Pete Hegseth Claims “Absolute Authority” After “Drug Boat” Strike

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth claimed he had the “absolute” authority to conduct a military strike on suspected drug smugglers.

Speaking to reporters Wednesday, Hegseth was asked what legal authority the Pentagon had invoked to carry out its deadly strike on a vessel officials claim was carrying drugs.

“We have the absolute and complete authority to conduct that,” Hegseth said. “First of all, just the defense of the American people alone. 100,000 Americans were killed each year under the previous administration because of an open border and open drug traffic flow. That is an assault on the American people.”

So, in other words, there was no legal authority, as far as we can tell.

“I’d say we smoked the drug boat, and there’s eleven narco terrorists at the bottom of the ocean. And when other people try to do that, they’re gonna meet the same fate,” Hegseth continued.

Hegseth’s response echoes Trump’s claim that the 11 slain crew members were “narco terrorists” who belonged to the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang. While the executive branch has labeled Tren de Aragua a terrorist organization, such a designation does not serve as any legal basis for a combat strike.

The New York Times reported Thursday that the Pentagon was still scrambling to invent a legal basis for its own strike—though it appears that Hegseth doesn’t actually think he needs any. But a strike with no legal basis would violate international and domestic law.

Some officials at the Department of Defense have privately expressed concerns that the government had changed details of its story about the deadly strike, which is especially concerning considering that the government has offered no evidence to support its claim that the individuals on the boat were in fact drug traffickers.

The Justice Department on Thursday scrambled to address alleged revelations about the Epstein files published by James O’Keefe—founder of the far-right Project Veritas, known for its hidden-camera stings, in which individuals are secretly filmed disclosing information about the organizations that employ them.

O’Keefe shared a video that, he said, showed an undercover operative eliciting eyebrow-raising statements from a top DOJ official, acting Deputy Chief of Special Operations Joseph Schnitt, about the department’s files on the notorious late sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein, as well as a supposed deal with Epstein’s convicted accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell.

In the secret recording, Schnitt acknowledges that the Epstein files do exist—“thousands and thousands of pages of files”—and goes on to detail the DOJ’s plan.

“They’ll redact every Republican or conservative person in those files, leave all the liberal, Democratic people in those files,” the official said over lunch. He also noted that Maxwell was “transferred to a minimum-security prison too recently, which is against [Federal Bureau of Prisons] policy because she’s a convicted sex offender.” He added, “They’re offering her something to keep her mouth shut.”

O’Keefe’s supposed bombshells here, as always, warrant skepticism, as they are notoriously sensationalized and often deceptively edited.

According to O’Keefe, the Justice Department provided a statement asserting that Schnitt’s claims were false—but effectively confirming the veracity of the video. The statement said, “Joseph Schnitt had no role in the Department’s internal review of Epstein materials,” and his comments “have absolutely zero bearing with reality and reflect a total lack of knowledge of the DOJ’s review process.”

Later, the official X account of the Department of Justice sought to clear the air in the most bizarre way: by posting an unedited iPhone screenshot (complete with airplane-mode icon and battery percentage) of an email from Schnitt to his superior.

The email states that the recorded meeting took place in August, when Schnitt met twice with a Hinge date who claimed to be “an au pair in Georgetown” named Skylar. She “gave no clues that she was a reporter or recording our dates,” he said, and his comments were based “on what I’ve learned in the media and not from anything I’ve done at or learned via work”

“I have no knowledge of the circumstances surrounding Ms. Maxwell other than what is reported in the news,” Schnitt wrote, per the DOJ’s screenshot. “I also never divulged anything about what I do at work.”

Stephen Miran, President Donald Trump’s nominee for a vacant seat on the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors, said that he would keep his job at the White House even if he’s confirmed to the Fed.

At a hearing before the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee on Thursday, Miran said that he planned to take an unpaid leave of absence from the White House, but retain his job. His admission shocked senators, who grilled him about the plan.

“Your independence has already been seriously compromised,” Democratic Senator Jack Reed said. “You are going to be technically an employee of the president of the United States, but an independent member of the board of the Federal Reserve. That’s ridiculous.”

Senator Reed has good reason to be worried. The president would clearly prefer for the Federal Reserve to bend to his whims, rather than serve as an independent body. He’s been pressuring the institution to lower interest rates for months, he’s threatened to sue Fed Chair Jerome Powell, and he’s also attempted to illegally remove Governor Lisa Cook from her position.

Were Miran to be employed by the White House while also serving on the Fed board, the public would likely lose trust in the Fed’s independence. And that could have serious economic consequences—not just in the U.S. but all over the world.

