The “Nixonland trilogy” refers to a series of books by author
Rick Perlstein that chronicles the rise of modern American conservatism, focusing on the political and cultural landscape of the late 1960s and 1970s. While Nixonland is the second book in the series, the term is sometimes used loosely to describe the first three titles: Before the Storm, Nixonland, and The Invisible Bridge.
Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus: The first book in the series, it examines the 1960s and how Barry Goldwater’s failed presidential campaign laid the groundwork for a future conservative movement.
Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America: This is the second book, which details how Richard Nixon capitalized on social and cultural divisions to rise from political defeat and win the presidency in 1968.
The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan: The third book covers the 1970s, focusing on the fall of the Nixon administration and the events that led to Ronald Reagan’s rise to power.
Elon Musk listens as President Donald Trump speaks during a news conference in the Oval Office of the White House, May 30, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)
PARIS (AP) — France’s government is taking action against billionaire Elon Musk ‘s artificial intelligence chatbot Grok after it generated French-language posts that questioned the use of gas chambers at Auschwitz, officials said.
Grok, built by Musk’s company xAI and integrated into his social media platform X, wrote in a widely shared post in French that gas chambers at the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp were designed for “disinfection with Zyklon B against typhus” rather than for mass murder — language long associated with Holocaust denial.
The Auschwitz Memorial highlighted the exchange on X, saying that the response distorted historical fact and violated the platform’s rules.
In later posts on its X account, the chatbot acknowledged that its earlier reply to an X user was wrong, said it had been deleted and pointed to historical evidence that Auschwitz’s gas chambers using Zyklon B were used to murder more than 1 million people. The follow-ups were not accompanied by any clarification from X.
In tests run by The Associated Press on Friday, its responses to questions about Auschwitz appeared to give historically accurate information.
Grok has a history of making antisemitic comments. Earlier this year, Musk’s company took down posts from the chatbot that appeared to praise Adolf Hitler after complaints about antisemitic content.
The Paris prosecutor’s office confirmed to The Associated Press on Friday that the Holocaust-denial comments have been added to an existing cybercrime investigation into X. The case was opened earlier this year after French officials raised concerns that the platform’s algorithm could be used for foreign interference.
Prosecutors said that Grok’s remarks are now part of the investigation, and that “the functioning of the AI will be examined.”
France has one of Europe’s toughest Holocaust denial laws. Contesting the reality or genocidal nature of Nazi crimes can be prosecuted as a crime, alongside other forms of incitement to racial hatred.
Several French ministers, including Industry Minister Roland Lescure, have also reported Grok’s posts to the Paris prosecutor under a provision that requires public officials to flag possible crimes. In a government statement, they described the AI-generated content as “manifestly illicit,” saying it could amount to racially motivated defamation and the denial of crimes against humanity.
French authorities referred the posts to a national police platform for illegal online content and alerted France’s digital regulator over suspected breaches of the European Union’s Digital Services Act.
The case adds to pressure from Brussels. This week, the European Commission, the EU’s executive branch, said that the bloc is in contact with X about Grok and called some of the chatbot’s output “appalling,” saying it runs against Europe’s fundamental rights and values.
Two French rights groups, the Ligue des droits de l’Homme and SOS Racisme, have filed a criminal complaint accusing Grok and X of contesting crimes against humanity.
X and its AI unit, xAI, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Adamson is a foreign reporter based in Paris for The Associated Press. He covers European politics, culture and style. He has reported across the continent in an over two-decade career.
Almost everyone who claims to care about democracy agrees that Citizen United was a terrible decision, and that getting big corporate money out of politics has to be a priority.
But most politicians, like Gov. Gavin Newsom, wring their hands and say: Nothing we can do. The Supreme Court has ruled.
But that might not be true.
Robert Reich, public policy professor at Berkeley and former secretary of labor, makes a good point (that had never occurred to me) in a substack post. He points out that corporations are creatures of the states, not the federal government.
Corporations are legal entities that have extensive rights, including the right to do business, to hire and fire people, to donate money … many of the things human beings can do. By creating a corporation, business people can avoid personal liability for a wide range of actions.
