Jeffries calls for the release of ‘double tap’ strike video on suspected drug vessel
Speaking to reporters today, House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries said that the “full video” of the “double tap” strike on a suspected drug-trafficking boat off the coast of Venezuela should be released.
The top Democrat said that the American people should “have an opportunity to determine for themselves whether that strike killing people who were shipwrecked and, by all accounts, were not presenting any threat to American military personnel, whether that kind of seemingly extrajudicial killing is consistent with American values”.
The 2 September strike has left defense secretary Pete Hegseth embattled, with several congressional lawmakers calling for further investigation into the series of events that killed the remaining survivors on the vessel.
Jeffries added that if the administration thinks that their “actions are justifiable, what are they hiding from the American people?”
Key events
Treasury secretary Scott Bessent spoke with Ukrainian prime minister Yulia Svyrydenko about Russian oil sanctions, Bessent said in a social media post today.
“I highlighted President Trump’s commitment to securing a lasting peace in Ukraine and discussed Treasury’s sanctions on Russia’s top oil giants, Lukoil and Rosneft,” Bessent said.
He added that the pair also discussed “Ukraine’s reform and anti-corruption agenda”, which made headlines in recent weeks after Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s chief of staff resigned following corruption allegations.
House speaker Mike Johnson announced an effort to rally the leaders of legislatures around the world to nominate Donald Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2026, in collaboration with Amir Ohana, the Speaker of the Israeli Knesset.
Johnson and Ohana had previously announced the effort in October, and signed a letter launching it today. Both credited Trump for his work to release the remaining 7 October hostages.
“While the world has aspired to peace in the Middle East for generations, President Trump has now created that path and forced the release of the last of the living hostages who endured two long years in Hamas captivity,” Johnson said in a statement.
Congressman Marc Veasey, a Democrat from Texas, will not seek reelection after the supreme court approved the state’s plan to redraw its congressional map.
Veasey, who has served seven-terms in congress, says he’ll run for a local judgeship in Fort Worth instead.
“Let me be clear: I’m not stepping back from the fight. I’m stepping into a new one,” he said in a statement.
Here’s more of our coverage of Texas’s effort to redraw its congressional map to add five Republican-friendly districts:
Jeffries also said that representative Jasmine Crockett was going to be a “formidable candidate” for the US Senate, after the Texas Democrat announced her bid on Monday.
Jeffries did not confirm whether he would endorse the congresswoman, who is set to face off against state legislator James Talarico in a competitive primary.
“We’re still in the process of working through the House battlefield, so I’ve got no visibility into what we might do at any point into the future relative to the Senate at the moment,” Jeffries said today. “We’ll leave that to Chuck Schumer and the crew over there.”
Jeffries calls for the release of ‘double tap’ strike video on suspected drug vessel
Speaking to reporters today, House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries said that the “full video” of the “double tap” strike on a suspected drug-trafficking boat off the coast of Venezuela should be released.
The top Democrat said that the American people should “have an opportunity to determine for themselves whether that strike killing people who were shipwrecked and, by all accounts, were not presenting any threat to American military personnel, whether that kind of seemingly extrajudicial killing is consistent with American values”.
The 2 September strike has left defense secretary Pete Hegseth embattled, with several congressional lawmakers calling for further investigation into the series of events that killed the remaining survivors on the vessel.
Jeffries added that if the administration thinks that their “actions are justifiable, what are they hiding from the American people?”
Here’s a recap of the day so far
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More than 200 former employees in the justice department’s civil rights division signed a letter released on Tuesday decrying the “near destruction” of the agency that is supposed to enforce America’s civil rights laws. They accused political leadership of waging a campaign to purge career experts from its ranks. There was a mass exodus of lawyers earlier this year after political appointees removed career managers, detailed employees to menial work, unilaterally dropped cases, and made it clear the division’s focus would be enforcing Donald Trump’s priorities. The letter goes on to detail how the division has abandoned civil rights enforcement, including dismissing key cases involving voting rights, sexual abuse of unaccompanied migrant children, and multiple consent decrees involving police departments across the country.
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A federal judge in New York has granted the justice department’s request to unseal grand jury documents in the sex-trafficking case against Ghislaine Maxwell – the companion and accomplice of the late sex-offender Jeffrey Epstein. It comes after the passage of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which Donald Trump signed last month. In his order today, judge Paul A Engelmayer cited the recent legislation and also granted the DoJ’s request to release discovery material – which could comprise thousands of documents and exhibits.
