Tuesday, December 2, 2025
■ Today's Top News
"It is blatantly illegal to order criminal suspects to be murdered rather than detained," said one human rights leader.
By Jessica Corbett
As the White House claims that President Donald Trump “has the authority” to blow up anyone he dubs a “narco-terrorist” and Adm. Frank M. “Mitch” Bradley prepares for a classified congressional briefing amid outrage over a double-tap strike that kicked off the administration’s boat bombing spree, rights advocates and legal experts emphasize that all of the US attacks on alleged drug-running vessels have been illegal.
“Trump said he will look into reports that the US military (illegally) conducted a follow-up strike on a boat in the Caribbean that it believed to be ferrying drugs, killing survivors of an initial missile attack. But the initial attack was illegal too,” Kenneth Roth, the former longtime director of the advocacy group Human Rights Watch, said on social media Monday.
Roth and various others have called out the US military’s bombings of boats in the Caribbean and Pacific as unlawful since they began on September 2, when the two strikes killed 11 people. The Trump administration has confirmed its attacks on 22 vessels with a death toll of at least 83 people.
Shortly after the first bombing, the Intercept reported that some passengers initially survived but were killed in a follow-up attack. Then, the Washington Post and CNN reported Friday that Bradley ordered the second strike to comply with an alleged spoken directive from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to kill everyone on board.
The administration has not denied that the second strike killed survivors, but Hegseth and the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, have insisted that the Pentagon chief never gave the spoken order.
However, the reporting has sparked reminders that all of the bombings are “war crimes, murder, or both,” as the Former Judge Advocates General (JAGs) Working Group put it on Saturday.
Following Leavitt’s remarks about the September 2 strikes during a Monday press briefing, Roth stressed Tuesday that “it is not ‘self-defense’ to return and kill two survivors of a first attack on a supposed drug boat as they clung to the wreckage. It is murder. No amount of Trump spin will change that.”
“Whether Hegseth ordered survivors killed after a US attack on a supposed drug boat is not the heart of the matter,” Roth said. “It is blatantly illegal to order criminal suspects to be murdered rather than detained. There is no ‘armed conflict’ despite Trump’s claim.”
The Trump administration has argued to Congress that the strikes on boats supposedly smuggling narcotics are justified because the United States is in an “armed conflict” with drug cartels that the president has labeled terrorist organizations.
During a Sunday appearance on ABC News’ “This Week,” US Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) said that “I think it’s very possible there was a war crime committed. Of course, for it to be a war crime, you have to accept the Trump administration’s whole construct here... which is we’re in armed conflict, at war... with the drug gangs.”
“Of course, they’ve never presented the public with the information they’ve got here,” added Van Hollen, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “But it could be worse than that. If that theory is wrong, then it’s plain murder.”
Michael Schmitt, a former Air Force lawyer and professor emeritus at the US Naval War College, rejects the Trump administration’s argument that it is at war with cartels. Under international human rights law, he told the Associated Press on Monday, “you can only use lethal force in circumstances where there is an imminent threat,” and with the first attack, “that wasn’t the case.”
“I can’t imagine anyone, no matter what the circumstance, believing it is appropriate to kill people who are clinging to a boat in the water... That is clearly unlawful,” Schmitt said. Even if the US were in an actual armed conflict, he explained, “it has been clear for well over a century that you may not declare what’s called ‘no quarter’—take no survivors, kill everyone.”
According to the AP:
Brian Finucane, a senior adviser with the International Crisis Group and a former State Department lawyer, agreed that the US is not in an armed conflict with drug cartels.
“The term for a premeditated killing outside of armed conflict is murder,” Finucane said, adding that US military personnel could be prosecuted in American courts.
“Murder on the high seas is a crime,” he said. “Conspiracy to commit murder outside of the United States is a crime. And under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, Article 118 makes murder an offense.”
Finucane also participated in a related podcast discussion released in October by Just Security, which on Monday published an analysis by three experts who examined “the law that applies to the alleged facts of the operation and Hegseth’s reported order.”