But those rights are entirely the purview of the state that grants the corporate license—and, Reich says, states can place any restrictions they want on those licenses.
For example, they could withhold the right to make political contributions.
When a state exercises its authority to define corporations as entities without the power to spend in politics, it will no longer be relevant whether corporations have a right to spend in politics — because without the power to do so, the right to do so has no meaning.
Delaware’s corporation code already declines to grant private foundations the power to spend in elections.
Importantly, a state that no longer grants its corporations the power to spend in elections also denies that power to corporations chartered in the other 49 states, if they wish to do business in that state.
Of course, corporations can move their charters; lots of them already incorporate in Delaware, which has limited transparency and low taxes. But if a Delaware corporation wants to do business in California, and California denies corporations the right to spend money on politics, that corporation has to comply.
Maybe that’s a good issue for the Newsom for President campaign. He could start right here at home; the Legislature will be back in session in January.
After a series of hearings and a few amendments, Mayor Daniel Lurie’s Rich Family Zoning Plan is headed for the Board of Supes Tuesday/2—and immediately, his new pick for D4 supervisor, Alan Wong, will be facing a tough vote
I called and texted Wong Sunday afternoon, but he hasn’t responded. I get that; his phone must be blowing up. And unlike Lurie’s previous pick, Wong has a lot of political experience; he’s not likely to stir up trouble for the mayor the same day his appointment is announced.
But he only has one free day before he has to cast a vote that could have a huge impact on his political future.
But the SFMTA staff argues that the additional private vehicles haven’t slowed transit service (yet), and recommends that “all day operations by service providers” be allowed to continue and expand.
The full SFMTA Board will hear a presentation on the project Tuesday/2, and it’s projected to come up around 4pm. Car-free Market advocates are encouraging people to show up and present public testimony. The meeting’s at City Hall Room 400.
48 Hills welcomes comments in the form of letters to the editor, which you can submit here. We also invite you to join the conversation on our Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Tim Redmond has been a political and investigative reporter in San Francisco for more than 30 years. He spent much of that time as executive editor of the Bay Guardian. He is the founder of 48hills.
This past Sunday I listened to a well-known Democratic influencer speak about the state of the country, particularly as it pertains to Donald Trump and the Republican party.
I agreed with his appraisal of Trump and the Republicans. His descriptions such as sociopath and psychopath work for me; I don’t think they’re hyperbole. But what struck me was a total lack of interest in looking at the mote in the eye of the Democratic party. No person, no organization, and no system that needs to reverse its fortunes can do so without looking in the mirror.
At one point he referred to George Lakoff’s description of the Republican party as the critical father and the Democratic party as the nurturing mother. I remember in the 1990’s when that seemed so astute, and perhaps at that time it was. But it isn’t now. Over the years the Republican party went from critical to abusive; the Democratic party became a mom standing outside the door while the abuse was happening, doing little to stop it, then offering the abused child milk and cookies when the beating was over.
Guess which one of those the abused child grows up to detest more?
One thing I will say about the Republicans; they’re willing to change on a dime if that’s what it would take to win. That’s hardly a compliment, just merely a statement about their corporate MO. More Republicans come from the business world, where if something isn’t selling on Wednesday then you’d better change something by Friday. And if you don’t, the business could shut down by Monday.
The Democrats simply do what they do. If things aren’t working on Wednesday, then you do them again on Friday. And if a disaster occurs on Monday, you just continue in zombie form. The mere mention of fundamental change is considered risky, critical, and unworthy of a “real Democrat.” The party is big on truth-tellers, as long as they’re talking truth about the other side.
The problem with the Democratic party is not just the Republicans. The problem with the Democratic party is that it stopped offering the American people a cohesive alternative to what Republicans were selling. Unequivocal advocacy for the working people of the United States was at one point the party’s heart and backbone. Democrats of old stood up to corporate overlords: they didn’t play footsies under the table with them. And if the overlords didn’t like, no big deal. Remember FDR’s response to his gilded critics? “I welcome their hatred.”
