Trump Is Bombing Boats Because Stephen Miller Wanted to Bomb Mexico

Attacking Venezuela was not the original game plan. Instead, internal reports suggest that the White House’s violent boat-smashing operation in the Caribbean was merely a backup plan when a potential war on Mexico fell through.

The Trump administration—namely, deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller—had planned to spark a new war on drugs in the early stages of Donald Trump’s second term. That effort would have targeted Mexican cartels and alleged drug traffickers.

But as the administration geared up for the fight, sending troops to the southern border, Mexico did the same. By the end of August, Mexico had effectively cracked down on the cartels.

Still hungry for a fight, Miller pivoted, shifting his gaze toward Venezuela, The Washington Post reported Thursday.

“When you hope and wait for something to develop that doesn’t, you start looking at countries south of Mexico,” a current U.S. official told the Post on the condition of anonymity.

So far, at least 95 people have been killed since the attacks began in early September. The White House has defended the violence, chalking it up to allegedly necessary efforts to thwart the pipeline of fentanyl into the country. To further justify the brutality, the president designated fentanyl as a “weapon of mass destruction” earlier this week, ostensibly legitimizing the militaristic response. Trump has simultaneously leveraged the aggression to try to shove Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro out of power, something that he attempted and failed to do in 2019.

Current and former officials that spoke with the Post argued that Miller was the primary driving force behind the operation, leading the charge on a July 25 classified directive that authorized the use of military force against criminal groups.

“The president’s memo is the original sin of the whole operation,” a former official told the Post.

But the White House is not on board with the leaking details that Miller masterminded Trump’s merciless foreign policy.

“President Trump’s counternarcotics policies come from President Trump himself,” White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said. “All senior administration officials work closely together to carry out the agenda President Trump was elected to implement, including eliminating the scourge of narco-terrorism that takes tens of thousands of American lives every year.”

But lawmakers have remained skeptical as to whether the boats even qualify as a narcoterrorist threat, considering the White House has been dropping bombs without investigating or interdicting the watercraft.

Their skepticism was rewarded Wednesday, when Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and State Secretary Marco Rubio revealed during a classified meeting that there was no intelligence indicating that fentanyl was coming out of Venezuela. Instead, the administration had learned the boats were carrying cocaine—bound for Europe, rather than America.

“That is a massive waste of national security resources and your taxpayer dollars,” said Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy, who attended the meeting.

Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released new photos from Jeffrey Epstein’s estate Thursday, and in some of them, handwritten lines from the book Lolita are visible on the bodies of unidentified girls or women.

One of the photos shows “Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth” written on someone’s collarbone, above her chest. A passage on a foot reads, “She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock.” “She was Lola in slacks” is visible on another person’s body, and a message written on someone’s neck reads, “She was Dolly at school.” And visible, written vertically along a person’s back, is the line, “She was Delores on the dotted line.”

The photos were released through a Dropbox account, and nothing in the upload indicates who the photos are of or when they were taken. Lolita, written in 1955 by Vladimir Nabakov, is about a professor who kidnaps and sexually abuses a 12-year-old girl, which seems on the nose for a convicted sex offender and trafficker like Epstein.

Other photos released Thursday include redacted passports from Ukraine, Czech Republic, and Russia, as well as new photos of New York Times columnist David Brooks. There are also additional photos of Noam Chomsky, Bill Gates, Sergey Brin, Woody Allen, and Bill Gates, following earlier releases of photos with them.

In response to the photos, The New York Times issued a statement reading, “As a journalist, David Brooks regularly attends events to speak with noted and important business leaders to inform his columns, which is exactly what happened at this 2011 event. Mr. Brooks had no contact with him before or after this single attendance at a widely-attended dinner.”

This release comes just one day before the Trump administration is required to release its full archive of Epstein documents from its federal investigation into the billionaire sex trafficker. House Speaker Mike Johnson has sent legislators home a day early, probably to try to avoid negative attention. Regarding tomorrow’s release, however, there’s no telling how much of the files the White House will try to redact or keep hidden.

View the latest batch of photos released by the House Oversight Democrats here.

The Kennedy Center will soon be called the “Trump-Kennedy Center,” in yet another egotistical move from the president that could be a death knell for the famed American cultural institution.

