“Year of Murders”: Trump’s Boat Strikes Killed Hundreds of Civilians

It’s been exactly one year since the Trump administration began indiscriminately attacking small watercraft traversing the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean.

In that time, the U.S. military has killed at least 227 civilians in some 65 strikes, according to an analysis published Wednesday by The Intercept.

“It’s been a year of murders,” a defense official told the outlet. “The Trump administration has normalized murder.… It’s absolutely criminal.”

The White House has insisted the violence is justified, broadly accusing the boats of trafficking narcotics to the U.S. from Venezuela and Colombia. A classified opinion penned last summer by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel attempted to shield the forthcoming attacks by claiming that suspected drug boats amounted to legitimate military targets.

But U.S. lawmakers have been more than skeptical on the matter. That’s partly due to the fact that several of the targeted boats were thousands of miles away in international waters at the time that they were struck by U.S. forces. Another reason is because the vast majority of the attacks were conducted without prior investigations or interdiction, leaving little ability to gather evidence that could support or refute the government’s allegations.

The administration’s lawless behavior has even restructured foreign governments. After blaming Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro for the attacks and the alleged drug pipeline, U.S. forces stormed Caracas and abducted Maduro in the early morning hours of January 3.

The strikes themselves have been criticized as extrajudicial killings.

“There is no plausible legal justification for the strikes. They’re obviously not occurring in the context of an armed conflict and outside of armed conflict, the term for premeditated killing is murder,” Brian Finucane, a former State Department lawyer and specialist in counterterrorism issues and the laws of war, told The Intercept.

The first ever Republican midterm convention is being fueled by a dark-money web with a MAGA super PAC at its center.

The unprecedented gathering will take place on September 9 and 10 in Dallas. But the private group organizing the conference, a nonprofit known as the Dallas 2026 Host Committee, has not yet disclosed any of its donors (federally mandated filings that would offer such transparency still aren’t due for several months). The only insight available as to who’s behind the multimillion-dollar operation stems from the nonprofit’s address.

An OpenSecrets investigation published Tuesday found that the Dallas 2026 Host Committee shares an address with Make America Great Again Inc., a super PAC formed in 2022 to back Donald Trump and his endorsed candidates.

Further still, the treasurer of MAGA Inc.—Charles Gantt—is also the listed custodian of the convention’s nonprofit, according to a Federal Election Commission filing and an IRS letter that tied Gantt to the self-advertised “nonpartisan” nonprofit.

Last month, the Dallas 2026 Host Committee told The Dallas Morning News that it raised $45 million in just 27 days from various independent and corporate contributions. That sum didn’t include the revenue expected from sales for the ticketed event, which requires even invited House members to pay a minimum of $25,000 to walk in the door with a guest.

The committee did not elaborate on who’s been filling its coffers.

The group’s nonprofit status legally prohibits it from sponsoring political candidates or aiding elections. Instead, organization leadership told the newspaper that the money it obtained would go toward aiding Dallas’s local economy and covering government costs.

“This Dallas Host Committee, if it stuck to just promoting Dallas, making Dallas look good, that would be permissible—as long as it’s not crossing that line to making contributions to the RNC or the state party,” Shanna Ports, senior legal counsel for campaign finance at Campaign Legal Center, told OpenSecrets. “Then, it would be operating within the realm of campaign finance laws and tax status.”

But that doesn’t seem to be the primary motivator for the GOP conference. Trump and Vice President JD Vance are both expected to deliver speeches to the conservative assembly, which has been strung together at the eleventh hour to give Republicans a boost ahead of a contentious midterm cycle.

President Donald Trump appeared to short-circuit Wednesday during a meeting with travel executives in the Oval Office.

“On 11 separate days, more than three million travelers flowed through the American flies, they, they, uh … American skies were loaded up with planes,” Trump, 80, said while seated at the Resolute Desk.

It’s clear that Trump meant to say “American skies,” but that his brain got in the way. The meeting was ostensibly supposed to be a chance for the president to brag about high levels of tourism in the U.S. over the summer, but not only did Trump fumble his lines, Americans have actually spent a lot less money on vacations these past few months. Flights and road trips have also declined compared to last year. Foreign tourism into the U.S. has also dropped sharply since Trump resumed office.

Trump’s ongoing cognitive decline seems to be getting worse each day. He’s fallen asleep dozens of times throughout his second term as president, frequently slurred his speech, and last month seemed to forget how to spell the word “dumb” at a speech in Las Vegas with cameras rolling. Just last week, the president fell asleep during a health care announcement at the White House.

Meanwhile, Trump’s decisions are increasingly erratic, from abruptly signing an executive order to rename Lake Ontario to “Lake America” to his continued poor handling of the ill-advised war with Iran. Hours before his meeting Wednesday, Trump proposed renaming the Strait of Hormuz after himself. All of this clearly points to a man who is not well, yet has just over two more years of being president left.

President Donald Trump wants to rename the Strait of Hormuz, which the U.S. doesn’t control, after himself.

“Now that we have it under U.S.A. control, should we change the name Hormuz Strait to TRUMP STRAIT??? Like America itself, it would be ‘hotter’ than ever before! Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DONALD J. TRUMP,” the president posted on Truth Social Wednesday morning.

The move wouldn’t have any support beyond his fans, and it is a terrible idea due to Iran currently being able to throttle maritime traffic through the crucial narrow waterway. Trump’s executive order to change the name of Lake Ontario to “Lake America” last week was unpopular with Canadians and many Americans, although Google and Apple decided to bow to Trump’s demand by renaming the lake on their map services.

Trump has sought to rename everything from buildings to aircraft carriers after himself in his second term as president, and even has his sights on renaming New York’s Penn Station. Florida just renamed Palm Beach’s airport after him: it’s now officially the President Donald J. Trump International Airport, complete with the code DJT.

At a time when Trump claims to want a deal with Iran, changing the strait’s name would undoubtedly hurt the prospects for peace. It’s not likely to go over well with the other countries in the region, such as Oman and the United Arab Emirates. If Trump is serious, the move is sure to invite more comparisons between him and historical dictators who also sought to rename everything.

The Trump administration is dipping its toe back in reality television.

The Small Business Administration announced Tuesday that the agency’s Million Dollar Pitch Competition would be concluded with a “live finale event” in Washington D.C. on September 18.

Five small manufacturing companies from across the country are set to go head-to-head for cuts of a $1 million prize pool furnished by Clover Network Inc., a point-of-sale and payment-processing platform. Think Shark Tank but way more boring.

The program will be presided over by a panel of Trump sycophants and scam artists, including Nicki Minaj, the rapper-singer who took a hard-right turn when her vaccine skepticism hit the MAGA mainstream; Grant Cardone, a get-rich-quick influencer accused of misleading investors; and Joe Gebbia, the co-founder of Airbnb, who currently leads a group of DOGE goons running federal websites. The event will be hosted by actor Dean Cain, once Superman, now fanboy for the president.

This is the Trump administration’s second foray into reality television, after Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy debuted his flop travel show last month. It’s not yet clear where the SBA’s show will “air,” but if Duffy’s project was any indication, it will be quietly dumped on YouTube and immediately forgotten.