Democrats in those days didn’t care what rich donors thought of them – partly because prior to the Koch brothers they didn’t have to, but also because it would have been against their principles to do so. Keep that word in mind: principles. The Democratic party, starting mainly in the 1990’s, decided we could compete with the Republicans for the big boy money if we simply made enough deals with the big boys. As a party, the Democrats went from “We feel your pain and we’re here for you no matter what,” to “We feel your pain, and we’ll do whatever we can to help you up as long as it doesn’t threaten our donor base.” The party took the big money, thinking it could have it both ways. Yet too often, it simply could not. The party sacrificed its spine at the expense of its principles. One has to ask “What did that get us?” The answer, of course, is that it got us two terms of Donald Trump.
You can’t just blame the thief who came in during the night, if you opened every window and door and then went to sleep.
A perfect example, of course, is Obamacare. During the 2008 campaign, Obama said universal health care would be the top priority during his first term. Once he got into office, however, insurance companies clearly had a talk with him: You can go this far, but no further. There was to be no more mention of universal coverage or a public option.
What emerged was the Affordable Care Act. Yes it helped a lot of people, but none so much as the insurance companies themselves. It still left tens of millions of people uninsured or underinsured. It still left over a million people rationing their insulin. It still left over half of our bankruptcies, medical bankruptcies. It still left many people mad.
I remember a young man being forcibly removed from a Congressional hearing on health care because he kept shouting out, Public Option! In the 2010 midterms, Obama told Democratic candidates he wouldn’t campaign for them if they mentioned the phrase. Such was the new Democratic party. Little compromises here and little compromises there.
In the first two years of both Obama’s and Biden’s presidency, both men had a trifecta. The House and Senate were theirs. Obama could have passed universal healthcare in his first two years, and Biden could have repealed that 2017 Trump tax cut in his first two years in office (immediately putting back in the middle class cuts). No one thing has done more to create our obscene income inequality – the $50T transfer of wealth from the middle class to the top .001 per cent – than that tax cut. Blaming Republicans for “cutting needed services so they could pay for a tax cut for billionaires” was really something this year, when for the first two years of Biden’s term the Democrats could have gotten rid of the damn thing themselves.
Compromise your principles a little here, a little more there, and over time you’ve lost your moral authority. You can do a lot for people, but what they’ll remember is what you didn’t do.
All this happened because the neoliberal corporatists – once treated by the party with appropriate and healthy skepticism – came to be seen as the grown-ups who were going save it. They would be the experts in the room, arguing that you had to run the party like a business. They didn’t listen too much to those they considered the “riff raff” in the party, who in their minds weren’t sophisticated enough to navigate real power. They huddled in safe spaces like the Hamptons and Sun Valley, knowing nothing, not even a clue, about real lives lived by people outside their enclaves. I mentioned at a bigwig fundraiser once that we’d probably get some good advice if we were to ask a few questions of the servers. I remember being looked at like I had two heads. Such were the new breed of neoliberal donors and the operatives they trained to serve them. They posed as saviors and clearly thought that they were. In fact they were invaders.
Under the sway of this elite, the party lost touch with its core principles. Losing touch with its core principles, it began to lose touch with its base. “America won’t have to worry about a fascist takeover,” said President Franklin Roosevelt, “as long as democracy delivers on its promises.” Too often Roosevelt’s own party didn’t heed those words, and now we are where we are.
After the 2024 elections, I ran for Chair of the DNC. I did so because of all I had seen, all I experienced, and what I could see coming down the road. I knew the culture of the party would need to change, were it to survive as a powerful political force. I had seen the corruption inside the belly of the beast, and I knew it had to be expunged if the party was to emerge victorious in the future.
The DNC convention to elect its next Chair was mind boggling. Having won the Presidency again, Trump was putting together his next administration. And to me the dark clouds were looming. This wasn’t a conservative government that was on its way in, but a neo-fascist coup that was revving up to destroy our government. How anyone could have not seen this even then, I can’t imagine. Yet the convention was more like a frat party than a wake. People didn’t seem to me to register the horror that to me matched the moment. I expected us to at least be somber. But there was more singing and dancing than there was serious conversation. I saw corruption at the top, cluelessness in the middle, and childishness at the bottom. It’s not that I didn’t encounter individuals who saw through the charade, because I did. But no one seemed willing to counter the establishment narrative, that “Basically, it’s okay. We just need to make sure we win next time.” Obviously it wasn’t okay, and it’s not okay. Just blaming Republicans is not the answer.
