Blowing up a boat on international waters and killing 11, extending federal troop presence in D.C. despite a new lawsuit, and an effort to rename the Defense Department.
It is impossible to put too much emphasis on number two on your list of things tRump claims he has the right to do: Designate anyone he wants as a member of a group he can direct the military to target and even murder. Remember Abrego Garcia being declared a member of Tren de Aragua because of tattoos on his knuckles, hand drawn as suggested labels on top of the photo?
No one even checked the 11 Venezuelans for tattoos... or drugs. No one has suggested the boat's registration was checked for prior history of drug use. No one has even mentioned that carrying eleven people would be extremely odd crewing for a drug boat which would hardly need the hands, want the extra witnesses, or care to spare the extra space. tRump wants a target and there they are - who cares if they were fishermen? Partygoers? Refugees?
I hope every law group and legal commentator and constitutional lawyer with a voice makes damn sure the American people know - and tRump knows that they know - that America holds elections in time of war unlike Israel which apparently will allow Netanyahu to commit war crimes and remain in power so long as he can drag out his nearly one-sided "war" on Gaza. No, tRump, if we just "happen" to be at war it doesn't mean "no more elections" here. Closing the lid firmly on that cookie jar might just remove one of this administration's motives for provoking a war.
So much for the military balking at an illegal order...blowing up a small boat which presented NO threat to the large, heavily-armed USN armada parked off the Venezuelan coast surely must have caused SOME questions or soul-searching amongst the officers aboard the ship that actually murdered those eleven people. Do they consider themselves blameless cos "following orders"? If tRump can call somebody a "terrorist", thence a "combatant" in the same sentence, what's to prevent him from applying the same "logic" on US soil? At what point does a military commander draw the line? Or is this beyond the scope of an officer's oath of service?
Stripped of career JAGs, it now appears that anything goes, and any order received from Kegsbreath or tRump is considered legal and binding...as you say, well on the way to fascism.
True story, I was in the JAG fifty years ago and if a field grade officer consulted the little shop I worked in about the legality of taking an analogous action, our CO would have said "Better not, but if you do you better be prepared to go up before a board of inquiry and there aren't going to be be a lot of happy faces on the other side of the table."
Key questions raised here, Lance. But unless they can be raised in Congress or, perhaps, in a massive press campaign, it’s hard to see how answers will be found - or how anyone will be held to account. <sigh>
None of these people—whether they were drug dealers or not—deserved to be murdered by the government of the United States of America!
Dealing drugs is not a death sentence even if that’s what they were coming here for but no one knows why they were coming here, they were murdered before they could tell anyone!!!
But do we even know they were drug traffickers? What was the evidence? Is no one in the world community concerned about this, although the US appears not to be....
isn't it more important for US to be outraged? after all it's OUR government assassinating people in international waters, renaming the Department of Defense to Department of War, and threatening to keep keep assassinating people they don't like.
Other nations MUST moderate their responses as we still have the largest most heavily armed military on Earth and we have the unhinged willing to abuse that power on US (LA, DC, Chicago, New Orleans, Baltimore).
the GOP is fully complicit and cowardly. it's up to US to push back in the streets and at the ballot box next year.
vote straight Blue until all collaborators have been removed, vote for PROGRESSIVE Dem candidates, keep calling/emailing/visiting your Dem reps and senators until they stop snatching defeat from the jaws of victory (as apparently our "leadership" wants to do to "help" the GOP stay in power by extending the healthcare subsidies but only until AFTER the midterms, which only helps THEM keep their edge in Congress).
Perhaps more important for the US to be outraged, but I'm skeptical that DJT will get impactful US push-back. However, I am surprised the international community doesn't create headlines of outrage. Who knows? It could be a boat off the coast of the UK next. They should be worried.
meanwhile our former allies are busy quietly creating new alliances to protect their interests while cutting the US out. they can't depend on us any more and we are losing trading partners to China...
Wow—so who needs three branches of government when we have a brave genius/president whose mind decides - and it decides alone - the culpability of drug cartels and immigrants (brown only) … as well as what crimes to not investigate (white collar, civil rights, sex crimes)? Well, as long as it’s Epstein-free.
If Trump’s kill order is deemed an “official act,” he will not face criminal or civil consequences due to Supreme Court immunity, even if illegal or unconstitutional. Accountability is limited to impeachment, future reforms, and public backlash—legal prosecution is blocked unless his actions are classified as “unofficial.”
