update - Fed'l judge blocks ICE arrests in Washingtom DC

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Hegseth warned his subordinates will have evidence of his orders


Should a serious inquiry be conducted by Congress into the reported killing of two survivors left clinging to a vessel after a kinetic strike on an alleged drug-running boat, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth should be prepared to face military officials who will go in prepared to defend themselves.

Late Monday, the Wall Street Journal editorial page editors suggested, “If Mr. Hegseth is right, then the factual record will support him. There are layers of bureaucracy between the Secretary of Defense and the business end of a missile. You can bet senior military officers bought insurance on their own careers by recording the advice they gave and the directions they received.”



Using that as a jumping-off point, MS NOW host Joe Scarborough agreed and pointed out that the Pentagon chief could find himself in a war with his subordinates as he tries to fend off blame — and they will likely come with “receipts.”

After noting that Admiral Alvin Holsey, former head of U.S. Southern Command, which oversees all military activity in the Caribbean and South America, resigned abruptly after the supposed drug interdiction attacks began, the “Morning Joe” co-host remarked, “Think about how chilling it is for Pete Hegseth that you have somebody who resigned in anger reportedly over this, and also, as David Ignatius said, well, actually, he's quoting the Wall Street Journal editorial page — these admirals, these officers, they have receipts.”



“They aren't going to do this without making sure they have evidence of authority sent by Pete Hegseth,” he predicted. “Which is why I'm just — I personally believe — which is why the White House had to come out yesterday and admit this happened and not blame it, as Pete Hegseth did, on lefty fake news reporters.”

 

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Trump repeatedly struggles to stay awake in Cabinet meeting


Once again, President Donald Trump appeared to struggle to stay awake, this time during his mid-Tuesday televised Cabinet meeting. At several points, the president was filmed with his eyes closed, occasionally reopening them while seeming disengaged.

In one 30-second clip, the president’s eyes close numerous times, then Trump nods when he is mentioned. In a shorter clip, Trump also struggles to keep his eyes open, as his hand holds up his head.

In a 23-second clip, the president is hunched over, slouching in his chair, his eyes closed in what could be described as appearing to nod off.

Trump slouches and appears to try to listen as HUD Secretary Scott Turner speaks, in this 79-second video.

In a 17-second clip, journalist Aaron Rupar wrote, “Trump’s face is becoming contorted as he desperately tries to cling to consciousness.” In another, he called the president “Dozy Don.”

But in perhaps the most extreme capture of the president appearing to doze off, as Secretary of State Marco Rubio speaks, Trump is totally hunched over, his eyes closed, his head then falls forward, and he appears to try to wake up before seemingly falling back asleep.

While this is not the first time the president has appeared to fall asleep on camera, it comes after a massive late-night social media spree, in which Trump posted or reposted over 150 times, as Alternet reported.

Axios’ Marc Caputo noted that “Trump went on a Truth Social bender last night, posting 158 times from 9pm Monday to 12am Tuesday Just before 5:30 am, he started hitting social media again.”

The media is beginning to notice.

Last week, The New York Times published an in-depth look at Trump’s “signs of fatigue.”

“Mr. Trump appeared to doze off during an event in the Oval Office,” one week after Halloween, the Times noted.

The president “has fewer public events on his schedule and is traveling domestically much less than he did by this point during his first year in office, in 2017, although he is taking more foreign trips,” according to the Times. “He also keeps a shorter public schedule than he used to. Most of his public appearances fall between noon and 5 p.m., on average.”

“During an Oval Office event that began around noon on Nov. 6,” the Times added, “Mr. Trump sat behind his desk for about 20 minutes as executives standing around him talked about weight-loss drugs.”

“At one point, Mr. Trump’s eyelids drooped until his eyes were almost closed, and he appeared to doze on and off for several seconds. At another point, he opened his eyes and looked toward a line of journalists watching him. He stood up only after a guest who was standing near him fainted and collapsed.”

 

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Doodling, drowsiness and a conspicuous misspelling highlight Trump's last Cabinet meeting of 2025


WASHINGTON (AP) — With Tuesday's White House Cabinet meeting chugging past the two-hour mark, President Donald Trump 's eyes fluttered and closed. His budget director busied himself doodling a fluffy cloud. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was lucky enough to speak early, but the title on his nameplate was misspelled.