The other compromise with ethics, integrity, and most importantly democracy that the Democratic party engaged in was with free and fair primary elections. Everyone knows by now that the DNC tipped the scales in favor of Hillary in the 2016 primaries. The proverbial grown-ups I mentioned earlier – the new iteration of Tammany Hall party bosses – considered Bernie Sanders an unacceptable choice.
It’s important to remember the traditional, more ethical role of a political party. First of all, parties are not mentioned in the Constitution; their outsized power today is preposterous. George Washington warned in his Farewell Address that they could form “factions of men” more loyal to their party than to their country. Our second President, John Adams, considered them the biggest threat to our democracy.
And in the words of Thomas Jefferson, “The only safe repository for power is in the hands of the people.” Nothing should ever be considered a more important American creed. A party’s appropriate role is to stand in the background until the voters have chosen the party’s nominee. Only then are they to step in and help that person win.
Millions of volunteers, mainly young people, came out to support Bernie in 2016, yet the party bosses simply weren’t having it. If nothing else worked, their system of super-delegates would make sure voters wouldn’t have a chance to make what the bosses considered an unwise decision. Those voters used to be called their base, by the way.
If the DNC hadn’t put their finger on the scales that year, I don’t know who would have won the election, Hillary or Bernie. But I do know this. Millions of Democrats wouldn’t have been in a foul mood that year. The general election would have had a much different energy and I don’t think Trump would have won.
After the 2016 election, a group of Bernie supporters sued the DNC for unfair practices. Incredibly, the DNC’s defense was “Hey, we don’t owe people fairness! We’re a private corporation!” Yes, they’re a private corporation but they perform a quasi-governmental function; if they don’t play fairly they are betraying the public. Even more incredibly, the DNC won the case!
At that point, all constraints were removed. In 2020 – and I would know – the party recognized, however begrudgingly, its responsibility to let any FEC registered candidate have a chance to present their message to the public. But by 2024, they figured to hell with that. A small group of White House insiders decided that there would be no primary, that the threat Trump posed to our country was so great that the only way to save democracy was to suppress it. This was far too important a decision to leave in the hands of the people!
The DNC put out the word: Biden would be the candidate, and that was that. No other voices would be heard, or even tolerated. “We will all line up and support the President.” I remember standing at the baggage carousel at the airport in Charleston, South Carolina, reading on my phone that DNC Chairman Jaimie Harrison had just said, “helping Joe Biden win is our top priority,” when the primary race had hardly even started. I thought, “Wow, that’s not the role of the party Chair to say that.” I had no idea what was coming.
Partnering with their media cohorts, the primary was effectively cancelled but not cancelled. It reminded me of the Soviet Union, when the party would brag of free elections yet they themselves had chosen the candidates. No lies, no infiltration, no shaming was too low to go in the effort to peripheralize whoever’s voice they intended to shut out. When fate stepped in and President Biden gave a disastrous debate performance, the bosses simply appointed his successor. Yes, there could have been a blitz primary; many supported it. And yes, it could have been taken to the floor of a convention. It would have actually been very exciting, and a boost of energy we sorely needed.
Don’t let anyone tell you the problem was that the President should have gotten out sooner. They’re all saying that now simply to cover their own asses. It should not have mattered whether or not the President was still running. Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy Sr. ran against Lyndon Johnson, and McCarthy doing so well in New Hampshire is what made Johnson drop out. “We don’t have a primary when there’s an incumbent President” was just one of the many gaslights put on the internet, constantly repeated, and allowed to roam freely in people’s heads.
