Trump’s Team Is Struggling to Get Its “Drug Boat” Story Straight

President Donald Trump’s administration appears to be changing its story to help justify an unprecedented military strike on a boat officials claim was carrying drugs.

The New York Times reported Thursday that some officials at the Department of Defense had privately expressed concerns that the government had changed details of its story about the deadly strike earlier this week, which killed 11 people.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters on Tuesday that the ship was traveling to Trinidad, Tobago, or “some other country in the Caribbean.” But after President Donald Trump claimed the ship was on course for the United States, Rubio changed his tune.

International drug traffickers “pose an immediate threat to the United States, period,” Rubio said Wednesday at a joint press conference in Mexico City. “If you’re on a boat full of cocaine or fentanyl or whatever headed to the United States, you’re an immediate threat to the United States.”

Shifting the narrative to center the United States is particularly concerning, considering the fact that the Trump administration has yet to produce a legal authority for the use of military force against cartels.

Trump claimed Tuesday that the 11 crew members were “narco terrorists” who belonged to the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang, which the executive branch has labeled a terrorist organization. But such a designation does not serve as any legal basis for a combat strike.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth claimed Wednesday that administration officials “knew exactly who was in that boat” and “exactly what they were doing.” But the government has offered no evidence to support its claim that the individuals on the boat were in fact drug traffickers.

Despite Trump posting a video of the incident to Truth Social, the actual details still remain murky beneath the Trump administration’s shifting narratives, and the government has been anything but transparent about the military strike, which may prove to have been illegal.

Yet another Jeffrey Epstein survivor has expressed her disappointment in President Trump’s constant dismissal of their fight for justice as a “Democrat hoax.”

“I’m a Republican. I voted for him. I voted for Trump,” Jena-Lisa Jones, who was abused by Epstein in 2003 when she was just 14 years old, said on MSNBC Wednesday evening. “For him to say what he’s saying is beyond me. Because I put my hope in him, and he’s supposed to protect us. And for him to say that this is a joke, and that it’s sides? This is not sides. We will say it time and time again: None of us are up there accusing him of anything. There is no one that is accusing him of any wrongdoing, so for the fact that he is saying those things and saying it’s a hoax, who are you hiding for then? Because if it’s not you, then who is it?”

Trump has been framing the Epstein saga as one big lie that his supporters would be stupid to believe, despite years of his own Cabinet officials speaking about the issue.

“So this is a Democrat hoax that never ends,” Trump said earlier Wednesday, as Epstein survivors held a press conference outside the Capitol. “You know, it reminds me a little of the Kennedy situation; we gave ’em everything. Over and over again, more and more and more. And nobody’s ever satisfied. From what I understand—I could check—but from what I understand, thousands of pages of documents have been given. But it’s really a Democrat hoax. Because they’re trying to get people to talk about something that’s totally irrelevant to the success that we’ve had as a nation since I’ve been president.”

Trump is, of course, lying again. The “thousands of pages of documents” the Justice Department and House Republicans released Tuesday evening contained old, redacted information, and even duplicate pages to make it seem more significant than it was.

Jones isn’t the only Epstein survivor questioning her vote for Trump.

“Mr. President Donald J. Trump, I am a registered Republican, not that that matters because this is not political. However, I cordially invite you to the Capitol to meet me in person so you can understand this is not a hoax,” said survivor Haley Robson when asked about Trump’s hoax comments at the Wednesday press conference. “We are real human beings. This is real trauma.… We’re here in person. To say that it’s a hoax is just not … please humanize us. I would like Donald J. Trump and every person in America and around the world to humanize us, and to hear us for what we have to say.”

At this point it’s clear that whatever “hoax” there is is coming directly from the Trump administration, as they have done everything in their power to avoid holding any of their rich friends accountable and giving these abused women the basic justice they deserve.

The White House is apparently desperate to get Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene to stop pushing for the release of more files on Jeffrey Epstein—but she’s still not blaming Donald Trump.

Speaking on the Real America’s Voice show Bolling! Wednesday night, the Georgia Republican described the White House’s efforts to urge her not to support Representative Thomas Massie’s discharge petition to release all files on the alleged sex trafficker.

“Oh, I got a lot of pushback. I got phone call after phone call last night. They didn’t want me to sign the discharge petition. They want to focus on the oversight investigation,” Greene explained. “They hate Thomas Massie more than they can hate any Democrat, which makes no sense to me. And they don’t want to work with Democrats at all.”

But even as the target of a pressure campaign from the White House, Greene was still loath to blame Trump, and claimed that White House staffers were responsible.

“Eric, you and I both know any president is insulated and in a cone of information based on the people that work directly with him, and I don’t think they’ve informed him on what a big deal this really is,” she said.