Russ Vought, Director of the Office of Management and Budget, attends the Cabinet meeting at the White House, Tuesday, Dec. 2, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)© The Associated Press
The sleepy, and occasionally slipshod, gathering nonetheless ended with a flurry of news. Trump declared that he didn't want Somalis in the U.S. and Hegseth cited the “ fog of war ” in defending a follow-up strike on an alleged drug-carrying boat in the Caribbean Sea in September.

The president started things off by noting that it was the last time his Cabinet would gather until 2026. And, though marathon sessions with his top advisers lavishing praise have become a Trump trademark since he returned to the White House, this latest installment felt at times like a holiday break was needed.

Trump offered lengthy opening comments largely rehashing his key previous policy announcements from recent months. He also repeated old grievances, going back to his falsehoods about having won the 2020 election.

‘Go quickly’

The president then gave each Cabinet member a chance to speak, declaring, “We're gonna go quickly.” That did little to stop most Cabinet members from offering long presentations.

Hegseth went first and praised the Trump administration's move to rename his agency the Department of War — something that can't be officially done without an act of Congress. But the nameplate in front of Hegseth labeled him the “ssecretary of war,” including a mistaken double “S” that quickly became the source of searing online ridicule.

President Donald Trump closes his eyes as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth speaks during a Cabinet meeting at the White House, Tuesday, Dec. 2, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)© The Associated Press
After that, as each official took turns speaking, a TV camera trained on Trump showed him struggling to stay alert. The president sat back in his chair with his eyes occasionally drooping and sometimes shutting completely.

Trump's apparent sleepiness followed his criticism of a recent New York Times story examining his schedule and stamina at age 79. Trump again slammed the Times story early in Tuesday's meeting and even slipped into the third person to assure all involved that “Trump is sharp.”

Another indication that things were dragging came from budget director Russell Vought, who was spotted sketching a bucolic scene on White House letterhead.



President Donald Trump stands up to depart following a Cabinet meeting at the White House, Tuesday, Dec. 2, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)© The Associated Press
Vought drew mountains framed by pine trees topped by the kind of friendly-seeming clouds that public television legend Bob Ross preferred to crowd his serene landscape paintings with. The budget chief also sketched an arrow underneath his mountain. Where it was supposed to be pointing was not clear.


Just as Trump's admonishments to keep things tight were flouted, some of the Cabinet members also defied the president in their presentations when it came to the issue of affordability.

Trump made a point in his opening remarks to call concerns that Democrats have raised about rising costs a “con job." That didn't stop many of his administration's top voices from earnestly detailing how they were indeed seeking to reduce prices nationwide.

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins talked about economic pressures on farmers, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called affordability a “crisis," and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner said that hundreds of thousands of Americans becoming first-time homebuyers was an example of how the administration was making strides to achieve greater affordability.


The final speaker was Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who spoke for several minutes and acknowledged: “I know I’m last, so I wanted to be fast. But there’s a lot to cover."

All told, Tuesday's gathering lasted more than two hours. That fell short of Trump's Cabinet meeting record: an August marathon that stretched to a whopping three hours and 17 minutes.

Still, even the president acknowledged that the latest meeting was going long. “We're spending a lot of time in here," he said.

Trump wrapped things by taking questions from reporters, but only after jokingly asking, “After that, do you WANT to ask any questions?” He also pointed at a journalist holding a boom mic to capture sound from the Cabinet meeting and playfully offered, “How strong are you?”

“You've been holding that for two hours,” the president continued, drawing laughs from Cabinet members. “There are very few people who could do that. I'm very proud of you.”

A newsy Q&A

Reporters' questions shook off the doldrums.

Hegseth said he did not see that there were survivors in the water when the second strike on the boat off Venezuela was ordered and launched in early September. He said “the thing was on fire” and cited the “fog of war” in defending what occurred. He also said he “didn’t stick around” for the remainder of the Sept. 2 mission following the initial strike.


In response to a later question, Trump declared he didn't want Somali immigrants in the U.S., adding that residents of the war-ravaged eastern African country should stay there and try to fix their homeland. He also accused Somalis of being too reliant on U.S. aid programs while offering little to the nation in return.

That drew applause from his Cabinet, though the questions ended abruptly with journalists soon hustled out of the room. Trump punctuated the conclusion by slapping his hand twice on the table, pushing his chair back, standing up and thumping Hegseth on the shoulder.

Will Weissert And Michelle L. Price, The Associated Press

 

[mandrill]

White House defends pardoning exec who defrauded thousands


The White House has defended Donald Trump’s commutation of a prison sentence for former private equity executive David Gentile, who conned thousands out of $1.6 billion in a fraud scheme.
Gentile, 59, was granted clemency and released on Wednesday (26 November) after serving less than two weeks of a seven-year prison sentence.