Finally, a Department of War to terrorize more children, to wage war against throwers of sandwiches and … Greenland. Mike Johnson is consulting the white Jesus and his orange apostle as we speak.
In mid-March, Trump proclaimed that Venezuela was waging war on the U.S. Since then, as far as I know, Congress has taken no action to authorize Trump to wage war on Venezuela. Changing names to Department of War and Secretary of War only accentuates the criminality of Trump's and Hegseth's misconduct. Pretty much everybody who is anybody in the U.S. knows that We the People delegated only to Congress the power to declare war. The people did so because they foresaw dangerous deranged demagogues like Trump and sycophants like Hegseth dragging us (the People) into a war we definitely don't want to have to fight.
Trump's and Hegseth's acts of war are making war more likely not only with Venezuela or Iran, but also with other nations that view Trump's and Hegseth's acts of war as a threat to everyone.
My question about the people murdered in that boat,what if they were fishermen,what if they were trying to escape their own regime?For certain they were innocent people just minding their own business and not a threat to anyone!
I am so goddamn sick and tired of THIS LAWLESS REGIME up and deciding which people to randomly perscecute next!
When can we,as citizens,ask the International Courts for help?We could certainly use that help!I don't want these idiots loosely in charge speaking for me!
Seriously - wanting to be nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize and at the same time blowing a boat and 11 people out of the water, still threatening Greenland, and renaming the DoD to the Department of War? I don’t really understand how these things remotely go together.
1. Drug smuggling is not an act punishable by death in our laws
2. Drug smugglers bare not enemy combatants.
3. Extra,-judicial killings are murder
4. The boat was in international waters
5. Did the Navy have unimpeachable sources as to its cargo, people on the boat, or destination? Were their women, children, tourists, immigrants, etc aboard? Allowable collateral damage? Did the Navy know with absolute certainty the boat was going to the United States and not just on a days outing?
I can't see this standing up in court. Even a modestly skilled prosecutor could shred the defense
Is there any reason murder charges couldn't be brought? But who would bring them and to what court would such a case go?
I thought Trump wanted to be known as the ‘Peace President’ - he’s on a constant campaign to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for heavens sake! So how does instilling a ‘warrior ethos’ within our military, and even using the word WAR to describe our military, support that goal I wonder⁉️ And how does using lethal force on foreign countries running drugs, without the consent of Congress, support that goal⁉️ 🤦♀️
So, it’s a good thing we have created the infrastructure to mount a semi-permanent resistance to what since 2015 was obviously a fascist movement. You know, like strike and legal funds and money for education and organization, the solidarity already existing to overcome the fear and selfishness….
It won’t be tough at all to pull all that out of our asses now. I’m so glad people didn’t choose to live in a bubble, so scared of the worst that they denied it till the wolf was in the house.
Damn those “doomers”! They fucked it all up with their grasp of reality, just like they did during the winter of 2020, when, like the innately pathological depressives they are, they refused to accept that a magic force field would protect America from Covid.
I say we n-tuple down on status quo bias so that we are totally sessile once rotten institutions fully fail.
This is all very true, but this is also always what happens. Some of us get it right away, and it takes forever for others. Yes it's frustrating, but I have a hard time seeing how it helps going forward to hold anger about it. I mean, venting is good and well, but you're absolutely right that what we need most now is solidarity. If we're right about how much trouble we're in, then I consider it a positive development if someone like Chris, who is temperamentally very cautious and disciplined, displays increasing alarm in his reporting. We need everyone, and different people are going to respond to different strategies, so we need a broad toolkit.
For what it’s worth, years ago Noam Chomsky preferred Department of War — said it was more honest. In Trump’s case though, just more “Nyah nyah” tiresome schoolyard aggressiveness
It is impossible to put too much emphasis on number two on your list of things tRump claims he has the right to do: Designate anyone he wants as a member of a group he can direct the military to target and even murder. Remember Abrego Garcia being declared a member of Tren de Aragua because of tattoos on his knuckles, hand drawn as suggested labels on top of the photo?
No one even checked the 11 Venezuelans for tattoos... or drugs. No one has suggested the boat's registration was checked for prior history of drug use. No one has even mentioned that carrying eleven people would be extremely odd crewing for a drug boat which would hardly need the hands, want the extra witnesses, or care to spare the extra space. tRump wants a target and there they are - who cares if they were fishermen? Partygoers? Refugees?
