US Strikes Extend to Pacific
By its own admission, the Trump administration has expanded its lawless attacks on supposed drug-smuggling boats from the Caribbean to the Pacific.
The U.S. military has conducted two strikes that we know of in the Pacific, bringing the total number of attacks since the campaign began to nine, with a reported death toll of 37. The Pacific attacks took place in international waters, and at least one of them was off the coast of Colombia, according to reports.
Throughout the weeks-old campaign, nearly all of the publicly available information about the attacks has come from the notoriously unreliable Trump administration. The campaign has also happened in parallel with an administration purging of the reporters who usually cover the Pentagon, most of whom gave up their press credentials rather than accede to a restrictive new media policy. What remains to cover the Defense Department on-site is a hodgepodge of mostly right-wing media outlets that agreed to sign on to the new restrictions.
The combination of fewer reliable reporters at the Pentagon and compromised news outlets taking their place could hardly come at a worse time given the administration’s own struggles with truth-telling. Well before Trump, the national security realm was one of the hardest to cover for journalists, and the structure and traditions of American government gave overwhelming deference to secrecy and security at the expense of transparency and accountability.
Even now, the campaign is being waged on the basis of a secret memo from the Trump DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel, and the president has issued a secret presidential finding authorizing the CIA to conduct covert operations in and around Venezuela. Congress and the American public have been kept in the dark about the legal basis for the attacks, their ultimate goal, the larger strategy, and the endgame.
Similar practices in past administrations have created enormous historic tensions between democratic processes and military/intelligence operations. But no past administration has launched military operations at the same time it is conducting a vigorous, sustained, and broad-based attack on the rule of law, the constitutional order, and the professional military like President Trump is.
It’s a bad combination at a bad time … something earlier opponents of government secrecy, deference to the military, and extrajudicial killings warned would eventually come back to bite us.
The Corruption: $230M and Counting
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) is warning that President Trump may be able to settle his own $230 million claim against the federal government for the criminal investigations of himself without immediately divulging the settlement publicly.
“Our reading is that, even though this is a private settlement, it doesn’t have to be disclosed anywhere until there is an accounting of where all the money has gone at the end of the year,” Raskin tells Greg Sargent.
Raskin also cites the Emoluments Clause — which proved to be a weak tool in Trump I — as barring any compensation to the president from the federal government other than his salary.
CONFIRMED: East Wing Demolished
After a few days of weak dodging and poor deception, the Trump administration — first via an unnamed senior official and then by President Trump himself — confirmed what photographic evidence had made undeniable: It is demolishing the entire East Wing of the White House to make way for the president’s ballroom pet project.
Facing a groundswell of backlash over the unannounced demolition of one-third of the White House complex, Trump took to holding up mockups of the ballroom during an Oval Office press availability with the NATO secretary general.
Philip Bump writes of the demolition of the East Wing:
The metaphor of Trump crushing a portion of the White House as he aims bulldozers at democracy itself is almost too obvious to note. But it’s not just a symbolic parallel: both are rooted in the same indifference to what these American institutions mean to Americans and to America. Both are rooted in Trump wanting to treat those things as his own and now feeling empowered to do precisely that.
Also Demolished: CISA
“The Trump administration has effectively closed the division of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency that coordinates critical infrastructure cybersecurity improvements with states and local governments, private businesses and foreign countries,” Cybersecurity Dive reports.
Wahoowhat? UVa Capitulates
Under pressure from the White House, Mr. Jefferson’s University of Virginia became the first public university to strike a deal with the Trump administration, agreeing to the imposition of certain race-based policies in order only to pause ongoing federal investigations.
For the Record
On Wednesday afternoon, Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) concluded a marathon 22-hour floor speech in which he warned it was time to “ring the alarm bells about authoritarian control.”
He’s Telling Us He’s Going to Do it Again
National Guard Case Confusion
Late yesterday, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals declined to rehear en banc a decision that paused a lower court order that blocked National Guard troops from being deployed in California. A total of 11 judges joined in a powerful dissent by Judge Marsha Berzon, TPM’s Kate Riga reports.
To make sense of the three big National Guard cases — California, Oregon, and Illinois — and the current legal status of each case, I’ll defer to Georgetown law professor Steve Vladeck who does a bang-up job this morning of sorting out the various moving parts.
ICYMI …
During oral arguments this week, a three-judge panel of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals appeared deeply skeptical of the Trump administration’s effort to detain and deport pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, the former Columbia University student being punished for his political views.
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