Greene condemned a Wednesday statement from a “coward” White House official that had warned Massie’s discharge petition was a “hostile act” against the Trump administration.

“I take very big offense to that, because I put my life and my fortune on the line fighting to get that man elected,” Greene said.

Greene also pushed back gently on Trump’s disturbing dismissal of the survivors’ press conference Wednesday, calling their pleas to release the complete Epstein files a “Democratic hoax that never ends.”

“It’s not a hoax, because Jeffrey Epstein is a convicted pedophile. That takes away the whole hoax thing. It’s not a hoax. It’s not a lie,” Greene said.

The representative also said she hoped Trump would change his mind, and invite the survivors to the Oval Office. “I want him to be the hero and champion of this issue,” Greene said. “And I want him to fight for these women, because I know him to be a fighter.”

Greene is one of four Republicans supporting Massie’s discharge petition, and the second to offer her own baffling defense of Trump’s inaction. On Wednesday, Representative Nancy Mace claimed Trump was “committed to protecting women and children,” shortly after he had claimed that survivors of sexual abuse were lying.

A bipartisan group of U.S. representatives—ranging from progressives to MAGA true believers—unveiled legislation Wednesday to ban stock trading for members of Congress and their relatives.

The surprising group has united behind one bill dubbed the Restore Trust in Congress Act, which Democratic Representative Seth Magaziner and far-right Republican Chip Roy officially introduced.

At the bill’s announcement on Wednesday, progressive Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said any prospective members of Congress who are vexed by the proposal are probably not cut out to serve.

“If anyone says, ‘This isn’t fair. I’m going to have to divest all my stocks if I’m going to run for Congress,’ maybe you should stay home,” said Ocasio-Cortez. She added that it’s “outrageous” that some representatives see the proposed ban as “some undue burden.”

Ocasio-Cortez also observed the need for more working-class representation in a Congress where millionaires are overwhelmingly overrepresented. “I feel that actually banning the trade of individual stock can help even the playing field,” she said.

“This body has been enriching itself on the taxpayer’s dime, and, dadgummit, it’s got to stop,” added MAGA Representative Tim Burchett.

Progressive Democrat Pramila Jayapal spoke to the importance of voters knowing their representatives “are taking votes on issues where they’re not thinking about their own stock portfolio.”

“This is beyond an 80–20 issue,” said Republican Representative Brian Fitzpatrick. “This is a 95–5 issue, and the five that are against it are probably in this institution day trading.”

Asked why the bill is limited to the legislative branch, Magaziner suggested that a ban on stock trading for the president and vice president could be introduced down the line, as an amendment or a separate bill.

“Many of us, I think in both parties, support including the president and vice president,” he said. “We are working to see if we can get a critical mass of support to include them or not.”

Representative Nancy Mace offered a wild defense of President Donald Trump, who has dismissed calls for more transparency on Jeffrey Epstein, less than 24 hours after crying with survivors of the alleged sex trafficker.

Mace left a meeting with survivors of Epstein’s sexual abuse visibly upset on Tuesday afternoon, and later said she’d had a “full blown panic attack” in the face of their stories, having been a recent survivor of sexual assault herself.

“I feel the immense pain of how hard all victims are fighting for themselves because we know absolutely no one will fight for us. GOD BLESS ALL SURVIVORS,” she wrote in a post on X.

But on Wednesday, Mace went out of her way to defend Trump—who had just that day dismissed continuous calls to release Epstein’s list of clients as a “Democratic hoax that never ends.”

“President Trump is the one who banned Jeffrey Epstein from Mar-a-Lago. President Trump is the one who cooperated with the feds to get this guy. President Trump is the one who is COMMITTED to protecting women and kids,” Mace wrote in a post on X, linking an NBC News interview with some survivors who claimed they hadn’t witnessed any misconduct from Trump.

Mace’s claims stand in stark contrast to statements from survivor Chauntae Davies, who, while speaking Wednesday at a major press conference, said that Epstein’s longtime friendship with Trump was his “biggest brag,” and revealed that he had a framed picture of the two of them on his desk.

This is just the latest in a laundry list of revelations tying the president to the alleged sex trafficker.

Even though Trump has not been directly implicated in Epstein’s crimes, his attempts to discredit survivors and prevent the release of more information could easily be presented as efforts to sweep the whole thing under the rug.

Before the press conference, survivors of Epstein’s sexual abuse held a rally where they spoke about their experiences and condemned lawmakers who would fashion their trauma into political weaponry. Clearly, Mace’s solidarity with survivors of sexual assault only goes so far.

Mace did, however, lend her name to Representative Thomas Massie’s latest petition pushing for the House to release more files on Epstein, following the lackluster release of documents that were mostly already public, or duplicates of older reports.