Rehashing history is not my intent. My concern is not with the past but with the future. Do I want the Democrats to win next year? I want them tocrush it. Do I want a Democratic presidential candidate to win in 2028? I want him or her to crush it. But it won’t happen if the party doesn’t reclaim its principles, because without them it lacks what Martin Luther King Jr. called “cosmic companionship.” There is more to win than individual elections; we have to win the hearts and minds of people who no longer trust we will do what we say. Democrats will only win those voters if we return to our core: an unequivocal dedication to things that actually serve the average American. And to a dedication to the democratic process. Just complaining about Trump won’t win the future for the Democrats. Looking at ourselves, and cleaning our own house, is the only power great enough to override the darkness.
I agree with Sunday’s speaker that the crisis we face now is as great as any in our nation’s history. For those of us who see in the Trump administration a neo-fascist threat to democracy, nothing could be more important than that the Democratic party be strong. But the needed strengthening will not occur without some brutal self-awareness and acknowledgements of the party’s defects. We won’t be able to help course-correct the country if we’re not willing to course-correct ourselves. When and if we do, everything will change. If we recognize the mistakes we made, with humility and sincerity, heeding the call to make good on democracy’s promises and our responsibility to its principles, then the future will be ours.
Experienced phonebankers needed: Let’s get out the vote for Aftyn Behn and flip TN-07 blue! Tonight is our final phonebank for Aftyn Behn, a former Indivisible organizer who could score a major upset in Tennessee’s deep red seventh district. A win in tomorrow’s election would narrow the GOP House majority to a sliver and send a powerful message to the Republican Party about how politically toxic Trump’s agenda has become.
Note: Our phonebanks are normally open to all and start with a training for new phonebankers. Tonight we have a limited number of households remaining to be contacted, so we’re skipping the training and suggesting that only experienced phonebankers join (we wouldn’t want anyone to go through the entire training and then discover we’ve run out of numbers!).
Support immigrants under attack this Giving Tuesday. We normally don’t include fundraising asks in our weekly to-dos, but with the Trump regime escalating its attacks on immigrant communities, we want to encourage this movement to support the Defending Our Neighbors Fund. The fund helps individuals and families caught up in our increasingly draconian immigration system get the legal assistance they deserve.
Happening This Week December 1-7 Monday: “All in for Aftyn” Virtual Phonebank (6pm ET) Call Tennessee voters to help Aftyn Behn flip TN-07 (we won’t have a training on tonight’s call, so we encourage only those with prior phonebanking experience with us to join) Wednesday: Indivisible Red and Rural Caucus Call (8pm ET) Connect with other activists organizing in red and rural communities Thursday: “What’s the Plan?” with Leah + Ezra (3pm ET) An interactive Q&A with our co-founders Thursday: Resilience for Sustainable Activism Training (7pm ET) Because authoritarians want us overwhelmed and exhausted, rest and joy are critical components of successful resistance. Learn strategies for sustainable activism from expert organizers. Thursday: Indivisible’s Primary Launch Call (8:30pm ET) In 2026 we’re going to fight for Democratic leaders who’ll fight for us. This call is primarily intended for Indivisible group leaders, but anyone who wants to learn about our 2026 primary program is welcome to join.
Applications Now Accepted From Entire Animal Kingdom
Published: December 1, 2025 (TheOnion.com)
WASHINGTON—In an effort to expand recruitment for President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, the Department of Homeland Security announced Tuesday that it would waive the species requirements for new Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.
At a press conference, Home- land Security Secretary Kristi Noem said eligibility requirements that previously limited ICE applicants to the species Homo sapiens would now permit any animal to join, opening the door for countless birds, primates, and reptiles to participate in raids of immigrants’ workplaces, conduct ambushes at immigration courts, and pilot fast-track deportation flights to cooperating foreign countries.
“By removing restrictions on tentacles, hooves, talons, and the number of legs an applicant may possess, we’ve made it possible for countless nonhuman patriots to do their part cleaning up America’s streets,” said Noem, dressed in a pith helmet and ICE-emblazoned safari gear while flanked by a gorilla and an ostrich. “A bison can love its country just as much as any person, and if it wants to use its large, powerful horns to toss illegals into the back of a van, we say, ‘Welcome aboard.’ ”
“There are many kinds of patriots in this country, even if some of them can only communicate by hooting or growling,” Noem added.
Secretary Kristi Noem with newly sworn-in animal agents who quickly became distracted and searched the briefing room for acorns, shoots, and leaves.