Miran denied accusations that he would act as a political pawn, saying, “If I’m confirmed to this role, I will act independently, as the Federal Reserve always does, based on my own personal analysis of economic data.”

However, his idea of what acting “independently” means is concerning: In 2024, he co-wrote a paper for the Manhattan Institute where he argued that presidential control over the Fed should be increased.

But who knows whether he’ll stick to his recommendations.

He also wrote, “To further insulate board members from the day-to-day political process, they should be prohibited from serving in the executive branch for four years following the end of their term.”

A federal judge has blocked President Donald Trump’s shady attempt to claw back funds through a rare legal move called a pocket rescission, ordering the president to unfreeze billions of dollars of foreign aid.

U.S. District Court Judge Amir Ali ruled Wednesday that while the Trump administration retained “significant discretion” as to how the funds ought to be spent, it had no power over whether or not to spend the nearly $5 billion in funds that had already been allocated.

Last week, Trump wrote to Congress requesting back $4.9 billion in funding approved for international aid efforts, including $3.2 billion in development assistance from the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Congress then had 45 days to decide whether to approve Trump’s request, but the White House Office of Management and Budget asserted that it could freeze the funds until the fiscal year ended on September 30, ensuring the funds’ cancellation.

Trump had already bypassed Congress to dismantle USAID, and now he planned to do it again.

But the judge wrote that Congress would have to approve the rescission, because the law was “explicit that it is congressional action—not the President’s transmission of a special message—that triggers rescission of the earlier appropriations.”

Ali couched his decision by saying that it would likely not be the final word in the case, and that “definitive higher court guidance now will be instructive.”

Vice President JD Vance didn’t take well to senators pressing Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on his wanton mismanagement of the Department of Health and Human Services. In response to the health secretary’s contentious Thursday Senate Finance hearing, the vice president lost his cool on social media.

“When I see all these senators trying to lecture and ‘gotcha’ Bobby Kennedy today all I can think is: You all support off-label, untested, and irreversible hormonal ‘therapies’ for children, mutilating our kids and enriching big pharma,” Vance wrote on X, adding, for good measure, “You’re full of shit and everyone knows it.”

Senators had questioned Kennedy’s various concerning moves since taking the helm of the Health Department—grilling him, for instance, on his firing of the director of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, his anti-vaccine agenda, promises he broke from his Senate confirmation, and his general ignorance on public health matters.

Kennedy frequently flailed under the pressure, which came not only from Democrats but also Republicans—such as Thom Thillis, who highlighted Kennedy’s shady penchant for self-contradiction, and Bill Cassidy, who raised concerns about his vaccine skepticism.

But the vice president apparently can’t distinguish between conducting oversight on an official wreaking havoc on the nation’s health system and cheerleading child mutilation.

Senator Bill Cassidy deftly grilled Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in a Senate hearing Thursday, forcing Kennedy to contradict himself on the topic of vaccines.

Cassidy, who chairs the Health Committee, is a Republican and a medical doctor. He’s had to walk a fine line when it comes to Kennedy, who holds many views not based in scientific fact. Cassidy wavered on confirming Kennedy, before ultimately casting a key vote in his favor after securing promises from the future health secretary on vaccines.

On Thursday, he managed to tie Kennedy in knots.

He began by praising President Donald Trump’s Covid-19 vaccine development and rollout, Operation Warp Speed. “President Trump deserves a Nobel Prize for Operation Warp Speed,” Cassidy said. “Mr. Secretary, you agree with me that President Trump deserves a Nobel Prize for Operation Warp Speed?”

“Yeah, absolutely,” Kennedy replied.

“But you just told Senator Bennet that the Covid vaccine killed more people than Covid?” Cassidy asked.

Kennedy denied it. However, he did tell Senator Michael Bennet that he agrees with Dr. Retsef Levy, one of his new appointees to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention vaccine advisory committee, who said that “evidence is mounting and indisputable that mRNA vaccines cause serious harm, including death, especially among young people.” Previously, during his confirmation hearing, Kennedy had also called the Covid vaccine “the deadliest vaccine ever made”—an outright lie.

Cassidy continued to press Kennedy, saying he was “surprised” that the secretary had canceled $500 million in contracts for mRNA vaccine research—the technology that made Operation Warp Speed, and the remarkably quick development of the Covid-19 vaccine, possible.

To defend himself, Kennedy claimed that he supported the Covid-19 vaccine when Trump pioneered it because there were low levels of natural immunity to the virus and people were getting dangerously sick.

