Pete Hegseth’s Main Defense for Boat Strike Survivors Just Fell Apart

The Defense Department’s decision to kill the two survivors of a boat bombing in the Caribbean Sea—which may very well be a war crime—was all part of Secretary Pete Hegseth’s contingency plan, The New York Times reported.

The Hegseth-approved plan involved rescuing any helpless survivors and killing them if they tried to contact a “cartel” member. The Defense Department is alleging that the men killed on September 2 did the latter, initiating the second half of the contingency plan.

The White House has insisted the violence is justified, as the administration accuses the boats of trafficking narcotics to the U.S. from Venezuela and Colombia. Of course, the government has yet to provide evidence that the men they murdered contacted a cartel, or that they were trafficking drugs at all. But this plan once again begs the question: Who was actually responsible here?

Hegseth has made a point to shift the blame for the actual decision to strike the boat a second time—the potential war crime—onto Admiral Frank “Mitch” Bradley.

“I didn’t stick around [after the first strike],” Hegseth told reporters at Donald Trump’s Tuesday Cabinet meeting. “Couple of hours later, I learned that … Admiral Bradley made the correct decision to sink the boat and eliminate the threat.… It was the right call, we have his back.”

Hegseth is trying so hard to distance himself from the attack that he’s claiming he wasn’t even in the room when it happened. Regardless, his version of events made no mention of the report that he approved the contingency plan that Bradley followed.

This saga has drawn the ire of both the left and right.

“This is an act of a war crime. Ordering survivors—who the law requires be rescued—instead to be murdered,” Newsmax host and current Hegseth co-worker Judge Andrew Napolitano said on Tuesday. “There’s absolutely no legal basis for it. Everybody along the line who did it, from the secretary of defense to the admiral to the people who actually pulled the trigger, should be prosecuted for a war crime for killing these two people.”

Bradley is expected to meet with House and Senate Armed Services Committee members on Thursday to clear up exactly what happened.

It seems that Pete Hegseth’s brilliant response to the watchdog report finding that the defense secretary had directly endangered U.S. troops is just to lie and say he didn’t.

Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell didn’t even try Wednesday to spin the results of the inspector general’s report on a major scandal earlier this year, when Hegseth sent highly sensitive information in a nonsecure Signal group chat.

“This Inspector General review is a TOTAL exoneration of Secretary Hegseth @PeteHegseth and proves what we knew all along—no classified information was shared. This matter is resolved and the case is closed,” Parnell said in a statement, per Trump acolyte Laura Loomer.

Sources had previously told CNN that Hegseth sent messages detailing materials marked classified at the time. One message from Hegseth—“This is DEFINITELY when the first bombs will drop”—seemed obviously classified. But the war chief has maintained that he had the power to unilaterally declassify information discussed, though no documentation of that actually happening seems to exist.

A classified version of the inspector general’s Signalgate report was sent to Congress on Tuesday night, finding that Hegseth should not have used the app at all. Four sources familiar with the report told CNN that Hegseth had risked compromising sensitive military information and could have potentially endangered troops and mission objectives.

A declassified version of the report is expected to be released to the public Thursday.

Donald Trump is still backing Pete Hegseth, despite growing scrutiny over reports that the defense secretary issued orders to mercilessly kill survivors of a September 2 airstrike on a small boat in the Caribbean.

“If it is found that survivors were actually killed while clinging on to that boat, should Secretary Hegseth, Admiral [Frank M.] Bradley, or others be punished?” asked a reporter at the White House Wednesday.

“I think you’re going to find that this is war, that these people were killing our people by the millions, actually, if you look over a few years. I think last year we lost close to 300,000 people were killed. That’s not mentioning all the families—have you seen what happens with the families?” Trump said.

The White House has insisted the violence is justified, broadly accusing the boats of trafficking narcotics to the U.S. from Venezuela and Colombia while vaguely and inaccurately referring to the death toll caused by fentanyl, a synthetic opioid 50 times stronger than heroin.

Fentanyl overdoses in the U.S. were on the rise for a decade before falling slightly in 2023, when more than 72,000 people died from the synthetic opioid, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

U.S. lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have been more than skeptical of the White House’s theory—particularly since several of the boats were thousands of miles away in international waters, and since the attacks were conducted without prior investigations or interdiction. Pentagon officials reportedly haven’t been concerned with identifying the people on the boats before attacking.

“I think you’re going to find that there’s a very receptive ear to doing exactly what they’re doing taking out those boats,” Trump said. “And very soon we’re going to start doing it on land, too. Because we know every route, we know every house, we know where they manufacture this crap, we’re going to put it all together.”