Asked by a reporter in the White House about the commutation on Monday (2 December), Karoline Leavitt said the Biden government was “unable to tie any supposedly fraudulent representations to Mr Gentile”.
She called the case another example of the “weaponization of justice from the previous administration”.
Gentile and his co-defendant, Jeffry Schneider, were convicted in August 2024 on conspiracy to commit securities fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and securities fraud. His conviction will not be erased.

 

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Experts accuse Trump admin of leaving top admiral exposed to legal consequences


Admiral Frank M. Bradley – who was in charge of the September 2, 2025 mission in which the U.S. military killed two shipwrecked survivors of a boat strike in the Caribbean Sea — is being left out to dry by President Donald Trump's administration, according to multiple experts.

The New York Times' Helene Cooper and John Ismay reported Tuesday that recent comments from Trump, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt all suggest that Bradley is being cast as the central figure in the controversial strike. The Washington Post reported that after the initial missile strike that blew up a boat in international waters, the two survivors were seen clinging to the wreckage of the vessel, and that Hegseth demanded officials overseeing the operation "kill everybody." Dan Maurer, retired U.S. Army Judge Advocate General Corps (JAG) officer, characterized the operation as "murder."

Hegseth previously said that he watched the strike unfold in real time, though clarified during Tuesday's Cabinet meeting that he "didn't stick around" to see the secondary strike. Trump said that he "wouldn't have wanted" the subsequent strike, and Leavitt said from the White House Briefing Room lectern that Hegseth authorized Adm. Bradley to carry out the strikes.



"The public comments of the president, Mr. Hegseth and Ms. Leavitt all leave Admiral Bradley exposed," Cooper and Ismay wrote.

In a post to his X account, Hegseth maintained that Bradley was overseeing the operation, but praised his decision-making. Carrie A. Lee, who is the former chair of the department of national security and strategy at the Army War College, suggested that Trump and Hegseth were demonstrating poor leadership by pointing the finger at Bradley.

"For the top two civilians in the Pentagon and the White House to effectively wash their hands of it and claim no responsibility, while simultaneously saying that they stand by the decision, goes against any kind of ideas of responsible command," Lee told the Times.

Lee added that the president and the defense secretary were "trying to walk this middle line where you are saying, 'Well, I agree with his decisions, but if they violated the law, then we’re going to leave him swinging.'"

Hegseth said in his initial statement following the Post's report that the strike was "lawful under both U.S. and international law," and that all operations were "approved by the best military and civilian lawyers, up and down the chain of command." But now that both the House and Senate Armed Services Committees are conducting official inquiries with the Department of Defense about the attack, Duke University political science professor Peter D. Feaver said Admiral Bradley could find himself caught between a rock and a hard place when it comes to the legality of his orders.

“What’s at stake here is not just the legal position of a single officer, but the larger ethic of the professional soldier,” Feaver told the Times. “The question is: How do officers deal with an order that an administration says is lawful but that most of the lawyers outside the U.S. government say is not? This current case brings that question into sharp relief.”

Click here to read the Times' report in full.

 

[mandrill]

Judge issues injunction restricting immigration arrests in nation's capital


A federal judge late Tuesday blocked the Trump administration from making widespread immigration arrests in the nation’s capital without warrants or probable cause that the person is an imminent flight risk.

U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell in Washington granted a preliminary injunction sought by civil liberties and immigrants rights groups in a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

An email to the department after hours Tuesday was not immediately returned.

Officers making civil immigration arrests generally have to have an administrative warrant. Under the Immigration and Nationality Act, they may make arrests without a warrant only if they have probable cause to believe the person is in the U.S. illegally and is likely to escape before a warrant can be obtained, according to Howell's ruling.

The American Civil Liberties Union and other plaintiffs' attorneys argued federal officers were frequently patrolling and setting up checkpoints in Washington, D.C., neighborhoods with large numbers of Latino immigrants and then stopping and arresting people indiscriminately.

They provided sworn declarations from people they say were arrested without warrants or a required assessment of flight risk and cited public statements by administration officials that they said showed the administration was not using the probable cause standard.

Attorneys for the administration denied it had a policy allowing such arrests.

Howell, who was nominated to the bench by President Barack Obama, a Democrat, said the plaintiffs had “established a substantial likelihood of an unlawful policy and practice by defendants of conducting warrantless civil immigration arrests without probable cause.”