“I have just been informed that the highly respected Board of the Kennedy Center, some of the most successful people from all parts of the world, have just voted unanimously to rename the Kennedy Center to the Trump-Kennedy Center, because of the unbelievable work President Trump has done over the last year in saving the building,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt wrote Thursday on X. “Not only from the standpoint of its reconstruction, but also financially, and its reputation. Congratulations to President Donald J. Trump, and likewise, congratulations to President Kennedy, because this will be a truly great team long into the future! The building will no doubt attain new levels of success and grandeur.”

The current Kennedy Center Board of Trustees contains Trump himself and MAGA sycophants like Fox News host Laura Ingraham, White House deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino, Allison Lutnick (wife of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick), Trump’s U.S. Ambassador to India Sergio Gor, and Attorney General Pam Bondi.

Trump has taken aim at the Kennedy Center since his return to office, firing the entire board, complaining that the performances were too woke, claiming that the building was dilapidated, and watching ticket sales plummet in the process.

This story has been updated.

The Trump administration is stripping funding for gender-affirming care.

The new rule, announced by the Department of Health and Human Services Thursday, virtually bans gender-affirming care at any Medicare- or Medicaid-participating hospital, even if the care itself is not paid for with federal funds.

While announcing the policy change, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy—who has made millions of dollars peddling thoroughly debunked health conspiracies—condemned the concept of gender-affirming care as “junk science.”

“So-called gender-affirming care has inflicted lasting physical and psychological damage on vulnerable young people. This is not medicine, it is malpractice,” Kennedy said. “We’re done with junk science driven by ideological pursuits, not the wellbeing of children.”

In reality, medical studies have shown that providing trans and nonbinary children with gender-affirming care actually makes them safer. Gender-affirming care decreases the amount of depression and anxiety that trans and nonbinary teenagers feel, and it makes them less likely to consider suicide.

But genuine research on the complications of gender dysphoria is apparently of little import to Kennedy’s HHS, which seems fixated on the lie that transgender children have unfettered access to surgical sex changes. The truth is that they do not: Virtually no sex change surgeries have been performed on transgender minors diagnosed with gender dysphoria. That decision can be made when they turn 18 and are of legal age to make the decision for themselves.

The hoopla is deceptive and obscures the facts: A 2024 Harvard School of Public Health study found that cisgender adults and minors had “substantially” more “gender affirming surgeries” than their transgender counterparts—though Kennedy didn’t announce any restrictions on that.

Instead, the anti-vaxxer unveiled that his agency would take “six decisive actions” intended to protect children from what he described as “surgical mutilation.”

“Guided by gold standard science and the week one executive order from President [Donald] Trump … this morning I signed a declaration,” Kennedy continued. “Sex-rejecting procedures are neither safe nor effective treatment for children with gender dysphoria.”

The LGBTQ+ community has had a target on its back since Trump returned to power. The administration has taken aim at transgender athletes and fearmongered over bathroom access, all while book bans purging LGBTQ+ friendly texts have surged around the country.

Earlier this year, the ultraconservative brass on the Supreme Court ruled along ideological lines in U.S. v. Skrmetti that states may ban minors from receiving gender-affirming care, such as hormone treatments and puberty blockers, denying parents the control that they have clamored for.

When a military helicopter collided with a passenger plane at Ronald Reagan National Airport in January and killed 67 people, President Trump absurdly blamed DEI, citing a “big push to put diversity into the [Federal Aviation Administration]’s program.”

“The FAA is actively recruiting workers who suffer severe intellectual disabilities, psychiatric problems, and other mental and physical conditions under a diversity and inclusion hiring initiative spelled out on the agency’s website,” Trump said then. 

Months later, the administration is eating its words, as it takes full responsibility for the crash and may end up paying for damages. 

“The United States admits that it owed a duty of care to Plaintiffs, which it breached, thereby proximately causing the tragic accident on January 29, 2025,” the Justice Department wrote in an admission of liability, brought forth by a lawsuit from a family member of one of the victims. “The collision could have been avoided.”

According to the DOJ, the Army pilots flying a Black Hawk helicopter that evening failed to “maintain vigilance” and “proper and safe visual separation” with the passenger plane. They admit that the accident would not have happened if the helicopter pilots were able to “see and avoid” the plane. 

Trump’s immediate finger-pointing at DEI—specifically at FAA workers with disabilities—was absolutely disgusting, tone deaf, and completely incorrect. But now that his government has admitted that it was its fault, and that it could have been avoided, the president is completely mum.