“So to be clear, you support the decision to kill survivors after—” the reporter pressed, before Trump interjected that he “supports the decision to knock out the boats.”

“Whoever is piloting those boats, they’re guilty of trying to kill people in our country,” Trump added, referring to the alleged drug mules, who would be the lowest and least significant participants on the drug trade totem pole.

Meanwhile, Trump pardoned former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández on Monday, freeing a man who 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.”

Hernández’s case was initially prosecuted during Trump’s first administration.

Donald Trump has taken over the United States Institute of Peace building in Washington, D.C., and put his name on it, even as the legal battle over who owns the building is ongoing.

Independent journalist Marisa Kabas posted about the visible signage on the building Wednesday on Bluesky, showing “DONALD J. TRUMP” in block letters tacked to the building. Kabas reports that Trump plans to use the building to host the signing of a peace agreement between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo on Thursday.

The USIP was created by Congress in the 1980s as a nonprofit organization independent of the federal government. The letters making up Trump’s name seem to have been taken from USIP’s sign inside the building, when the Department of Government Efficiency took over the think tank by force in March.

In May, that takeover was blocked in federal court, with U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell ruling that the firing of the USIP’s leadership and staff, their replacement by DOGE-affiliated staff, and the building’s transfer to the General Services Administration were “effectuated by illegitimately installed leaders who lacked legal authority to take these actions, which must therefore be declared null and void.”

But in June, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia granted the Trump administration a stay of Howell’s ruling pending appeal, ordering that the building be turned over to the GSA and restoring the Trump administration’s preferred leadership.

“The President faces irreparable harm from not being able to fully exercise his executive powers,” the three-judge panel wrote at the time.

“Because the Institute exercises substantial executive power, the Government is likely to succeed on its claim that the Board’s removal protections are unconstitutional,” they wrote, referring to the USIP’s governing board.

“We agree with the Government that ‘[f]acilitating the foreign policy of the United States by brokering peace among warring parties on the international stage is plainly an exercise of executive power under our Constitution,’” the judges added. The appeal is still ongoing, but since then, most of the USIP’s staff have been fired and the institute’s website states that it is under maintenance.

The USIP’s building occupies prime Washington, D.C., real estate between the Potomac River and the National Mall, and is worth approximately $500 million, so it’s no surprise that the Trump administration wanted the building. Now it appears that Trump wanted something else with his name on it where he could be feted and praised, and isn’t willing to wait for the legal case to conclude in his favor.

Surprise, surprise: House Republicans don’t want the public to hear what Jack Smith has to say about President Donald Trump—even though the president claims he’d prefer it.

The GOP-led House Judiciary Committee issued a subpoena Wednesday to the former special counsel, demanding he appear for a closed-door interview later this month to discuss his investigations into Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents and alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Of course, Smith had already offered to tell them everything they wanted to know—if he could have a public hearing.

It seems House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan wasn’t really interested in that level of transparency—or accountability.

But it’s not clear that Republicans and Trump are on the same page. During a press conference Wednesday, the president was asked whether he would prefer to have Smith testify in a public hearing.

“I think Jack Smith is a sick man, there’s something really wrong with him. I’d rather see him testify publicly ’cause there’s no way he can answer the questions,” Trump said, before veering into a rant about the autopen.

Smith’s legal team had previously requested that their client be given the opportunity to testify publicly to refute the “many mischaracterizations” of his investigations.

The team responded to the subpoena in a statement to CBS News Wednesday: “Nearly six weeks ago Jack offered to voluntarily appear before the House Judiciary committee in an open hearing to answer any questions lawmakers have about his investigation into President Trump’s alleged efforts to unlawfully overturn the election results and retention of classified documents. We are disappointed that offer was rejected, and that the American people will be denied the opportunity to hear directly from Jack on these topics.”

Recently, some Republicans were incensed by a revelation that Smith had requested Senate Republicans’ phone records from the days before and after the deadly January 6 riot, without their knowledge, in order to see who may have been involved in Trump’s alleged efforts to subvert the election. Trump earned himself four felony counts for those alleged efforts, but those charges were dismissed after he was elected to the White House in 2024.

As part of the budget bill passed to fund the government last month, a pretty petty provision was passed allowing senators who had their phone records accessed to sue the Justice Department. Senators would be able to win $500,000 of taxpayer money per violation.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries is simply not cut out to lead the Democratic Party in any kind of serious opposition against Trump, as he proved once again on Wednesday. 