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Bill Cassidy, the Republican who chairs the Senate health committee, pushed back against the recent decision from the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) to limit the hepatitis B vaccine. The Louisiana lawmaker and former hepatologist also criticized some of the panel’s logic in citing European countries who also don’t recommend a birth dose of the hepatitis B vaccine. “When those who oppose this recommendation say, ‘well, the Europeans don’t do it’, that is how that is such a selective bias presentation information,” Cassidy said today at a Politico event on health care affordability. “We should be informed by medical science and empiricism, not by personal prejudice. And right now with a ACIP, I see far more being informed by a personal prejudice.”
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In his interview with Politico published on Tuesday morning, Trump said that the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, should testify under oath before Congress about a “double tap” strike on an alleged drug ferrying boat “if he wants”. He added: “I don’t care. I would say do it if you want, Pete.” Trump also said he had seen the video of the strikes. Asked if he thought the second strike was necessary, he said “it looked like they were trying to turn back over the boat, but I don’t get involved in that”.
Garcia says judge’s decision to release Ghislaine Maxwell grand jury records is a ‘victory for transparency’
The top Democrat on the House oversight committee, Robert Garcia, said that a federal judge’s decision to allow the justice department to unseal the grand jury documents in Ghislaine Maxwell’s sex-trafficking case is a “victory for transparency” in the Epstein investigation.
“We must continue fighting to deliver justice for survivors. Release the files, NOW,” Garcia added in a statement, referring to the deadline the Department of Justice has to release all documents related to Epstein in a searchable format.
A reminder that the committee is conducting a concurrent investigation into the Epstein case. Oversight Democrats have released several bundles of documents, including emails from Jeffrey Epstein in which he wrote that Donald Trump “knew about the girls”.
Sam Levine
Organizers challenging Missouri’s gerrymandered congressional map say they turned in enough signatures on tuesday to block the map from going into effect and to force a referendum on the map next year.
People not Politicians, the main organization behind the effort, said they submitted more than 300,000 signatures to the secretary of state’s office, nearly triple the number required to block the map from going into effect. Missouri’s Republican secretary of state now needs to review the signatures.
Missouri Republicans approved a new map in September that eliminates the Kansas City-based district of Emanuel Cleaver, a Democrat, and replaces it with a Republican one. It’s part of a nationwide push by Donald Trump to redraw congressional districts across the country to redraw Republican-friendly districts ahead of next year’s midterm elections, when Republicans are expected to lose their razor-thin majority in Congress.
Texas and North Carolina have also redrawn districts to be more GOP-friendly, while California has countered with a new map that adds as many as five Democratic districts.
Top Republican on Senate health committee slams decision from advisory panel on hepatitis B vaccine
Bill Cassidy, the Republican who chairs the Senate health committee, pushed back against the recent decision from the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) to limit the hepatitis B vaccine.
On Friday, the panel voted to recommend that parents of infants whose mothers test negative for hepatitis should decide when – or if – their child should receive the vaccine series, in consultation with a healthcare professional. A reminder that health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr replaced the panel with a hand-picked roster of new advisors, several of whom have expressed vaccine skepticism.
“If you’re infected at birth, you have a 95% chance of becoming a chronic carrier,” said Cassidy, a former hepatologist. “If you’re vaccinated at birth, then you’ve got a little bit more than 0% chance of becoming a chronic carrier – an incredibly effective intervention.”
The Louisiana lawmaker also criticized some of the panel’s logic in citing European countries who also don’t recommend a birth dose of the hepatitis B vaccine. “When those who oppose this recommendation say, ‘well, the Europeans don’t do it’, that is how that is such a selective bias presentation information,” Cassidy said today at a Politico event on health care affordability. “We should be informed by medical science and empiricism, not by personal prejudice. And right now with a ACIP, I see far more being informed by a personal prejudice.”
In the early hours of Tuesday morning, Donald Trump took to Truth Social to extol the national security benefits of his sweeping tariffs. “We have become the financially strongest Country, by far, anywhere in the World,” he wrote. “Only dark and sinister forces would want to see that end!!!”
A federal judge has allowed a Tufts University student from Turkey to resume research and teaching while she deals with the consequences of having her visa revoked by the Trump administration, leading to six weeks of detention.