I hope every law group and legal commentator and constitutional lawyer with a voice makes damn sure the American people know - and tRump knows that they know - that America holds elections in time of war unlike Israel which apparently will allow Netanyahu to commit war crimes and remain in power so long as he can drag out his nearly one-sided "war" on Gaza. No, tRump, if we just "happen" to be at war it doesn't mean "no more elections" here. Closing the lid firmly on that cookie jar might just remove one of this administration's motives for provoking a war.
11 on board weights it down considerably and unnecessarily. A drug boat wants to move as fast as possible.
For all we know it may have been filled with immigrants, sports fishers, holiday junketeers, etc.
Frankly calling it the department of war leaves a very sick feeling in my stomach.
That doesn’t sound like a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize. Has he given up on that already?
Department of War is a Trump fabrication, just like Gulf of America, another misnomer.
So much for the military balking at an illegal order...blowing up a small boat which presented NO threat to the large, heavily-armed USN armada parked off the Venezuelan coast surely must have caused SOME questions or soul-searching amongst the officers aboard the ship that actually murdered those eleven people. Do they consider themselves blameless cos "following orders"? If tRump can call somebody a "terrorist", thence a "combatant" in the same sentence, what's to prevent him from applying the same "logic" on US soil? At what point does a military commander draw the line? Or is this beyond the scope of an officer's oath of service?
Stripped of career JAGs, it now appears that anything goes, and any order received from Kegsbreath or tRump is considered legal and binding...as you say, well on the way to fascism.
True story, I was in the JAG fifty years ago and if a field grade officer consulted the little shop I worked in about the legality of taking an analogous action, our CO would have said "Better not, but if you do you better be prepared to go up before a board of inquiry and there aren't going to be be a lot of happy faces on the other side of the table."
Key questions raised here, Lance. But unless they can be raised in Congress or, perhaps, in a massive press campaign, it’s hard to see how answers will be found - or how anyone will be held to account. <sigh>
He is such a monster!
None of these people—whether they were drug dealers or not—deserved to be murdered by the government of the United States of America!
Dealing drugs is not a death sentence even if that’s what they were coming here for but no one knows why they were coming here, they were murdered before they could tell anyone!!!
Regrettably, if they’re brown they ain’t people … unless they own boutique prisons.
But do we even know they were drug traffickers? What was the evidence? Is no one in the world community concerned about this, although the US appears not to be....
Or even if they were headed to the US.
they weren't... AND being in international waters makes this a crime regardless.
So where is the international outrage?
isn't it more important for US to be outraged? after all it's OUR government assassinating people in international waters, renaming the Department of Defense to Department of War, and threatening to keep keep assassinating people they don't like.
Other nations MUST moderate their responses as we still have the largest most heavily armed military on Earth and we have the unhinged willing to abuse that power on US (LA, DC, Chicago, New Orleans, Baltimore).
the GOP is fully complicit and cowardly. it's up to US to push back in the streets and at the ballot box next year.
vote straight Blue until all collaborators have been removed, vote for PROGRESSIVE Dem candidates, keep calling/emailing/visiting your Dem reps and senators until they stop snatching defeat from the jaws of victory (as apparently our "leadership" wants to do to "help" the GOP stay in power by extending the healthcare subsidies but only until AFTER the midterms, which only helps THEM keep their edge in Congress).
Perhaps more important for the US to be outraged, but I'm skeptical that DJT will get impactful US push-back. However, I am surprised the international community doesn't create headlines of outrage. Who knows? It could be a boat off the coast of the UK next. They should be worried.
meanwhile our former allies are busy quietly creating new alliances to protect their interests while cutting the US out. they can't depend on us any more and we are losing trading partners to China...
1,200 miles trip in a 30 ft speed-boat? How many fuel stops? Eleven people - not much room for "all those drugs"!!
Wow—so who needs three branches of government when we have a brave genius/president whose mind decides - and it decides alone - the culpability of drug cartels and immigrants (brown only) … as well as what crimes to not investigate (white collar, civil rights, sex crimes)? Well, as long as it’s Epstein-free.
If Trump’s kill order is deemed an “official act,” he will not face criminal or civil consequences due to Supreme Court immunity, even if illegal or unconstitutional. Accountability is limited to impeachment, future reforms, and public backlash—legal prosecution is blocked unless his actions are classified as “unofficial.”