The insipid congressman twice made a point to praise the president on two particularly controversial decisions—his crackdown on the southern border and his pardon of Texas Democratic Representative Henry Cuellar, whom the Justice Department charged with accepting around $600,000 in bribes from an oil and gas company owned by Azerbaijan’s government and a Mexican bank.

Jeffries was asked about his response to the Cuellar pardoning by CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. 

“Congressman Cuellar is a beloved member of the House of Representatives, loved in his community.... The reality is, this indictment was very thin to begin with, in my view,” Jeffries replied. “The charges were eventually gonna be dismissed.... I think the outcome was exactly the right outcome.” 

While Cuellar was not yet convicted, the charges against him were certainly thick enough for a grand jury to indict him. This could have been an opportunity to denounce Cuellar—a moderate Democrat who is anti-abortion and opposed his party’s agenda in 2024—as a corrupt politician of old. Jeffries could have even tied Cuellar’s corruption charges to how Trump has transformed the presidency to make himself and his family richer. 

Instead, Jeffries is calling a man who the Biden’s Justice Department  charged with bribery, unlawful foreign influence, and money laundering a “beloved” member of Congress, perhaps in an effort to win Cuellar’s vote back to the Democrats if he is to win in 2026.

Later on Wednesday, Jeffries was asked about giving Trump his flowers for the brutal detainment and deportation campaign that he argues has secured the border, and gave a similarly baffling answer.  

“Can you give Trump credit for securing the border?” Jeffries was asked again on CNN. “That was a big issue under the Biden administration when you had record border crossings.” 

“The border is secure, that’s a good thing. It’s happened on his watch. He wants to claim credit for it, of course he’ll get credit for that,” Jeffries replied. “In terms of making sure that we actually deal with the issues that matter, including on immigration … there’s a lot that is left to be desired.” 

Under Trump’s watch, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, Border Patrol, and other federal agencies have flooded local communities, once again ripping families and neighborhoods apart as they detain immigrants regardless of criminal history. And by the time you read this, he’ll have sent National Guard troops to Minneapolis and New Orleans to continue to do just that. What exactly does Jeffries think is left to be desired? 

“I would not get in a car if Hakeem Jeffries was driving. We can’t continue to let him and those like him ‘lead’ a milquetoast opposition to overt fascism,” one Bluesky user wrote. “Primary appeasers. Elect fighters.”

Trump is as unpopular as he’s ever been, the GOP is reeling with internal strife, and their 2026 chances aren’t looking too good. Americans are still struggling to pay rent, buy food, and support their families, and still Trump claims with his full chest that the very word “affordability” is a hoax. Liberal voters are eager for strong leadership, and this would be the exact time for an all out attack. Instead, Jeffries is practically gift-wrapping the president’s positive sound bites. 

Moments like this are the reason the progressive-led Democratic “fight club” even exists in the first place.  

House Speaker Mike Johnson is convinced he has a grip on his caucus, even as reports circulate that his control is slipping.

The chief House Republican rebuked comments made by Representative Elise Stefanik, who told The Wall Street Journal Tuesday that the speaker would not have enough support among his caucus to win the speakership if the vote took place this week.

Speaking with PBS Newshour correspondent Lisa Desjardins Wednesday, Johnson insisted that Republicans in Congress were “united” behind him.

“I’m not sure how to comment on what Elise is doing or what the rationale behind this is, but you can talk to Republicans in Congress, 99.9 percent are united, we’re working together to keep delivering our agenda,” Johnson told PBS.

“I talked to Elise late last night. We talked through what I thought were a misunderstanding of the facts,” he continued, making mention of the National Defense Authorization Act. Stefanik claimed victory regarding the bill Wednesday morning, announcing that a provision she wrote related to congressional disclosures would be included in the act after a “productive” conversation with Johnson and Donald Trump.

“I told her, you could have just picked up the phone and called me initially and not had to do all this other stuff,” Johnson told PBS.

But Desjardins underscored that plenty of other members of the caucus had expressed their discontent with Johnson’s leadership.

Just nine representatives of the majority party are needed to trigger a vote of no confidence against a House speaker. Those lawmakers could include Stefanik, as well as Representative Anna Paulina Luna, who on Tuesday openly defied Johnson by introducing a discharge petition that would bypass his direction on a bipartisan bill regarding insider trading. It could also include Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who announced last month her intention to exit office in early January.

The Trump administration is taking aim at the Somali American community in Minnesota with an immigration crackdown, punctuated by President Trump on Tuesday calling Representative Ilhan Omar, a Somali American herself, “garbage,” along with the rest of her community.