Michael Schmitt, Ryan Goodman, and Tess Bridgeman emphasized in Just Security that the law of armed conflict (LOAC) did not apply to the September 2 strikes because “the United States is not in an armed conflict with any drug trafficking cartel or criminal gang anywhere in the Western Hemisphere... For the same reason, the individuals involved have not committed war crimes.”
“However, the duty to refuse clearly unlawful orders—such as an order to commit a crime—is not limited to armed conflict situations to which LOAC applies,” they noted. “The alleged Hegseth order and special forces’ lethal operation amounted to unlawful ‘extrajudicial killing’ under human rights law... The federal murder statute would also apply, whether or not there is an armed conflict.”
Goodman added on social media Monday that the 11 people killed on September 2 “would be civilians even if this were an armed conflict... It’s not even an armed conflict. It’s extrajudicial killing.”
"The president is trying to gaslight Americans into believing that everything is fine."
By Brad Reed
President Donald Trump on Tuesday blew off US voters’ concerns about affordability, even as polls show most voters blame him for increasing prices on staple goods.
At the start of a Cabinet meeting, Trump falsely claimed that electricity prices are coming down, despite the fact that Americans across the country are struggling with utility bills being driven higher in large part by energy-devouring artificial intelligence data centers.
The president then claimed more broadly that voter concerns about increased costs were all figments of their imaginations.
“The word ‘affordability’ is a Democrat scam,” Trump declared. “They say it and they go onto the next subject, and everyone thinks, ‘Oh they had lower prices.’ No, they had the worst inflation in the history of our country. Now, some people will correct me, because they always love to correct me, even though I’m right about everything. But some people like to correct me, and they say, ‘48 years.’ I say it’s not 48 years, it’s much more, but they say it’s the worst inflation we’ve had in 48 years, I’d say, ever.”
Later in the Cabinet meeting, a reporter asked Trump if he believed voters were growing “impatient” with his policies, which have not produced the kind of broad-based decline in prices he once promised.
"The goal is to transform an imperfect system which aimed for fairness into a rubber stamp mill, leaving only the 'deportation judges' they want," said one policy expert.
By Julia Conley
As the Trump administration intensifies a push to hire what officials call “deportation judges,” eight judges were fired Monday from the New York City immigration court that’s become the epicenter for anti-immigrant enforcement in the city.
The National Association of Immigration Judges, the union that represents judges who handle immigration cases, confirmed to the New York Times that the eight officials had been dismissed in what one recently fired judge described as a “Monday afternoon massacre.”
“The court has been basically eviscerated,” said former Judge Olivia Cassin, who presided over another immigration court in New York City until being fired in November, told the Times.
The judges who were dismissed Monday had worked at the immigration court at 26 Federal Plaza, where the city’s US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) offices are also located.
The building has been the scene of harrowing ICE arrests in recent months, with an agent throwing an asylum-seeker to the ground in September as she pleaded with him not to detain her husband, and masked officers arresting NYC Comptroller Brad Lander in June when he tried to offer assistance to an immigrant.
The immigration court at 26 Federal Plaza employs 34 judges. Nearly 100 immigration judges have now been fired across the US this year.
Among those dismissed on Monday was Judge Amiena A. Khan, who served as the assistant chief immigration judge and supervised other jurists.
The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse found that from 2019-24, Khan ruled on 620 asylum cases and granted asylum to 544 applicants. Cassin decided on 669 asylum cases from 2020-25 and granted asylum to 582 people. Immigration judges across the country denied asylum to refugees more frequently than Khan and Cassin over those same periods, according to TRAC.
After Monday’s dismissals were announced, American Immigration Council senior fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick posited that “the Trump administration is systematically firing immigration judges across the country for no reason other their above-average grant rates.”
Last week, the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) posted on social media a call for legal professionals to join the Justice Department as “a deportation judge to defend your community.”
“End the invasion,” urged DHS.
