like fatigue overtaking leadership vigilance, the sort of slump that in most offices would prompt a supervisor to ask whether the employee needed time off or a medical check.
