Franklin the Turtle Publisher Slams Hegseth for Sick Boat Strike Post

The publisher of Franklin the Turtle has completely denounced Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s AI depiction of the children’s character launching missiles at “drug boats,” which made light of his own potential war crime. 

“Franklin the Turtle is a beloved Canadian icon who has inspired generations of children and stands for kindness, empathy, and inclusivity,” Kids Can Press publishing house wrote on X Monday. “We strongly condemn any denigrating, violent, or unauthorized use of Franklin’s name or image, which directly contradicts these values.” 

Hegseth’s post—another installment in the GOP’s AI image fetish—was an imitation of the cover of the Franklin children’s books, and reads “A Classic Franklin Story: Franklin Targets Narco Terrorists.” It shows the turtle in full U.S. military combat gear, launching a missile at brown-skinned men in their boats from a helicopter.  

“For your Christmas wish list …” Hegseth captioned the post.

The Trump administration has killed at least 80 people in its attacks on boats in the Caribbean Sea, claiming they are trafficking drugs to the United States. The most recent attack saw someone from the Trump administration order a boat to be bombed off the coast of Trinidad, and then bombed again once it was known that two people had survived—which may constitute a war crime. The White House has recently shifted blame onto Admiral Frank Bradley, but a Washington Post report noted that Hegseth made the initial order to leave no survivors. 

It’s a bleak situation when the administration’s cruelty and lack of seriousness has Franklin the Turtle’s publisher reminding us not to use him in posts about extrajudicial bombings and warfare. 

Donald Trump has officially pardoned former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, according to the ex-leader’s attorney. He was released from a federal prison in West Virginia early Tuesday.

Hernández was sentenced to 45 years in prison for playing a central role in what the Biden administration deemed to be “one of the largest and most violent drug-trafficking conspiracies in the world.” Though Trump is blaming the conviction on Biden, much of the investigation began during Trump’s first term, with his now Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove acting as one of the lead investigators on the case.

The investigation found that Hernández moved mountains of cocaine between 2004 and 2022, facilitating the influx of more than 400 tons of the highly addictive substance into the U.S.

Under the protection of a machine gun-wielding, grenade launcher-toting gang, Hernández received “millions of dollars of drug money from some of the largest and most violent drug-trafficking organizations in Honduras, Mexico, and elsewhere.” The politico used that money to fuel his political ambitions, pay off bribes, and extend legal protections toward himself and his drug trafficking co-conspirators during his time in office.

The decision to release him comes just days after Hernández penned a sugar-coated letter to the U.S. president in which he claimed to be a victim of “political persecution” by the Biden administration, reported The New York Times.

Trump announced Friday that he planned to grant Hernández a “full and complete pardon,” though a White House official told the Times that the decision had nothing to do with the letter. Trump, at the time, had not seen the appeal, the official said on the condition of anonymity.

“This was a clear Biden over-prosecution,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said. “He was the president of this country. He was in the opposition party. He was opposed to the values of the previous administration, and they charged him because he was president of Honduras.”

Meanwhile, the Trump administration’s approach to curbing narcoterrorism—which has involved bombing small boats in the Caribbean suspected of smuggling drugs without evidence—has run afoul of international law. It has also placed an outsized target on drug mules, potentially the lowest and least significant participants on the drug trade totem pole.

The decision to wipe Hernández’s record clean appears to be a seismic departure from the Trump administration’s rhetoric on drug trafficking. After celebrating the deaths of several people killed in an airstrike in September, Vice President JD Vance claimed that “killing cartel members who poison our fellow citizens is the highest and best use of our military.” That rule apparently does not apply to the head honchos of the drug trade—or to the White House.

This story has been updated.

Donald Trump’s social media addiction appeared to reach a new level last night.

The president made more than 150  posts to his Truth Social account late Monday night, resharing praise for his deportation agenda, fake news about Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, complaints about California Governor Gavin Newsom, and claims that Nancy Pelosi was the real mastermind behind the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol Building.

Freelance journalist Yashar Ali shared a screen recording of Trump’s social media binge, documenting the trove of late night posts. The scroll lasts nearly five minutes.

“TRUTH SOCIAL IS THE BEST! There is nothing even close!!!” Trump wrote hours later, after the sun had come up.

That level of social media fixation puts Trump in line with America’s teens, who are spending hours on social media to the detriment of their mental health, according to a 2024 report by the American Psychological Association.