David Bier, director of immigration studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, said the Trump administration appears to want “to poison the applicant pool.”
“The job of an immigration judge isn’t to ‘end the invasion,’” said Bier. “It is to evaluate whether someone is eligible for relief from deportation under civil immigration law.”
Immigration attorney Allen Orr said Tuesday that if an administration’s goal is to “improve vetting, you don’t fire eight immigration judges in NYC—the epicenter of the national backlog.”
Such mass firings are done, he said, “to stall the system, punish immigrants, and create crises. Dismantling is deliberate, not security.”
On Monday, former Chicago immigration Judge Carla Espinoza described to Al Jazeera how she was abruptly fired from her courtroom position in July.
The judges who have been fired this year include “attorneys who previously represented immigrants or provided pro bono help to immigrants before they became a judge,” she said.
“For the first time,” said Espinoza, “we’re seeing a clear indication that there’s an expectation that we do things a certain way, that we rule on motions in cases before us a certain way, that we rush through cases, which is something we’ve never heard before.”
"Yes, let's extend the ACA tax credits to prevent a huge spike in healthcare costs for millions," said Sen. Chris Van Hollen. "Then, let's finally create a system that puts your health over corporate profits."
By Jake Johnson
Democratic US Sen. Chris Van Hollen on Monday became the latest lawmaker to champion Medicare for All as the best solution to the country’s healthcare woes as tens of millions of Americans face soaring private insurance premiums.
In a social media post, Van Hollen (D-Md.) said that “we must stop tinkering around the edges of a broken healthcare system,” pointing to massive administrative costs and poor health outcomes under the for-profit status quo.
“Yes, let’s extend the [Affordable Care Act] tax credits to prevent a huge spike in healthcare costs for millions,” said Van Hollen. “Then, let’s finally create a system that puts your health over corporate profits. We need Medicare for All.”
Van Hollen’s remarks came as lawmakers continued to negotiate a possible deal to extend enhanced ACA subsidies that are set to lapse at the end of the year, an outcome that would further drive up healthcare costs for millions.
Politico reported late Monday that most senators “believe the chances for a bipartisan breakthrough” before a planned vote next week “are roughly zero.”
“Instead, the most likely outcome is that Senate Democrats put up a bill that has little GOP support for a vote, if any, while Republicans offer a competing bill of their own,” the outlet noted. “And even those partisan proposals remained in flux as lawmakers returned to Washington from a weeklong recess.”
Neither side of the negotiations is offering much more than a Band-Aid on a gaping wound. Democratic leaders want a clean extension of the subsidies to avert catastrophic cost increases, while President Donald Trump and Republican lawmakers are demanding new restrictions on the ACA that would make the system worse.
A handful of progressive lawmakers have used the worsening US healthcare crisis to make the case for a fundamental overhaul, one that would replace the for-profit model with a Medicare for All system that guarantees coverage to everyone for free at the point of service—and at a lower overall cost than the current system.
Van Hollen is the newest Senate cosponsor of the Medicare for All Act, formally backing the legislation led by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) just last month.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), the lead sponsor of the Medicare for All Act in the House, expressed “100%” agreement with Van Hollen’s Monday post.
“Thank you, Chris Van Hollen!” Jayapal wrote.
"This is murder," said one legal expert.
By Brad Reed
Finger-pointing has reportedly begun inside the Pentagon as the Trump White House has tried to shield US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth from taking the blame for a double-tap strike on a purported narcotics smuggling vessel that many legal experts say was an obvious war crime.
According to the Washington Post, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt set off “a furious backlash within the Defense Department” on Monday after she declared that Adm. Frank Bradley, not Hegseth, made the decision to launch a second strike to kill two men who had survived an initial strike on a purported drug boat off the coast of Trinidad and Tobago on September 2.
One defense official told the Post that Leavitt’s statement was “'protect Pete’ bullshit,” while another said that the administration appeared to be “throwing us, the service members, under the bus.”