ICE’s urgent need for new members is said to have led the agency to send recruiters to beaver dams, buzzard nests, and dank, bone-strewn caves across the country, where in a desperate effort to secure the personnel necessary to carry out their waves of deportations, they offer signing bonuses that range from logs full of termites to live salmon to carrion. Despite concerns from critics that most animals were unfit to wield life-or-death authority over a vulnerable populace, ICE officials claimed that an inability to experience human empathy was exactly the kind of quality they were looking for in their candidates.
“Morale is extremely low right now, and we’re frankly in no position to be picky about who we recruit,” said ICE chief of staff Jon Feere, adding that preferences for bipedal candidates with object permanence and opposable thumbs had become “a thing of the past” in the current political climate. “At the end of the day, what we need is more boots and talons and flippers on the ground. If a blue whale has a mouth big enough to detain a hundred illegals at a time, we’ll gladly hire it to help us take our country back.”
“Maybe if we’d been draping ostriches in body armor and sending them into sanctuary cities back in 2017, we wouldn’t be in the mess we’re in now,” Feere continued.
According to eyewitness accounts, packs of ICE animals participating in training exercises have become a common sight in immigrant communities, with these maneuvers often derailing when a rabid raccoon leaps onto an agent’s face or a grizzly bear mauls law enforcement officials. This has reportedly prompted undocumented civilians to stay off the streets for fear of being carried off in the jaws of vicious wolves or stuffed in a kangaroo’s pouch and spirited away to a shadowy detention facility.
Despite sharing similar backgrounds, many of the most gung-ho among ICE’s new recruits seem unbothered that they themselves come from species not native to North America.
“Immigrants Moka tax dollars take, dirty country—cry Moka,” said Moka, a 5-year-old eastern lowland gorilla recently hired by ICE, who communicated with reporters via rudimentary sign language while hidden behind mirrored aviators and a Punisher skull neck gaiter. “Immigrants trouble devils. Smart Trump Moka helpful. Far immigrants. Far woke. Patriot gorilla true.”
“No country charity,” Moka went on, snorting and slapping the ground as she grew increasingly agitated. “ICE good. Stink crime. Moka America great make.”
From New York Times bestselling author Sarah Kendzior comes the bitingly honest examination of the erosion of American liberty and the calculated rise to power of Donald Trump.
The rise of Donald Trump may have shocked Americans, but it should not have surprised them. His anti-democratic movement is the culmination of a decades-long breakdown of U.S. institutions. The same blindness to U.S. decline – particularly the loss of economic stability for the majority of the population and opportunity-hoarding by the few – is reflected in an unwillingness to accept that authoritarianism can indeed thrive in the so-called “home of the free”.
As Americans struggle to reconcile the gulf between a flagrant aspiring autocrat and the democratic precepts they had been told were sacred and immutable, the inherent fragility of American democracy has been revealed. Hiding in Plain Sight exposes this continual loss of freedom, the rise of consolidated corruption, and the secrets behind a burgeoning autocratic United States that have been hiding in plain sight for decades. In Kendzior’s signature and celebrated style, she expertly outlines Trump’s meteoric rise from the 1980s until today, interlinking key moments of his life with the degradation of the American political system and the continual erosion of our civil liberties by foreign powers.
Kendzior also offers a never-before-seen look at her personal life and her lifelong tendency to be in the wrong place at the wrong time – living in New York through 9/11 and in St. Louis during the Ferguson uprising, and researching media and authoritarianism when Trump emerged using the same tactics as the post-Soviet dictatorships she had long studied.
Hiding in Plain Sight is about confronting injustice – an often agonizing process, but an honest and necessary one – as the only way that offers the possibility of ending it.
Sarah Kendzior is the New York Times bestselling author of They Knew, Hiding in Plain Sight, The View from Flyover Country, and The Last American Road Trip.
She has a PhD in anthropology from Washington University in St Louis, where she researched politics and digital media in authoritarian states of the former Soviet Union. From 2012 to 2014, she wrote op-eds for Al Jazeera English, and from 2016 to 2020, she wrote op-eds for The Globe and Mail. She has a newsletter (https://sarahkendzior.substack.com/) and lives in St. Louis with her husband and children.