Social media addictions can be a horrible catch-22, feeding anxiety for users when they’re gravitating to the platform to distract from other stressors. But with so many scandals on his plate, it’s not clear which could have been rattling the president late Monday.

Trump is currently playing cover for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who stands accused of violating international human rights law for permitting—or perhaps ordering—a second airstrike on a small Venezuelan boat in early September to kill all survivors. He has also leveraged the attacks to pressure Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro out of power, something that he tried and failed to do in 2019—though in the process he has rallied tens of thousands of Venezuelans against the United States.

On the other side of the planet, Trump still has yet to broker peace between Russia and Ukraine, something that he had promised from the first day he returned to office.

The 79-year-old could also be concerned about his health. Minnesota Governor Tim Walz’s public appeal for the release of Trump’s medical records appeared to seriously get under the president’s skin late Monday, inciting a wave of insults directed at the onetime vice presidential candidate by way of his keyboard. Still, public concerns prevail that there could be something seriously wrong with Trump, particularly after news broke that he covertly underwent some soft tissue scans.

Beyond all of that, the Epstein files—which reportedly mention Trump’s name numerous times—are on their way.

President Trump is making baseless claims of fraud in the Honduran election as he continues to publicly meddle in an incredibly close race between his choice—the conservative Tito Asfura—and liberal Salvador Nasralla. 

“Looks like Honduras is trying to change the results of their Presidential Election. If they do, there will be hell to pay!” President Trump said Monday night with zero evidence to back it up. “The National Electoral Commission, the official body charged with counting the Votes, abruptly stopped counting at midnight on November 30th. Their count showed a close race between Tito Asfura and Salvador Nasralla with Asfura holding a narrow lead of 500 votes. Their tally was stopped when only 47 percent of the Vote was counted. It is imperative that the Commission finish counting the Votes. Hundreds of thousands of Hondurans must have their Votes counted. Democracy must prevail!” 

In reality, this is a very slim election that will take the National Electoral Council, or CNE, an extended period of time to count. Preliminary results on Monday had Asfura ahead of Nasralla by just 515 points. 

“Faced with this technical tie, we must remain calm, be patient, and wait for the CNE to finish counting,” said CNE head Ana Paola Hall. “Subsequently, the special counting process will be carried out in order to finalise the general count.”

Trump has already promised to cut off aid to Honduras if Asfura doesn’t win. Now he is further undermining the country’s electoral sovereignty by trying to lie his way into a favorable result. It’s obvious that Trump has his own agenda for Honduras, especially given his pardon of prolific drug trafficker and conservative former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who was sentenced to 45 years in prison on drug-trafficking and weapons charges. The game plan is almost identical to Argentina—meddle in elections, promise funding to guarantee  your preferred candidate’s victory, and reap the benefits. 

Arizona Senator Mark Kelly accused Pete Hegseth Monday of “playing army,” after the defense secretary posted a juvenile meme making light of his military’s extrajudicial executions. 

Speaking at a press conference, Kelly nailed precisely what’s so disturbing about Hegseth’s lackluster leadership of the Pentagon: He’s like a little kid playing dress-up.  

“I mean, think about this: He runs around on a stage talking about lethality and warrior ethos and killing people. We have the most competent, capable military this planet has ever seen by far. That’s not the message that needs to come from the secretary of defense,” Kelly said. 

Instead of focusing on the military’s mission, “he runs around on a stage like he’s a 12-year-old playing army. And it is ridiculous, it is embarrassing,” Kelly said. “And I can’t imagine what our allies think of looking at that guy in this job, one of the most important jobs in our country.” 

Kelly was referring to Hegseth’s outrageous summit in September, where he invited droves of top military personnel to listen to him lecture about how much he hates the way overweight men with beards make him feel. 

The Arizona senator seems to be fighting back after becoming a target for the Trump administration. Last week, Hegseth threatened to court-martial Kelly, a former astronaut and U.S. naval officer, after he appeared in a video alongside fellow Democratic lawmakers to urge members of the U.S. military and intelligence community not to follow illegal orders. 

Kelly also slammed Hegseth for posting an AI image of the popular children’s character Franklin the Turtle extrajudicially blowing up “drug boats,” just days after it was revealed the secretary potentially committed a war crime of his own. 

“He is in the national command authority for nuclear weapons, and last night he’s putting out on the internet turtles with rocket-propelled grenades. I mean, have you seen this? This is the secretary of defense, this is not a serious person. He should have been fired after Signalgate, and then every day after that,” Kelly said. 