Since then, Trump’s staff have been defending his racism. Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin was asked by CNN’s John Berman Wednesday exactly how much of the Somali American community in Minnesota, an estimated 40,000 of whom were born in Somalia, could be considered garbage. Her response was a word salad nowhere near a condemnation.

“John, we’re really looking at the data, the analyses here particularly out of Minneapolis, and other parts of the country where we’re seeing Somalia, there’s widespread fraud, particularly marriage fraud when it comes to immigration, we’re looking at criminality here,” McLaughlin said. Berman then repeated his question.

“My question is, all of them? The president says he doesn’t want them here. He called them ‘garbage.’ Do you consider that to be all of the 40,000 people born in Somalia now living in Minnesota?” Berman asked.

“John, this is not about politics, this is about public safety,” McLaughlin replied, referencing last week’s shooting of two National Guard members, allegedly by an Afghan national, in Washington, D.C.

“That’s what the precipice of this was. That’s why we have to get back to base camp and make sure we are prioritizing the American people’s safety,” McLaughlin added, before criticizing the Biden administration for poor vetting processes.

The Somali community in Minnesota, particularly in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area, has nothing to do with last week’s shooting. But, it’s clear that McLaughlin is speaking not just for DHS, but for the entire administration by failing to address the president calling an entire ethnic group and community garbage.

Instead, McLaughlin is using the shooting to justify an immigration crackdown on Somalis in Minnesota, 58 percent of whom were born in the U.S., with 87 percent of those born overseas being naturalized U.S. citizens, according to Census data. But she’s only following the president’s racist lead, and he was inspired by a story full of holes originating from right-wing media.

A bad week has gotten even worse for Pete Hegseth, as a new watchdog report from the Pentagon inspector general’s office finds that the defense secretary directly endangered U.S. troops when he used the Signal messaging app to discuss sensitive plans to bomb the Houthi rebels in Yemen back in March. 

Sources told CNN that the classified report details Hegseth’s lack of urgency and seriousness in speaking freely on the public messaging app about active U.S. war plans, updates, and even when “the first bombs will drop.” 

It is unclear if any of the information was properly declassified before it was put on Signal—and before The Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg was accidentally added to the chat. As CNN reported, Hegseth claimed he declassified all the info after the messages became public, but no such documentation exists.

A classified version of the inspector general’s report was sent to Congress on Tuesday, with an unclassified version set to drop on Thursday.  

This report comes in the midst of another controversy for Hegseth in which he is currently attempting to shift blame for a boat bombing double strike that killed two survivors—a potential war crime—away from himself and onto Admiral Frank Bradley. 

At Tuesday’s Cabinet meeting, Hegseth claimed that he didn’t know there were survivors after the first strike, adding that the “fog of war” would’ve made it difficult to determine if anyone had survived—a response both the left and right is finding to be insufficient. 

“This week has made it abundantly clear that Pete Hegseth should not be in charge of the most powerful military on Earth,” podcaster Jon Favreau wrote on X. 

A federal judge on Wednesday shredded the Trump administration’s shallow defense for bragging about its rampant, warrantless immigration arrests.

In an 88-page ruling, U.S. Judge Beryl Howell wrote that the Trump administration had illegally lowered the standard for making immigration arrests when it instituted a policy of “arrest now, ask questions later” as part of the federal takeover of Washington, D.C.

Howell documented how the Department of Homeland Security and Trump officials began to insist on using a standard of “reasonable suspicion” to make arrests, and included a laundry list of official comments claiming that the government did not need to demonstrate probable cause. Howell took issue with the government’s attorneys, who claimed the statements had been made by “non-attorneys” who “don’t necessarily understand” legal terms.

“This is a remarkable assertion. On its face, the government’s defense appears to be that the individuals behind these statements are ignorant or incompetent, or both,” Howell wrote.

For example, chief Border Patrol agent Gregory Bovino told the press, “We need reasonable suspicion to make an immigration arrest,” adding, “You notice I did not say probable cause, nor did I say I need a warrant. We need reasonable suspicion of illegal alienage, that’s well grounded within the United States immigration law.”

White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller was also cited in the ruling as saying, “Just go out there” and arrest people at Home Depots or 7-Elevens.

In June, Miller reportedly told a meeting of dozens of immigration officers that he didn’t want ICE to narrow its field to just undocumented immigrants with criminal records. “Stephen Miller wants everybody arrested. ‘Why aren’t you at Home Depot? Why aren’t you at 7-Eleven?’” an official recalled.

Howell barred the government from making warrantless immigration arrests without obtaining probable cause that the person was in the country illegally and a flight risk.