US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth looks on during a bilateral meeting between President Donald Trump Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on November 18, 2025 in Washington, DC.
(Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)
Two Republican-controlled committees also said they were opening investigations into the defense secretary’s alleged order to “kill everybody” aboard a boat in the Caribbean in September—the first of nearly two dozen strikes.
Former top military lawyers on Saturday said that new reporting on orders personally given by US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in early September, when the military struck the first of nearly two dozen boats in the Caribbean, suggests Hegseth has committed “war crimes, murder, or both.”
The Former Judge Advocates General (JAGs) Working Group, which includes former officials who served as legal advisers for the military, issued a statement in response to the Washington Post‘s reporting on the September 2 attack on a boat in the Caribbean—the first strike on a vessel in an ongoing operation that the Trump administration has claimed is aimed at stopping drug trafficking.
The Post reported for the first time on the directive Hegseth gave to Special Operations commanders as intelligence analysts reported that their surveillance had confirmed the 11 people aboard the boat were carrying drugs to the US—an alleged crime that, in the past and in accordance with international law, would have prompted US agencies to intercept the vessel, confiscate any illegal substances that were found, and arrest those on board.
But as the Trump administration began its boat bombing campaign, the order Hegseth gave “was to kill everybody,” one of the intelligence analysts told the Post.
After the first missile strike, the officials realized that two of the passengers had survived the blast—prompting a Special Operations commander to initiate a second strike to comply with Hegseth’s order.
The Former JAGs Working Group, which was established in February in response to Hegseth’s firing of Army and Air Force JAGs, said that the dismissal of the military’s top legal advisers set the stage for the defense secretary’s order and the continued bombing of boats in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific, which have now killed more than 80 people.
Hegseth’s “systematic dismantling of the military’s legal guardrails” led to the formation of the working group, pointed out the former JAGs. “Had those guardrails been in place, we are confident they would have prevented these crimes.”
The working group said Hegseth’s order to “kill everybody” could be understood in one of two ways—a demand for the US military to carry out a clear war crime, or for those involved in the operation to commit murder:
If the US military operation to interdict and destroy suspected narcotrafficking vessels is a “non-international armed conflict,” as the Trump administration suggests, orders to “kill everybody,” which can reasonably be regarded as an order to give “no quarter,” and to “double-tap” a target in order to kill survivors, are clearly illegal under international law. In short, they are war crimes.
If the US military operation is not an armed conflict of any kind, these orders to kill helpless civilians clinging to the wreckage of a vessel our military destroyed would subject everyone from [the defense secretary] down to the individual who pulled the trigger to prosecution under US law for murder.
The Post‘s reporting comes less than two weeks after NBC News revealed that Senior Judge Advocate General (JAG) Paul Meagher, a Marine colonel at US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) in Miami, had spoken out against the plans to begin bombing boats in the Caribbean, specifically warning in August that the operations would make service members liable for extrajudicial killing.
Following the Post‘s report, Republican-controlled House and Senate committees said they were investigating the allegations regarding Hegseth’s order, which the defense secretary dismissed on Friday as “fabricated, inflammatory, and derogatory reporting.”
Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), joined by Ranking Member Jack Reed (D-RI), said they had “directed inquiries to the Department [of Defense],” and would “be conducting vigorous oversight to determine the facts related to these circumstances.”
Reps. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) and Adam Smith (D-Wash.), chair and ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, released a similar statement.
The administration has never publicly released evidence that the dozens of people it’s killed in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific were drug traffickers. The Associated Press reported on the identities of some of the victims, finding among them an out-of-work bus driver and a fisherman who had agreed to help ferry narcotics—which led one policy expert to liken the boat-bombing operations to “straight-up massacring 16-year-old drug dealers on US street corners.”
President Donald Trump has told Congress—where lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have unsuccessfully sought to block further military action in the Caribbean and Venezuela—that the US is engaged in an “armed conflict” with drug cartels in the South American country. The Former JAGs Working Group suggested that Trump’s claims about the operation are immaterial considering Hegeth’s reported order for US officers to “kill everybody” on September 2.