Hegseth on Monday praised Bradley in a post on X as “a true professional” who “has my 100% support.” However, Hegseth also appeared to make clear that Bradley was the person in the chain of command who made the final decision to authorize a second strike on the survivors.
“I stand by him and the combat decisions he has made—on the September 2 mission and all others since,” Hegseth wrote.
Even Fox News chief political analyst Brit Hume found Hegseth’s praise for Bradley to be disingenuous, and he described it as “how to point the finger at someone while pretending to support him.”
Bradley is set to give members of Congress a classified briefing on the strikes on Thursday amid bipartisan demands for more information.
The question of who authorized the second strike on the boat is crucial in determining who would face potential future war crimes charges. Earlier reporting from the Washington Post claimed that Hegseth gave a spoken order to “kill everybody” in the boat strikes, which was then interpreted as a justification for launching a second strike on the survivors.
Rachel VanLandingham, a military expert at Southwestern Law School, told Al-Jazeera that, regardless of who authorized the strike, it was clearly illegal.
“That second strike against individuals who are shipwrecked, clinging desperately to the side of their boat wreckage—that’s a war crime,” she said. “It’s a war crime because those individuals who are shipwrecked have protected status under the law unless they were, for example, shooting a gun at somebody.”
Todd Huntley, a former Staff Judge Advocate who served as a legal adviser on drone strikes carried out in Afghanistan and other nations by Joint Special Operations task forces, told The Intercept he had no doubt that the second strike on the survivors was a prosecutable offense under either federal law or the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
“This is about as clear of a case being patently illegal that subordinates would probably not be able to successfully use a following-orders defense,” he explained.
Rebecca Ingber, professor at Cardozo Law School, told Time that authorizing the second strike violated “one of the most basic and longstanding rules” of the laws of armed conflict.
“It is absolutely unlawful to order that there will be no survivors,” she explained. “There is no actual armed conflict here, so this is murder.”
The Social Security Administration's plan, warned one Senate Democrat, will likely lead to "worse service and more challenges."
By Jake Johnson
The Trump administration is reportedly looking to dramatically reduce the number of people who visit Social Security field offices across the United States, a plan that Democratic lawmakers warned is yet another scheme to disrupt and ultimately cut benefits.
Nextgov/FCW viewed internal Social Security Administration (SSA) planning documents showing that the agency is aiming for “no more than 15 million total” in-person visits to field offices in fiscal year 2026—half the level of the prior fiscal year.
“Under Social Security Commissioner Frank Bisignano, the agency is aiming to push people to interact with Social Security online instead of going to a field office or calling the agency, although Bisignano told lawmakers in June that, even with his focus on technology, the agency is not ‘getting rid of field offices,’ despite reports of planned closures,” Nextgov/FCW reported Monday.
One anonymous SSA staffer told the outlet that agency leadership wants “fewer people in the front door and they want all work that doesn’t require direct customer interactions to be centralized.”
“They appear to be quietly killing field offices,” the staffer said.
The plan comes after the Trump administration carried out the largest staffing cut in SSA history, cutting the agency’s workforce by around 7,000. The cut left one SSA worker for every 1,480 beneficiaries, resulting in understaffed field offices and overwhelmed phone operations.
Beneficiaries have also repeatedly faced issues this year attempting to access the Social Security website, problems that SSA’s plan to curb field office visits could exacerbate.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), one of the lawmakers spearheading a probe into Bisignano’s questionable tenure at the fintech company Fiserv, said in response to the new reporting that “this sure sounds like another way to make it even harder for Americans to get the benefits they’ve earned.”
In a social media post on Monday, Warren highlighted testimony from seniors who have faced long wait times and other difficulties while seeking assistance from SSA under Bisignano’s leadership:
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, told Nextgov/FCW that “between staffing reductions, more restrictive documentation requirements for Americans to get assistance on the phones, and rapid reorganization of offices around the country, it’s difficult to see how” SSA’s goal of slashing visits to field offices “will lead to anything other than worse service and more challenges at Social Security.”
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