He also said that under Trump, the vaccine was “perfectly matched” to the virus, and there were no mandates—unlike under Biden.

So essentially: Trump vaccine good, Biden vaccine bad. Thanks for the clarification, Mr. Secretary!

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. gave an absolutely vexing answer to a basic question on why he fired Centers for Disease Control and Prevention head Susan Monarez.

“Did you tell the head of the CDC that if she refused to sign off on your changes to the childhood vaccine schedule, that she had to resign?” asked Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, cutting off the shouting RFK Jr. was doing moments before.

“No, I told her that she had to resign ’cuz I asked her, ‘Are you a trustworthy person?’ And she said ‘no.’”

“What?” Warren replied. Next to her, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders laughed and smiled in disbelief.

“So if you had an employee who told you they weren’t trustworthy, would you ask them to resign, Senator?”

On Thursday, Monarez published a piece in The Wall Street Journal accusing RFK Jr. of firing her for refusing to preapprove the recommendations of his handpicked advisory panel.

But even the White House has admitted she was fired over a difference in opinion. Last week, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that Monarez was fired because her views were “not aligned with [President Trump’s] mission.” That same day, former CDC director and Monarez confidant Richard Besser told the media that Monarez was fired because she had refused to capitulate to Kennedy’s MAHA agenda.

“She said that there were two things she would never do in the job,” Besser said. “She said she was asked to do both of those, one in terms of firing her leadership, who are talented civil servants like herself, and the other was to rubber-stamp [vaccine] recommendations that flew in the face of science, and she was not going to do either of those things.”

Now RFK Jr. has dumbed the excuse all the way down to “She told me I shouldn’t trust her,” framing the situation as if Monarez was begging to be fired. It’s clear that Monarez—who has a Ph.D. in microbiology and immunology—was not sufficiently committed to carrying out Trump and Kennedy’s massive destabilizing attacks on our health care and vaccine systems.

At a Thursday Senate Finance Committee hearing, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. came under fire for his mismanagement of the Department of Health and Human Services—and the criticism didn’t just come from the Democratic side of the aisle.

Republican Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina delivered a series of withering remarks and questions to the man he—like all but one of his GOP colleagues—voted to confirm in February.

First, Tillis skewered RFK Jr.’s decision to fire Susan Monarez as head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, just weeks after her Senate confirmation. The senator quoted Kennedy’s prior praise of the official whom he’s since ousted and cast aspersions on.

“I don’t see how you go, over four weeks, from ‘a public health expert with unimpeachable scientific credentials,’ ‘a longtime champion of MAHA values,’ ‘caring’ and ‘compassionate’ and ‘a brilliant microbiologist,’ and four weeks later fire her because, at least the public reports say, because she refused to fire people that work for her,” Tillis said.

“So, as somebody who advised executives on hiring strategies, number one, I would suggest, in the interview, you ask them if they’re truthful, rather than four weeks after we took the time of the U.S. Senate to confirm the person,” the senator continued.

But he wasn’t done using Kennedy’s words against him. Whereas Kennedy vowed to “empower the scientists at HHS to do their job,” Tillis said, “I’d just like to see evidence where you’ve done that.” Whereas Kennedy promised to do nothing “that makes it difficult or discourages people from taking vaccines,” Tillis noted, “there seem to be several reports that would seem to refute that.”

And whereas Kennedy said he would not “impose my belief over any” HHS employees, Tillis observed this was contradicted by “the firing of a CDC director, the canceling of mRNA research contracts, firing advisory board members, attempting to stall [National Institutes of Health] funding, eliminating funding for, I think, a half a billion dollars for further mRNA research.”

The North Carolina Republican was not the lone GOP senator and Kennedy-confirmer to grill the health secretary on Thursday.

Republican Senator John Barrasso, a physician, told Kennedy, “In your confirmation hearing, you promised to uphold the highest standards for vaccines. Since then, I’ve grown deeply concerned.” Republican Senator Bill Cassidy, also a doctor, questioned how Kennedy could both be staunchly anti-vaccine and sing the praises of President Trump’s Operation Warp Speed, which developed and distributed Covid-19 vaccines.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy couldn’t cough up answers when pressed about the Trump administration’s actions that would increase drug prices for seniors, leaving one senator baffled.

While testifying before the Senate Finance Committee Thursday, Kennedy was asked by Senator Catherine Cortez Masto about his support of the carve-outs for high-cost cancer drugs from Medicare price-reduction negotiations in Trump’s behemoth budget bill.

