Summary
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The Pentagon was reportedly aware there were survivors after a September attack on a boat in the Caribbean Sea, but the US military still carried out a follow-up strike, according to a new Associated Press report.
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Troubles are continuing to mount for defense secretary Pete Hegseth, who faces growing scrutiny and criticism over his handling of the September boat strike and a Pentagon report that found his use of the Signal app violated policy. Democratic senator Mark Warner has called for his resignation while Republican senator Lisa Murkowski reiterated that Hegseth does not have her support.
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Donald Trump continued his xenophobic attacks on Somali immigrants, telling reporters on Wednesday that “those Somalians should be out of here. They’ve destroyed our country” and that congresswoman Ilhan Omar should be “thrown the hell out”.
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The US Institute of Peace has been renamed in Donald Trump’s honor amid a months-long battle for control over the thinktank. The state department announced Wednesday that it had renamed the Washington DC non-profit the “Donald J Trump Institute of Peace”.
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Donald Trump pardoned entertainment executive Tim Leiweke this week, continuing his spate of pardons that has in recent days included the Texas Democrat Henry Cuellar and the ex-president of Honduras.
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Trump described the US-Russia meeting on Tuesday that included Vladimir Putin and the US president’s son-in-law as “reasonably good” despite a lack of progress. A source told the Associated Press that Trump aides planned to meet with a top Ukrainian negotiator in Miami on Thursday for additional peace talks.
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The immigration crackdown in New Orleans got under way Wednesday. The operation has sent fear through the region’s Latino community and prompted businesses to close.
Key events
Donald Trump pardoned entertainment executive Tim Leiweke this week, continuing his spate of pardons that has in recent days included the Texas Democrat Henry Cuellar and the ex-president of Honduras.
The president’s justice department had charged the co-founder of stadium developer Oak View Group earlier this year for allegedly “orchestrating a conspiracy to rig the bidding process” for an arena at a public university in Austin.
The US Institute of Peace has been renamed in Donald Trump’s honor amid a months-long battle for control over the thinktank.
The state department announced Wednesday that it had renamed the Washington DC non-profit the Donald J Trump Institute of Peace “to reflect the greatest dealmaker in our nation’s history”. Photos showed the president’s name in at least two places on the building.
The White House was quick to celebrate the change. According to a schedule released by the White House on Wednesday evening, Trump planned to participate in a “signing ceremony” with the leaders of Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo at the “Donald J Trump Institute of Peace”.
Earlier this year, the administration’s “department of government efficiency” took over the independent organization, which Congress created more than four decades ago, and ousted its board. The battle over who controls the institute, which is not a federal agency, continues to unfold in court.
Donald Trump continued his xenophobic attacks on Somali immigrants, telling reporters on Wednesday that “those Somalians should be out of here. They’ve destroyed our country” and that congresswoman Ilhan Omar should be “thrown the hell out”.
The president’s remarks came the day after he called Somali immigrants “garbage” and reports emerged that ICE agents would stage an operation in the Minneapolis-St Paul metro area primarily focused on Somalis with final deportation orders. Local officials have said the city stands with the community.
In response to Trump’s latest comments on Wednesday, Jacob Frey, the Minneapolis mayor, said: “Somali Americans are Americans. Their nation is America. And we are proud to have these Americans in Minneapolis.”
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, with the non-profit American Immigration Council, said the president’s remarks were “the kind of racism even Nixon kept to himself”.
“Just a level of sheer bigotry that would have been utterly disqualifying for higher office even a decade ago,” he said.
A Democratic representative plans to introduce articles of impeachment against Pete Hegseth as criticism mounts over the defense secretary’s handling of a September boat strike and a Pentagon report that found his use of the Signal app violated policy.
The office of Michigan representative Shri Thanedar announced that the Democrat would move forward with the articles of impeachment on Thursday, although high-ranking Democrats have suggested such an effort would likely fail to advance.
This week, a report from the defense department concluded that Hegseth risked putting troops in danger by sharing secret information in a Signal messaging chat regarding a planned airstrike in Yemen earlier this year. The defense secretary and the administration are also facing scrutiny from Republican lawmakers over strikes on alleged drug boats, including a double strike in September that killed survivors of an initial blast.