Rümeysa Öztürk, a PhD student studying children’s relationship to social media, was among the first people arrested as the Trump administration began targeting foreign-born students and activists involved in pro-Palestinian advocacy. She had co-authored an op-ed criticizing her university’s response to Israel and the war in Gaza. Immigration enforcement officers took her away in an unmarked vehicle, in an encounter caught on video in March outside her Somerville residence.
Öztürk has been out of a Louisiana immigrant detention center since May and back on the Tufts campus. But she has been unable to teach or participate in research as part of her studies because of the termination of her record in the government’s database of foreign students studying temporarily in the US.
In her ruling on Monday, chief US district judge Denise J Casper wrote that Öztürk was likely to succeed on claims that the termination was “arbitrary and capricious, contrary to law and in violation of the First Amendment”.
Edward Helmore
A police investigation has found that Nancy Mace, the South Carolina Republican congresswoman, turned a “minor miscommunication” by police into a “spectacle” when she involved herself in a heated confrontation with staff at Charleston’s airport in late October.
According to an internal investigation by the Charleston airport police department and obtained by the Washington Post, Mace berated officers and Transportation Security Administration ( TSA) personnel on 30 October with profanity and insults, leaving facility employees “visibly upset”.
The investigative report, dated 12 November, said there had been some confusion over whether the congresswoman would arrive at the airport in a white BMW when she in fact arrived in a silver model. That led to a delay in meeting up with an escort to take her through the security line at the airport.
The airport police chief, James Woods, wrote in the report that the Charleston airport holds “a certain level of responsibility” for a “minor miscommunication” about the color of the vehicle that Mace came in, as the Post noted. But the congresswoman’s “continued failure to follow established procedures at the checkpoint” escalated the situation into “a spectacle”.
The investigation found Mace told officers “I’m sick of your shit.” She also reportedly said that officers were “fucking idiots” and “fucking incompetent” – and yelled that she was a “fucking representative” in the US House.
An airport employee described Mace’s tone as “very nasty, very rude” and “very unbecoming if she’s representing us” as a member of Congress. One described feeling “downtrodden”.
However, Mace’s office told the Post that the report was “a full exoneration” of the congresswoman – who is running for governor of South Carolina in 2026.
Here’s the full story:
Trump had two mortgages he claimed were primary dwellings, records show
Joseph Gedeon
Donald Trump signed mortgage documents in the 1990s claiming two separate Florida properties would each serve as his principal residence – the same thing his administration is calling “mortgage fraud” when done by political rivals, records show.
ProPublica unearthed documents demonstrating that within seven weeks of each other in late 1993 and early 1994, the president obtained loans for neighboring Palm Beach homes, pledging each would be his primary dwelling. Instead of living in them, though, he rented both out as investment properties.
There is no suggestion that the activity is or was illegal, and proving intent is key in fraud cases. Yet Trump has called the same behavior – having two primary dwelling mortgages – “deceitful and potentially criminal” in relation to mortgage fraud charges against the Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook. The Trump administration is bringing several similar cases against the New York attorney general, Letitia James, the senator Adam Schiff and the congressman Eric Swalwell.
James was charged in October over a Virginia property she designated as a second home before renting out. Cook was fired after signing two primary residence mortgages weeks apart – just as Trump did.
The Trump loans in question in 1993 and 1994 financed two Woodbridge Road properties adjacent to Mar-a-Lago, for $525,000 and $1.2m. Each mortgage contained standard occupancy requirements mandating Trump make the property his principal residence within 60 days and live there at least one year.
Records place Trump at his Manhattan residence, Trump Tower, throughout the period. He would not officially change his permanent residence to Florida until 2019. Newspaper advertisements from the mid-1990s seen by ProPublica confirm both homes were marketed as rentals, with the larger seven-bedroom property listed at $3,000 a day in 1997.
Both mortgages have since been paid off, the outlet said, and any potential violations fall well outside the statute of limitations for mortgage fraud.
ProPublica said Trump hung up when a reporter asked whether his Florida mortgages resembled those he has accused others of fraud over.
Democrats introduce bill to prevent Trump from appearing on ceremonial one-dollar coin
Two Senate Democrats – Jeff Merkley of Oregon and Nevada’s Catherine Cortez Masto – introduced new legislation today that would to prevent any living or sitting US president from being featured on any currency.
They’re announcing the bill after the US mint released draft designs for a commemorative coin ahead of the 250th anniversary of America’s founding. The drawings featured three coins with Donald Trump’s face on the obverse.