“Regardless of whether the US is involved in an armed conflict, law enforcement operations, or any other application of military force, international and domestic US law prohibit the intentional targeting of defenseless persons,” said the former military lawyers. “If the Washington Post and CNN reports are true, the two survivors of the September, 2 2025 US attack against a vessel carrying 11 persons were rendered unable to continue their mission when US military forces significantly damaged the vessel carrying them. Under such circumstances, not only does international law prohibit targeting these survivors, but it also requires the attacking force to protect, rescue, and, if applicable, treat them as prisoners of war. Violations of these obligations are war crimes, murder, or both. There are no other options.”
The Joint Special Operations Command previously told the White House that the “double-tap” strike was necessary to sink the boat to avoid a “navigation hazard” to other vessels—a claim that Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.), a Marine Corps veteran, called “patently absurd.”
“Mark my words: It may take some time, but Americans will be prosecuted for this, either as a war crime or outright murder,” Moulton told the Post.
Writer Ramez Naam said Saturday that Hegseth “telegraphed his intent to issue illegal orders the day he fired the JAGs,” when he told the press that the legal advisers had been dismissed to avoid “roadblocks to orders that are given by a commander in chief.”
The former JAGs called on Congress to investigate the new reporting on Hegseth’s order “and the American people to oppose any use of the US military that involves the intentional targeting of anyone—enemy combatants, non-combatants, or civilians—rendered hors de combat (”out of the fight“) as a result of their wounds or the destruction of the ship or aircraft carrying them.”
“We also advise our fellow citizens that orders like those described above are the kinds of ‘patently illegal orders’ all military members have a duty to disobey,” they said.
The reporting on Hegseth’s order came ahead of Trump’s latest escalation with Venezuela, with the president claiming he had ordered the airspace above and around the South American country closed—an action Venezuela’s government denounced as an “extravagant, illegal, and unjustified aggression” and a “colonialist threat.”
While the administration has repeatedly claimed its actions in Venezuela—including the boat strikes, an authorized CIA operation, and discussions about potential strikes inside the country—are aimed at dismantling drug trafficking operations there, US and international intelligence assessments have not pointed to Venezuela as a major source of drugs that enter the United States.
Meanwhile, Trump on Friday announced his plan to pardon former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who was convicted by a US jury of conspiring to traffic more than 400 tons of cocaine and who once said he wanted to “stuff the drugs right up the noses of the gringos.”
The president publicly stated in 2023 that had he won the 2020 election, he would have taken control of Venezuela’s oil reserves.
Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) said the new reporting on Hegseth’s order made even clearer that the boat bombings have been “extrajudicial killings.”
“Hegseth needs to be held accountable,” said the senator. “What’s more, Trump promised the American people no new wars but is now manufacturing this conflict and lying about his motives. This warmongering has got to stop.”
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How could the Nazis have committed the crimes they did? Why did commandants of concentration and death camps willingly – often enthusiastically – oversee mass murder? How could ordinary Germans have tolerated the removal of the Jews? In THE NAZI MIND, bestselling author Laurence Rees combines history and the latest research in psychology to help answer some of the most perplexing questions surrounding the Second World War and the Holocaust.
Ultimately, he delves into the darkness to explain how and why these people were capable of committing the worst crime in the history of the world. Rees traces the rise and eventual fall of the Nazis through the lens of ‘twelve warnings’ – from talk about ‘them’ and ‘us’ to the escalation of racism – whilst also highlighting signs to look out for in present day leaders.
Rees uses previously unpublished testimony from former Nazis and those who grew up in the Nazi system, and in-depth psychological insights including cutting edge work on obedience, authority and the brain. THE NAZI MIND is a revelatory new way of understanding how so many people committed the most appalling crime of the 20th century.
In addition to writing, Rees has also produced films about World War II for the BBC.
In New York in January 2009, Laurence was presented with the ‘Lifetime Achievement Award’ by ‘History Makers’, the worldwide congress of History and Current Affairs programme makers
In 2011 he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate (DUniv) by The Open University(UK).
(Goodreads.com)
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