Mike Lindell, the MyPillow founder and a leading proponent of conspiracy theories that the 2020 election was stolen, could soon run for governor in Minnesota.
The 64-year-old filed paperwork to run for the office, but told the Minnesota Star Tribune he “isn’t 100% yet” and would announce his decision next week.
Lindell, one of the most prominent faces in the US election denier movement, has long promoted false claims about the 2020 election and accused voting machine companies Smartmatic and Dominion of rigging the contest against Trump. In June, he was ordered to pay $2.3m to a former Dominion employee who sued him for defamation, and in September a judge ruled he had defamed Smartmatic with his false statements.
While his legal and financial troubles have mounted in recent years, he continues to operate LindellTV. The pro-Trump network has a designated White House correspondent, former fitness influencer Cara Castronuova, who gained attention earlier this year for asking for the president’s personal “fitness plan”.
Lisa Murkowski, a Republican senator, has reiterated that the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, does not have her support after an inspector general report found he violated departmental policies.
Murkowski, who has been critical of Hegseth, told CNN today:
He had not earned my support at the beginning of the confirmation process, and I had suggested that perhaps we can and should do better … I think many are calling into question some of the actions that we’re seeing out of the secretary of defense. There’s just the story today about how his use of the Signal chat had compromised information. That’s not good for any cabinet official, and certainly not the secretary of defense.
The senator was referencing a new inspector general report that criticized Hegseth for sharing secret information in a Signal chat about a planned airstrike in Yemen – a chat that was exposed when an Atlantic journalist was added to it.
When CNN pressed Murkowski on whether Trump should fire Hegseth, she said: “As I said, I have not supported him in the beginning.”
Jeremy Barr
Bari Weiss, the editor-in-chief of CBS News, is scheduled to moderate a network town hall event with Erika Kirk, the widow of the conservative activist Charlie Kirk, the Guardian has learned.
The event will air on 13 December at 8pm and will focus on “grief, faith, politics, and more”, according to internal marketing materials.
According to an unpublicized online form soliciting potential attendees, the event will actually be recorded on 10 December at 12pm in New York City.
The town hall is a notable bit of programming for Weiss, who took on her role in October with a mandate to bring more balance – including a variety of political perspectives – to the network. When she was appointed by David Ellison, the president of CBS News’s parent company, Paramount Skydance, some journalists at the network expressed skepticism about her ability to do the job, considering her lack of experience working in television.
The Pentagon knew boat attack left survivors, AP sources say
The Pentagon was aware there were survivors after a September attack on a boat in the Caribbean Sea, but the US military still carried out a follow-up strike, according to a new Associated Press report, based on two people familiar with the matter.
The AP’s sources, who spoke anonymously as they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly, said the rationale for the second strike was that it was necessary to sink the vessel.
It is still unclear who ordered the strikes and whether Hegseth was involved, one of the AP sources said. Those questions are expected to be discuss at a classified congressional briefing on Thursday with Adm Frank Bradley, the commander whom the Trump administration says ordered the second strike, the outlet reported.
Trump administration officials have defended the follow-up strike by arguing that the complete destruction of the boat was the objective and that the Pentagon had internal legal approval to carry it out. Karoline Leavitt, White House press secretary, said in a briefing on Monday: “Admiral Bradley worked well within his authority and the law, directing the engagement to ensure the boat was destroyed, and the threat to the United States of America was eliminated.”
Our earlier coverage:
Senator Mark Warner calls for Hegseth to resign or be fired
Mark Warner, a Democratic senator, has called for Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, to resign or be fired after an inspector general report found he violated departmental policies when he shared secret information in a Signal chat about a planned airstrike in Yemen.
The Senate intelligence committee vice-chair spoke out this afternoon, saying in a statement that an “objective, evidence-based investigation by the Pentagon’s internal watchdog leaves no doubt: Secretary Hegseth endangered the lives of American pilots”.