“Defendants’ systemic failure to apply the probable cause standard, including the failure to consider escape risk, directly violates” immigration law and the Department of Homeland Security's implementing regulations, she said.

In addition to blocking the policy, she ordered any agent who conducts a warrantless civil immigration arrest in Washington to document “the specific, particularized facts that supported the agent’s pre-arrest probable cause to believe that the person is likely to escape before a warrant can be obtained.”

Howell also required the government to submit that documentation to plaintiffs' attorneys.

The ruling is similar to two others in federal lawsuits that also involved the ACLU, one in Colorado and another in California.

Another judge had issued a restraining order barring federal agents from stopping people based solely on their race, language, job or location in the Los Angeles area after finding that they were conducting indiscriminate stops, but the Supreme Court lifted that order in September.

Sudhin Thanawala, The Associated Press

 

[mandrill]

Former Air Force secretary: Bradley ‘would be court-martialed’ under ‘normal circumstances’


Former Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall on Monday rejected Navy Adm. Frank Bradley’s reasoning for launching a second strike on a vessel in the Caribbean as two wounded survivors clung on to the boat.

“Under normal circumstances, it’d be court-martialed. He’d be relieved of his duties, and he’d be court-martialed,” Kendall, who served as secretary under former President Biden, said during an appearance on MS NOW. “The administration makes up logic and rationale for the things it’s doing that defy all legal history and all precedent, and that’s basically what we’re seeing here.”

Several other former U.S. government and military leaders have also dubbed the “double tap” attack a violation of the country’s law of war manual. Bradley is slated to provide a classified briefing to lawmakers Thursday as members of Congress continue to investigate the Trump administration’s strikes in the Caribbean.

“Adm. Bradley was reported to have given an excuse, if you will, for the second engagement. That doesn’t hold water. These people were wounded. They were in the water. They were not a threat to anybody. Again, that’s a textbook example of a war crime,” Kendall said Monday.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, according to The Washington Post, gave orders to “kill everybody” onboard the ship as part of the Trump administration’s crackdown on the alleged sale and transport of narcotics in the Latin American region.

However, Hegseth says he did not order a second strike.

“You can‘t kill survivors who can no longer fight,” John Yoo, who served as an adviser in former President George W. Bush’s administration, said during a Monday appearance on CNN. “So, the admiral should not have obeyed the order that Secretary Hegseth gave. And even the soldiers who carried out the admiral‘s orders should not have obeyed.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Monday that Bradley acted “within his authority and the law.”

Leavitt alleged the strikes were justified after narcotrafficking groups were deemed foreign terrorist organizations, allowing for “lethal targeting in accordance with the laws of war.”

Her comments contradict the U.S.’s war manual, which states “orders to fire upon the shipwrecked would be clearly illegal.”

Legal experts told PBS the fatal attack violates peacetime laws as well as those governing armed conflict.

Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

 

[mandrill]

Expert warns House GOP soon to be marred by absences


House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has navigated a difficult year with a razor-thin majority where he had to wrangle every last vote on key issues, and frequently had to juggle unexpected vacancies. But things are about to get a whole lot worse for him, one congressional staffer predicted Tuesday on X.

That's because no fewer than 18 members of the House Republican caucus are running for other offices next year, and can't be counted on to always be in Washington for critical votes.



Aaron Fritschner, a top staffer for Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA), flagged this in response to a Punchbowl News analysis of Johnson's "brutal" 11 months ahead, which includes yet another shutdown fight looming over the next two months, and rising discontent from the GOP rank and file and even other House GOP leaders about the direction of the caucus.

"Punchbowl's rundown here is good, and there's another problem for Johnson that'll creep up next year: attendance," wrote Fritschner. "Republicans have 18 members running for other offices next year, compared to just 8 Dems. Campaigning will keep them out of DC, a significant vote math issue."



Among those 18 members are a number of gubernatorial campaigns, including Reps. Andy Biggs (R-AZ), Byron Donalds (R-FL), John James (R-MI), Tom Tiffany (R-WI), Nancy Mace and Ralph Norman (R-SC), and Elise Stefanik (R-NY); Senate campaigns, including Reps. Andy Barr (R-KY), Barry Moore (R-AL), Ashley Hinson (R-IA), and Buddy Carter (R-GA); and Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX), who is seeking the nomination for state attorney general.

All of this comes as both Democrats and Republicans await Tuesday night's results in a highly-watched special election for a vacant congressional seat in Tennessee, which polls have flagged as neck and neck despite President Donald Trump having carried the district by over 20 points.