Kelly noted that the threats on his family’s lives had “obviously” increased since President Donald Trump accused him of sedition “punishable by death” last week. Hegseth also accused Kelly of sedition—though even pro-Trump legal experts say that claim falls flat. 

Kash Patel is in hot water for joyriding on the FBI’s dime.

Top Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee on Monday opened an investigation into multiple flights that Patel took last month with a $60 million government jet.

The visits were reportedly to visit his girlfriend, country singer Alexis Wilkins, who was performing at a wrestling event at Penn State.

The jet owner’s listed address, according to its FAA registration, is the FBI’s national headquarters in Washington. After Penn State, the plane’s flight log indicates it flew to Nashville, where Wilkins lives.

In a letter addressed to Patel, committee Democrats asked the bureau to hand over flight records and communications with recent passengers aboard to inform their investigation.

“You flew there because your girlfriend was performing at a wrestling match on the campus of Pennsylvania State University,” they wrote. “After attending her performance, you used the government’s jet to fly with her home to Nashville the following day. Your ‘date night’ had no apparent connections to your official duties.”

The caucus also accused Patel of using the government plane mere days later to spend time with some friends in Texas.

“Later that weekend, you took the FBI jet to San Angelo, Texas, for four days, where Republican Party mega-donor Bubba Saulsbury hosted you at Boondoggle Ranch—‘a scenic hunting resort’ that touts itself as the ideal place to ‘waste money or time on unnecessary or questionable projects,’” committee Democrats continued.

But that’s not all: CBS News reported earlier this year that Patel potentially used the FBI’s jets several more times, including a jaunt to Las Vegas and another trip to Nashville, both of which occurred in March.

The entire situation is a bit of a hypocritical development for the former podcaster, who used to regularly chastise government officials for needless spending before joining the Trump administration. He relentlessly hounded the financial behavior of the man who previously filled his shoes—former FBI Director Chris Wray—even arguing in 2023 that the FBI should “ground” Wray’s private jet “that he pays for with taxpayer dollars to hop around the country.”

An immigration judge fired by the Trump administration is suing for discrimination, alleging that the Department of Justice dismissed her because she is a woman and a dual citizen of Lebanon and the United States, and because she previously ran for public office as a Democrat.

Tania Nemer on Monday filed suit in federal court against Attorney General Pam Bondi and the Department of Justice, arguing that despite receiving strong performance reviews, she was discriminated against in her February dismissal, violating the First Amendment to the Constitution and the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

The government’s response is that the executive branch’s constitutional powers override the civil rights law, effectively giving President Trump the right to discriminate as he sees fit and further undermining legal protections for federal workers.

“This is a case in which the President of the United States has asserted a constitutional right to discriminate against federal employees,” Nemer’s lawyer, Nathaniel Zelinsky, wrote in the lawsuit. “If the government prevails in transforming the law, it will eviscerate the professional, non-partisan civil service as we know it.”

Nemer was fired in the middle of her probationary period nearly 10 months ago, when she was summoned from court in a federal building in Cleveland and escorted out by security. Nemer’s supervisor, as well as the chief immigration judge in the building, told her they didn’t know why she was being fired in the middle of her probationary period.

Nemer initially filed a discrimination complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in March, but the EEOC dismissed Nemer’s complaint, saying that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act conflicts with the president’s ability to remove federal workers in the executive branch.

Nemer asserted in the lawsuit that the Justice Department is using driving offenses from the late 1990s and early 2000s, as well as two tax cases she disclosed as part of a background check, as pretexts for her firing. In her lawsuit, Nemer is seeking back pay and reinstatement to the job.

As it happens, the Trump administration has overhauled the EEOC’s office, which is under the purview of the DOJ. It has also declared war on diversity, equity, and inclusion; sought to crack down on legal as well as illegal immigration (Nemer is the daughter of immigrant parents); and gutted the federal workforce. If Nemer wins, those efforts will have officially been rebuked in a federal court. If she loses, Trump’s authoritarian presidency will grow even stronger.

President Donald Trump may want to celebrate a record number of Black Friday sales as a sign of a flourishing economy—but there’s a lot he’s not telling you.

The president shared an article on Truth Social Monday from conservative blog Just the News predicting that the 2025 holiday shopping season, which lasts between November 1 and December 31, would be the “first quarter trillion dollar season online in U.S. history.”