The inspector general report relates to an infamous Signal group in March about an airstrike in Yemen against Houthi fighters, which became public when a journalist from the Atlantic was added to the chat. The chat on the messaging app also included JD Vance; the CIA director, John Ratcliffe; and the then-national security adviser, Mike Waltz, but the report did not scrutinize their conduct.
“By sharing classified operational details on an unsecure group chat on his personal phone, he created unacceptable risks to their safety and to our operational security,” Warner said in his statement. “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Pete Hegseth should resign, or the president must remove him at once.”
The report noted that the inspector general is aware of “several other Signal chats” Hegseth used for official business, “underscoring that this was not an isolated lapse”, Warner said. “It reflects a broader pattern of recklessness and poor judgment from a secretary who has repeatedly shown he is in over his head.”
Our earlier coverage of the Pentagon report:
Lauren Gambino
California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, has been on a yearlong, “forensic” search to better understand why Americans rejected his party at the ballot box last year. The reasons are varied and diverse, totalling 26 pages so far, he said recently, naming immigration, inflation, Israel and interest rates among the issues that cost Democrats the White House and Congress.
But he’s also convinced there is something more deep-seated. On Wednesday, the term-limited California governor, who has positioned himself as a potential Democratic presidential candidate in 2028, said the party needed to be “more culturally normal”.
“We have to be a little less judgmental,” he said during an extended conversation at the New York Times’s DealBook Summit. He said Democrats need to “develop and design a compelling economic vision for the future”.
“If we don’t democratize our economy, we’re not going to save democracy,” he added.
Over the course of Trump’s first year in office, Newsom has emerged as one of the president’s chief Democratic antagonists. On Wednesday, he waved off groans from the business leaders in the audience when he promoted his website selling knee pads for universities, law firms, executives and Republicans who are “bending the knee” to Trump.
Of Trump, he added: “I think he recognizes time of life is catching up with him, even though he can’t remember exactly why he went in for an MRI.”
While speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Donald Trump said he supports the release of video of a follow-up strike on a drug boat that killed the remaining survivors on 2 September.
“I don’t know what they have, but whatever they have, we’d certainly release, no problem,” the president said.
The incident, in which the US military struck an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean and then conducted a second strike to kill survivors, has heightened scrutiny and criticism of the administration and defense secretary Pete Hegseth in recent days.
Administration officials have defended the follow-up strike and argued it was intended to ensure the complete destruction of the boat. Lawmakers are investigating whether the attack constituted a war crime.
When asked whether he supported the second strike to kill survivors during the 2 September operation, Trump said: “I support the decision to knock out the boats and whoever is piloting the boats, most of them are gone, but whoever piloted those boats, they’re guilty of trying to kill people in our country.”
As the Trump administration conducts immigration crackdowns in cities across the US as part of its mass deportation agenda, California announced the launch of an online portal for the public to report potential misconduct by federal agents in the state.
Californians can use the portal to submit videos and photos of potentially unlawful conduct to help the state’s department of justice create a record and support “possible legal actions”.
“The Trump administration is engaging in a campaign of terror and fear that has left some California communities scared to go about their daily lives,” Rob Bonta, the state’s attorney general, said in a statement. “Let me be clear: Federal agents can enforce federal laws, and no one should interfere with them doing their job. But they must also do so lawfully and in compliance with the constitution.”
Trump describes US-Russia meeting as ‘reasonably good’ despite lack of progress
One day after talks with Russia and the US ended without a Ukraine peace deal, Donald Trump said on Wednesday that the meeting between the two US envoys and Vladimir Putin was “reasonably good”.
Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, met with the Russian president in Moscow on Tuesday for five hours. A Kremlin aide reported after the meeting that the parties were “neither further nor closer to resolving the crisis in Ukraine”.
On Wednesday, Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that Russians “very strongly” want to make a deal to end the war, but that it was unclear what would happen next.
“What comes out of that meeting I can’t tell you because it does take two to tango,” Trump said.
A source told the Associated Press that Trump aides planned to meet with a top Ukrainian negotiator in Miami on Thursday for additional peace talks.