Ah, but Trump took his lawlessness international, and this could have negative repercussions for him in the future.
At least, I hope so.
Why doesn't he skip "Department of War" and go straight to Schutzstaffel or Geheime Staatspolizei?
Maybe the navy be renamed to the Kriegsmarine
Finally, a Department of War to terrorize more children, to wage war against throwers of sandwiches and … Greenland. Mike Johnson is consulting the white Jesus and his orange apostle as we speak.
In mid-March, Trump proclaimed that Venezuela was waging war on the U.S. Since then, as far as I know, Congress has taken no action to authorize Trump to wage war on Venezuela. Changing names to Department of War and Secretary of War only accentuates the criminality of Trump's and Hegseth's misconduct. Pretty much everybody who is anybody in the U.S. knows that We the People delegated only to Congress the power to declare war. The people did so because they foresaw dangerous deranged demagogues like Trump and sycophants like Hegseth dragging us (the People) into a war we definitely don't want to have to fight.
Trump's and Hegseth's acts of war are making war more likely not only with Venezuela or Iran, but also with other nations that view Trump's and Hegseth's acts of war as a threat to everyone.
My question about the people murdered in that boat,what if they were fishermen,what if they were trying to escape their own regime?For certain they were innocent people just minding their own business and not a threat to anyone!
I am so goddamn sick and tired of THIS LAWLESS REGIME up and deciding which people to randomly perscecute next!
When can we,as citizens,ask the International Courts for help?We could certainly use that help!I don't want these idiots loosely in charge speaking for me!
Seriously - wanting to be nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize and at the same time blowing a boat and 11 people out of the water, still threatening Greenland, and renaming the DoD to the Department of War? I don’t really understand how these things remotely go together.
1. Drug smuggling is not an act punishable by death in our laws
2. Drug smugglers bare not enemy combatants.
3. Extra,-judicial killings are murder
4. The boat was in international waters
5. Did the Navy have unimpeachable sources as to its cargo, people on the boat, or destination? Were their women, children, tourists, immigrants, etc aboard? Allowable collateral damage? Did the Navy know with absolute certainty the boat was going to the United States and not just on a days outing?
I can't see this standing up in court. Even a modestly skilled prosecutor could shred the defense
Is there any reason murder charges couldn't be brought? But who would bring them and to what court would such a case go?
I thought Trump wanted to be known as the ‘Peace President’ - he’s on a constant campaign to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for heavens sake! So how does instilling a ‘warrior ethos’ within our military, and even using the word WAR to describe our military, support that goal I wonder⁉️ And how does using lethal force on foreign countries running drugs, without the consent of Congress, support that goal⁉️ 🤦♀️
The “president’s ongoing efforts to restore law and order” … nice sleight of hand from a lawless man whose idea of order is a jerking knee.
Wait, I thought he was the Peace President?
So, it’s a good thing we have created the infrastructure to mount a semi-permanent resistance to what since 2015 was obviously a fascist movement. You know, like strike and legal funds and money for education and organization, the solidarity already existing to overcome the fear and selfishness….
It won’t be tough at all to pull all that out of our asses now. I’m so glad people didn’t choose to live in a bubble, so scared of the worst that they denied it till the wolf was in the house.
Damn those “doomers”! They fucked it all up with their grasp of reality, just like they did during the winter of 2020, when, like the innately pathological depressives they are, they refused to accept that a magic force field would protect America from Covid.
I say we n-tuple down on status quo bias so that we are totally sessile once rotten institutions fully fail.
PS: Yes, this was predictable. Trump’s first official call in 2017 was to Duterte to fawn over his mass murder program of drug dealers (often sic): https://theintercept.com/2017/05/23/read-the-full-transcript-of-trumps-call-with-philippine-president-rodrigo-duterte/
This is all very true, but this is also always what happens. Some of us get it right away, and it takes forever for others. Yes it's frustrating, but I have a hard time seeing how it helps going forward to hold anger about it. I mean, venting is good and well, but you're absolutely right that what we need most now is solidarity. If we're right about how much trouble we're in, then I consider it a positive development if someone like Chris, who is temperamentally very cautious and disciplined, displays increasing alarm in his reporting. We need everyone, and different people are going to respond to different strategies, so we need a broad toolkit.
For what it’s worth, years ago Noam Chomsky preferred Department of War — said it was more honest. In Trump’s case though, just more “Nyah nyah” tiresome schoolyard aggressiveness