“So my question to you, Mr. Secretary, is how do you justify claiming to take on Big Pharma while supporting a bill that shields drugs, like Keytruda and other cancer drugs, from Medicare negotiation, costing seniors and taxpayers billions and risking the lives of cancer patients who cannot afford the necessary medication?”

Kennedy replied that the planned price-reduction negotiations laid out in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act were “very well-intentioned, but they were poorly structured,” and added that previous negotiations had raised Medicare prices.

Cortez Masto interjected that Kennedy’s claims didn’t match the findings of the Congressional Budget Office. Trump and other Republicans have spent months trying to discredit the CBO’s findings as they warn of the effects of the president’s calamitous budget bill. “The CBO doesn’t say that, it’s just the opposite. So you’re saying that the CBO and independent agencies that validate the costs are wrong?”

Kennedy claimed that the data was from the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services, or CMS.

The Nevada Democrat did not relent, and when pressed on why those drugs had been exempted by Trump’s legislation, Kennedy said he was “not sure” of that provision.

“Your agency is responsible for that negotiation, and you don’t know about it?” Cortez Masto asked incredulously.

Cortez Masto tried to get specific, asking Kennedy if he knew how much people enrolled in Medicare Part D and Part B were expected to pay for prescription drug costs next year.

Each question elicited a long pause from Kennedy. He stammered answers that included, “I think that that is in debate right now” and even, “I don’t know.”

Cortez Masto explained that prices were expected to increase for Part D enrollees by $15, up to $50 a month. Part B enrollees could expect price increases of 11.6 percent, or $21.50 more each month. Medicare premiums were expected to have the largest single-year price increase in decades because the Trump administration had cut the federal subsidy that has been keeping costs down, she said.

Cortez Masto then attempted to simplify her question even further. “My question to you is, what are you doing to keep costs down for seniors?” Cortez Masto pressed. Kennedy wilted.

“I mean, I’m already doing—I’m already keeping costs down,” he said.

“What are you doing to keep costs down for seniors, knowing that these costs are going to be increasing?” she asked again.

Kennedy touted a Program Integrity Bill, which CMS said could lower premiums by 5 percent (the CBO contends it’s closer to 0.6 percent). “And does that impact seniors?” Cortez Masto pressed again.

“Excuse me?” Kennedy said.

“Does that impact seniors?” she said.“Does that impact seniors? What you just talked about, you’re lowering costs, does that impact seniors?

“Does it impact … ?” Kennedy said, appearing confused even though he’d heard the same question repeated several times. “I didn’t hear your question,” he pouted.

While the senators’ microphones cut out at different moments during Kennedy’s hearing Thursday, that hadn’t been the case during Cortez Masto’s questioning. It seems clear that Kennedy heard—he just didn’t have anything smart to say.

The secretary of health and human services and noted anti-vax conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. just admitted that he doesn’t know how many Americans died from Covid-19.

On Thursday, Kennedy attended a hearing of the Senate Finance Committee and answered questions about the recent turmoil at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In June, Kennedy fired an entire vaccine supervisory panel and replaced them with vaccine critics—and in August, Kennedy pushed out the recently confirmed director, Susan Monarez, causing four high-ranking CDC officials to resign in protest.

But amid attempts to navigate thornier questions about the pharmaceutical industry and Medicaid cuts, Kennedy also seemed stumped by the basics.

“I want to go back to some basic facts,” said Senator Warner, a Democrat from Virginia. “Do you accept the fact that a million Americans died through Covid?”

“I don’t know how many died,” Kennedy replied.

Seemingly astounded, Warner questioned him again: “You’re the secretary of health and human services. You don’t have any idea how many Americans died from Covid?”

“I don’t think anybody knows, because there was so much data chaos coming out of the CDC, and—”

“Sir, you don’t know the answer of how many Americans died from Covid.… Do you think the vaccine did anything to prevent additional deaths?” Warner continued.

“Again, I would like to see the data and talk about the data,” Kennedy said.

According to the World Health Organization, more than 1.2 million Americans have died of Covid, which is probably the number that Warner was referring to, though it was unclear whether Kennedy wasn’t aware of this statistic or didn’t recognize the authority of the source.

President Donald Trump and Kennedy have both made references to insufficient data about the Covid-19 vaccine, as well. But hundreds of reports have tracked the efficacy of these vaccines since their release, and they’re estimated to have saved millions of lives—something that Kennedy would not admit, even when New Hampshire Senator Maggie Hassan brought the point up again.

Kennedy’s refusal to accept data-driven, evidence-based conclusions when they don’t align with his views was evident throughout the hearing—even as he repeatedly claimed that he was, in fact, “depoliticizing” science.