A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
Abu Ghraib Meets Tonkin Gulf
The startling U.S. attack on an alleged drug-running boat in international waters off Venezuela is precisely the kind of no-holds-barred combat that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was clearing the way for when he began firing military lawyers as soon as he settled into his E-ring office.
As bad as some of the U.S. infractions were during the Global War on Terror — and I can scarcely believe I’m writing this — there still remained an understanding among the Dick Cheneys of the world that they needed to come up with at least a thread of an argument for what legal authority they were relying on, however pretextual, unpersuasive, and unavailing it might have been.
This astonishing sentence from the NYT suggests that President Trump — fully immunized for his official acts by the Roberts Court — has dispensed with even putting on a show of legally justifying this week’s attack: “Pentagon officials were still working Wednesday on what legal authority they would tell the public was used to back up the extraordinary strike in international waters.”
Shoot first, figure out the legal cover later.
The Trump administration couldn’t even get its facts straight on the story it was telling publicly, with Trump claiming the boat was headed to the United States and Secretary of State Marco Rubio initially claiming it was headed to Trinidad. Rubio later brought his public statements in line with Trump’s.
At this point, it would be credulous to accept without further proof the administration’s claims that this was a drug-running vessel — proof will be hard to provide since the boat was blown up and its 11 occupants were killed.
Of particular note is Trump’s unsupported claim those targeted in the killing were Tren de Aragua gang members. Trump has designated TdA as a terrorist organization and used that justification to invoke the Alien Enemies Act for the notorious removals of Venezuelan nationals, many of whom it’s now clear were not TdA members. In an ironic twist, the attack on the boat came the same week that the conservative 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that TdA was not invading the United States for Alien Enemies Act purposes, making Trump’s invocation of the wartime statute unlawful.
Assuming it was a drug boat, former State Department lawyer Brian Finucane surveys the legal landscape for a lethal attack on alleged drug traffickers on the high seas. “The use of lethal force in this attack appears gratuitous and the administration has not explained why law enforcement tools were inadequate to address the situation,” he writes.
Another difference from the GWOT is that when the line was crossed — Abu Ghraib comes to mind — there was an official effort to minimize, dismiss, and distance the administration from the incident. While that avoided real accountability, it suggested at the barest minimum a recognition that a situation was problematic, if not wrong. Not now. The president himself, along with his secretaries of defense and state, are celebrating this attack.
Looming over all of this are the larger geopolitical tensions that Trump is actively stoking. On his orders, a massive naval deployment to the region was already underway, escalating tensions with Venezuela. Trump’s saber-rattling off its coast while putting a $50 million bounty on the head of President Nicolás Maduro is the kind of flex that echoes decades of past U.S. intervention in Latin America.
As chilling as the attack was, we may come to see it as a Tonkin Gulf-style precursor to a larger effort to destabilize Venezuela with unpredictable and even more dire consequences.
Comment of the Day
From a MM reader:
Murdering people in a boat. Was thinking about that this am. We spent WEEKS in a course in law school taught by Jack Goldsmith on whether you could even place prisoners at Guantanamo and give them military trials. This guy is just out here letting some violent hopped-up-on-testosterone idiots murder people in broad daylight like it’s a fucking video game. It makes me ill.
Notorious Louisiana Prison Now Housing Migrant Detainees
Angola, the former Louisiana plantation that became one of the most brutal penitentiaries in the country, is now housing migrant detainees as part of President Trump’s mass deportation scheme. Attorney General Pam Bondi and DHS Secretary Kristi Noem personally visited the new facility, which officials are already turning into a meme: “Louisiana Lockup.”
The 2020 Election Rolls on and Jan. 6 Never Ends
In the background, the creation of a revisionist history of the 2020 election that can be used for further retaliation continues unabated. Just this week:
- House Republicans established a new subcommittee helmed by Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-GA) to reinvestigate the Jan. 6 attack.
- The Trump DOJ has been seeking access to voting machines in Missouri that were used during the 2020 election. At least two county clerks have been contacted by DOJ official Andrew McCoy “Mac” Warner, a former West Virginia secretary of state, according to a memo shared with election officials and first obtained by the Missouri Independent via a public records request.
- Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) is headlining a “gun rights” event with a high-profile Jan. 6 rioter, TPM’s Hunter Walker reports.
Footnote of the Day
In her ruling that the Trump administration’s attack on Harvard is unconstitutional, U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs returned fire from the Supreme Court on behalf of all federal judges:
Quote of the Day
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