A federal judge on Wednesday blocked the Trump administration’s attempt to freeze $2 billion of government funding to Harvard University, dealing a notable blow to the president’s attempt to “unwoke” academia under the guise of stopping antisemitism.

“The Court grants Harvard’s request for a permanent injunction that prevents Defendants reimposing any unconstitutional conditions imposed to date, and enjoins Defendants from issuing any other termination, freezing of funds, stop work orders, or withholding of payment on existing grants or other federal funding, or refusal to award future grants, contracts, or other federal funding to Harvard in retaliation for the exercise of its First Amendment rights,” Judge Allison D. Burrough wrote.

Burrough also dissected the administration’s antisemitism justification in just a few sentences.

“A review of the administrative record makes it difficult to conclude anything other than that [the Departments of Justice and Health and Human Services] used antisemitism as a smokescreen for a targeted, ideologically-motivated assault on this country’s premier universities, and did so in a way that runs afoul of the [Administrative Procedure Act], the First Amendment and Title VI,” Burroughs wrote pointedly. “Further, their actions have jeopardized decades of research and the welfare of all those who could stand to benefit from that research, as well as reflect a disregard for the rights protected by the Constitution and federal statutes.”

“The record here … does not reflect that fighting antisemitism was Defendants’ true aim in acting against Harvard and, even if it were, combatting antisemitism cannot be accomplished on the back of the First Amendment,” she added.

Burroughs stated the obvious: The Trump administration doesn’t actually care about antisemitism, they’re just looking for something to use to excuse their right-wing takeover of some of America’s top colleges and universities. This is pure culture war.

This story has been updated.

Over 1,000 current and former employees of the Department of Health and Human Services have demanded that Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. resign for “placing the health of all Americans at risk.”  

The signatories, who released the letter on Wednesday, include representatives from a number of health-related agencies, such as the Administration for Children and Families, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, and more. 

After a reportedly anti-vax shooter attacked the CDC on August 8, a number of federal health employees sent a letter to Kennedy, urging him to stop spreading false information about Covid-19. But now, as Kennedy “continues to endanger the nation’s health,” these horrified federal workers, scientists, and physicians are leveling up their demands.

 Last week, Kennedy fired CDC Director Susan Monarez, which spurred the resignations of multiple other high-ranking officials. Demetre Daskalakis, the director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, was one of those who stepped down. He shared his resignation letter on X, writing: “I am unable to serve in an environment that treats the CDC as a tool to generate policies and materials that do not reflect scientific reality and are designed to hurt rather than to improve the public’s health.”

Current and former employees cited these examples, along with Kennedy’s appointment of “political ideologues who pose as scientific experts,” his refusal to be briefed by CDC experts, and his rescinding of the FDA’s emergency use authorization for the Covid vaccine, as reasons they were demanding  Kennedy’s resignation.

“We swore an oath to support and defend the United States Constitution and to serve the American people. Our oath requires us to speak out when the Constitution is violated and the American people are put at risk,” employees wrote.

The letter is also addressed to Congress. If Kennedy refuses to step down, the signatories requested that Congress and the president appoint someone new to take his place. 

But for the sake of these federal employees, and the health of all Americans, let’s hope it doesn’t get to the point where relying on the sanity and compassion of congressional Republicans is our only option.

President Trump is considering offering jobs to New York City Mayor Eric Adams in exchange for him dropping out of the crowded general election. This would give former Governor Andrew Cuomo a better chance of beating Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani in the general election in November.

Politico reported that Adams was offered a position at the Department of Housing and Urban Development for his withdrawal, after going to Florida to meet with Trump’s staff on Monday. The New York Times reported that Trump is also considering offering a job to Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa in order to swing the race even further.

Adams has denied reports that he’d end his campaign early to join team Trump.

“Mayor Adams has not met with Donald Trump—don’t believe the noise,” said Adams campaign spokesperson Todd Shapiro. “He is not dropping out of the race.”

Adams didn’t fully close the door to dropping out of the election, though, telling FOX5 Wednesday, “Whenever I make a move, I’ll make an announcement.”

These reports are not shocking, as Trump is essentially the reason Adams isn’t actively on trial or in jail right now. After months of Adams shamelessly flattering, imitating, and breaking bread with Trump and his inner circle, the Justice Department dismissed his corruption case in a quid pro quo deal that threw Adams’s own constituents under the bus. And corruption still follows Adams even after that massive favor, with his former chief adviser now facing corruption charges and his former Asian community liaison caught bribing a reporter with a wad of cash in a bag of sour cream and onion potato chips. And that’s not to mention the former cops suing Adams for running the NYPD like a “criminal enterprise.”

Adams’s campaign is flailing badly in the face of all this, making reports of his exit all the more plausible. The most recent polling has him at a measly third place as an independent, at about 11 percent, well behind Mamdani and Cuomo. This, compared with his past fealty, makes a move to HUD or somewhere similar feel as certain as his election loss.