According to Adobe Analytics’s 2025 Holiday Shopping Report, U.S. shoppers spent a record $11.8 billion online on Black Friday, a 9.1 percent increase in online sales from the same day the previous year.

That’s a promising sign for Trump’s economy, right? Wrong.

Rising costs, driven by steadily rising inflation and the president’s disastrous tariffs, prevented retailers from offering better deals and kept discounts flat compared to 2024, Reuters reported. So while consumers spent more money on Black Friday than in previous years, shoppers checked out with far fewer items, according to Salesforce.

But that’s not all. Adobe also reported a significant increase in the use of Buy Now Pay Later, or BNPL, services, a financing option that allows consumers to pay off purchases in installments. The increased prevalence of services that accumulate consumer debt is nothing to celebrate, as it indicates Americans are experiencing mounting financial strain.

Adobe predicted that over the course of the holiday shopping season, American consumers would spend $20.2 billion using BNPL, an 11 percent increase from 2024. Consumers have already spent an estimated $7.5 billion using these services since the beginning of November.

Klarna, a popular BNPL service, announced Monday that sales using its “flexible payments” had increased 45 percent year-over-year between November 1 and Black Friday.

BNPL isn’t just for the holiday season—it’s already spread into routine, everyday spending. One economic survey from April found that 25 percent of Americans were using BNPL to pay for groceries, up from 14 percent in 2024 and 21 percent in 2023.

The choice to pay in installments may come crashing down on consumers’ heads soon. In June, FICO announced it would begin including BNPL loans in credit reports—meaning that a short-term splurge, like indulging in a few Black Friday “sales,” could potentially become a long-term mark on a borrower’s financial record.

The Trump administration is shifting blame for the “kill everybody” order behind a second strike order on an alleged drug boat, killing all survivors, from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to Commander Frank “Mitch” Bradley.

“In his social media posts, Secretary Hegseth didn’t go into details about that strike, he just said U.S. operations in the area were lawful, and he said that the story and media reports were fabricated,” a reporter said to White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt at her Monday briefing. “Does the administration deny that that second strike happened, or did it happen and the administration denies that Secretary Hegseth gave the order?”

“The latter is true, and I have a statement to read for you here,” Leavitt replied before reading off a statement. “With respect to the strikes in question on September 2, Secretary Hegseth authorized Admiral Bradley to conduct these kinetic strikes. Admiral Bradley worked well within his authority and the law, directing the engagement to ensure the boat was destroyed, and the threat to the United States of America was eliminated.”

This is the first time the White House is confirming a Washington Post report from Friday detailing an order that could be considered a war crime.

“The critical thing here is that Leavitt is distancing Hegseth from the final act of delivering the ultimate order for the strike that killed the two men in the water,” The New Republic’s Greg Sargent wrote. “She only acknowledges that Hegseth directed the initial destroying of the boat.”

The timing is impeccable: Republican House and Senate Armed Services Committee Chairs Mike Rogers and Roger Wicker—along with congressional Democrats—are moving to have Bradley in for a classified briefing to clear up exactly what happened.

The U.S. government’s September 2 attack on a boat off the coast of Trinidad, the first of dozens of strikes on what the Trump administration has claimed are drug-trafficking vessels, is drawing increased scrutiny after reports that an immediate, second missile strike was ordered to kill survivors.

ABC News reporter Rachel Scott asked White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt at a Monday briefing whether the Pentagon’s policy had changed, noting that in a subsequent October Caribbean Sea airstrike, survivors were rescued instead of targeted.

“Was there a decision to handle survivors differently after these airstrikes?” Scott asked.

“Not to my knowledge,” Leavitt replied.

The answer is chilling, as it doesn’t clear up anything about what policy or legal method governs the airstrikes, which have continued for nearly three months. According to a Washington Post article, which Scott referenced in her question, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth made the order to kill everybody in the September airstrike, which the White House denies.

The Trump administration’s legal justifications for striking boats in the waters around Central America have repeatedly been questioned by Democratic and Republican members of Congress, foreign governments, and the United Nations. The Defense Department’s own Law of War Manual prohibits declaring “no quarter” or conducting operations “on the basis that there shall be no survivors.”

As officials admit that they have no idea who is even being killed, the Trump administration continues launching airstrikes with impunity. At the same time, the airstrikes seem to be a precursor for war, with 14 percent of the U.S. Navy fleet already dispatched to the region. Alleged war crimes are becoming the norm in this yet-to-be-declared war.