“President Trump’s self-celebrating maneuvers are authoritarian actions worthy of dictators like North Korea’s Kim Jong-un, not the United States of America,” Merkley said.
The Change Corruption Act is also co-sponsored by Democratic senators Ron Wyden and Richard Blumenthal. In a statement, the latter said that the “rejection of monarchy” means that the US has “never allowed the image of a living or sitting president to be used on circulating currency”.
As Senate prepares to vote on Obamacare subsidies, Republicans are divided on path forward
On Thursday, the Senate will hold their much-anticipated vote on whether to extend Affordable Care Act (ACA) premium tax credits, which are set to lapse at the end of this year. It’s part of the guarantee that congressional Republicans gave when a small group of Democrats agreed to end the record-breaking government shutdown, and pass a stopgap spending bill.
Now, Democrats are putting forward a plan that extends the subsidies for three years. It’s destined to fail in the GOP-controlled Senate. But what’s unclear is what alternative the majority are willing to back.
Leading the pack seems to be the legislation put forward by Republican senators Bill Cassidy, the former physician who chairs the health committee, and Mike Crapo – the Idaho lawmaker who serves as the chair of the Senate budget committee. Their offering is, in many ways, in line with what Donald Trump has pushed for. It would deposit funds into health savings accounts (HSAs) for those enrolled in bronze or catastrophic plans on the Obamacare exchanges.
“Democrats’ temporary Covid credits do not lower costs or premiums. They direct billions of dollars to insurance companies,” the GOP lawmakers argue. “Republicans are proposing to empower patients to control their own health care.”
Meanwhile, Ohio senator Bernie Moreno and Maine’s five-term senior senator Susan Collins have unveiled their own proposal to extend ACA subsidies for two years, while implementing an income cap for households whose income exceeds $200,000, and eliminating zero-premium plans.
Supreme court hears arguments in case challenging campaign finance limitations from political parties
Happening now at the supreme court, arguments in a case that challenges the limits on campaign finance contributions from party committees.
In National Republican Senatorial Committee v Federal Election Commission, the challengers (in this case the Senate committee focused on electing GOP members to Congress) argue that the cap on coordinated spending –violates the first amendment, and a party’s ability to sufficiently support a candidate. Depending on the scope of the decision, if the challengers are successful, a party group could spend an unlimited amount of money taking out ads during an election.
Defending the FEC today in court is the high-profile Democratic election lawyer Marc Elias, with support from the Democratic National Committee (DNC).
Former justice department employees sound alarm over ‘near destruction’ of civil rights division
Sam Levine
More than 200 former employees in the justice department’s civil rights division signed a letter released on Tuesday decrying the “near destruction” of the agency that is supposed to enforce America’s civil rights laws and accused political leadership of waging a campaign to purge career experts from its ranks.
There was a mass exodus of lawyers earlier this year after political appointees removed career managers, detailed employees to menial work unilaterally dropped cases, and made it clear the division’s focus would be enforcing Donald Trump’s priorities. By 1 May of this year, the department had lost about 70% of its attorneys – a staggering number. The letter was released on Tuesday to commemorate the 68th anniversary of the founding of the civil rights division.
Harmeet Dhillon, a Trump ally who leads the civil rights division, has cheered the departures of career employees, describing them as activists who did not want to do the work that was asked of them. “That could not be further from the truth. We left because this Administration turned the Division’s core mission upside down, largely abandoning its duty to protect civil rights,” the letter says. “Having no use for the expertise of career staff, the Administration launched a coordinated effort to drive us out.”
The letter goes on to detail how the division has abandoned civil rights enforcement, including dismissing key cases involving voting rights, sexual abuse of unaccompanied migrant children, and multiple consent decrees involving police departments across the country. Dhillon also encouraged lawyers to leave and accept a paid leave offer and threatened to lay employees off if they did not, the letter says. Justice department officials appeared caught off guard by how many people were leaving earlier this year and quietly asked employees to reconsider leaving.
“America deserves better,” the letter says. “The future of the Civil Rights Division is in jeopardy, and with it, the rights it protects. We hope that one day we can return the Division to its righteous work. Until then, we will continue to defend those rights and the Constitution wherever we find ourselves. We call on all Americans to join us. Demand that the Division enforce our civil rights laws and defend the Constitution’s promise of equal justice for all.”