Cuomo has also sidled up to Trump, although less publicly than Adams. And while he denies that he’s spoken to Trump directly about the race, all of his actions have implied that he’s hoping for some rhetorical support against Mamdani from an old family friend.

“We can minimize [the Sliwa] vote, because he’ll never be a serious candidate,” Cuomo said at a fundraiser in the Hamptons last month. “And Trump himself, as well as top Republicans, will say the goal is to stop Mamdani. And you’ll be wasting your vote on Sliwa. So I feel good about that.”

“Let’s put it this way: I knew the president very well,” he continued. “I believe there’s a big piece of him that actually wants redemption in New York. He feels that he was rejected by New York. We voted for Hillary Clinton. Bill de Blasio took his name off things. So I believe there will be opportunities to actually cooperate with him.”

Whoever you choose to believe, it’s clear that wealthy, elite Democrats would rather work with the man they’ve been calling an “existential threat to democracy” for nearly a decade than throw their support behind the young, charismatic leader who their own voters chose.

The New York City mayoral election is on November 4.

President Donald Trump may have his eyes set on a new target for his military takeover of American cities, and this time it’s in a Republican-led state.

While speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, Trump floated the possibility of expanding his largely baseless military crackdown.

“We’re making a determination now,” Trump said. “Do we go to Chicago, or do we go to a place like New Orleans, where we have a great governor, Jeff Landry, who wants us to straighten out a very nice section of this country that’s become quite, you know, quite tough, quite bad?”

“So we’re going to be going to maybe Louisiana,” Trump added.

Louisiana is one state that could probably use help getting its crime rate down—if only Trump were interested in doing it the legal way. Instead, his administration has cut more than $800 million in Justice Department grants to crime-prevention programs.

In 2024, New Orleans had a homicide rate of 34.7 murders per 100,000 residents, while the rate in Washington D.C., where Trump instituted a federal crackdown earlier this summer, was 27.3 per 100,000 residents, according to a report from the Rochester Institute of Technology.

The rest of Louisiana isn’t in the clear, either. In 2024, Baton Rouge had a murder rate of 36 people per 100,000, and Shreveport, which is in House Speaker Mike Johnson’s district, landed at #25 on Newsweek’s recent list of the 30 U.S. cities (with at least 100,000 residents) that had the highest number of violent crimes against people.

Still, Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry had approved sending some of his state’s National Guard troops to Washington D.C. to assist in Trump’s so-called crackdown on crime in the capital, despite the fact that his own state has far higher crime rates.

Trump’s reference to a pliant Landry was likely a dig at Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, who has consistently hit back at the president’s advances to send the military to Chicago. “I want to go into Chicago,” Trump pouted Wednesday, during the same press conference. “And I have this incompetent governor who doesn’t want us.”

So far, Trump’s use of National Guard troops to counter crime has been focused on Democratic cities. On Tuesday, a federal judge ruled that Trump’s decision to deploy the National Guard in Los Angeles had blatantly violated the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act, an act prohibiting the use of the U.S. military to execute domestic law.

While the decision apparently infuriated the president, who has claimed he has “the right to do anything” he wants, Trump appears reluctant to help anyone who isn’t willing to beg him for it.

Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo on Wednesday announced that the state will become the first in the country to end all vaccine mandates.

“The Florida Department of Health, in partnership with the governor, is going to be working to end all vaccine mandates in Florida law,” Ladapo said. “All of them. All of them. All of them. Every last one of them.

“Every last one of them is wrong and drips with disdain and slavery,” he continued.

According to Ladapo, Florida’s Health Department mandates “maybe a half a dozen” vaccines. “So those are going to be gone for sure,” he said. “And we’re going to be working with our amazing Governor DeSantis and our wonderful lawmakers to get rid of the rest of it.”

Florida currently requires vaccines for kids to attend public school, including for diseases like measles, polio, chicken pox, and hepatitis B.

“Today is a great day for chickenpox, measles, and polio in Florida,” wrote state Senator Carlos Guillermo Smith, a Democrat, on X in response to the news.

Democratic state Representative Anna V. Eskamani called the move “a public health disaster in the making for the Sunshine State,” as it will “drive down immunization rates” and “open the door to outbreaks of preventable diseases, putting children, seniors, and vulnerable Floridians at risk.”

At the same Wednesday event, DeSantis announced the establishment of the Florida MAHA Commission, a working group chaired by his wife, Casey DeSantis, and Lieutenant Governor Jay Collins.

The new commission will, per the governor, “recommend state-level integration” of the “Make America Healthy Again” principles espoused by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—who is currently dismantling the nation’s public health infrastructure and stoking vaccine skepticism as the head of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.