“According to the suit, the agents were patrolling the streets of Washington, D.C., on June 4, 2020, in response to civil unrest sparked by the murder of George Floyd just 10 days earlier. The agents were allegedly confronted by a mob that included “hostile” individuals and young children. In an effort to de-escalate the situation, the lawsuit states, the agents took a knee.
“As a result of their tactical decision to kneel, the mass of people moved on without escalating to violence,” states the suit, which contrasts the tactic favorably against the actions of British soldiers at the 1770 Boston Massacre. “Plaintiffs did not need to discharge their firearms that day. Plaintiffs saved American lives.”
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The lawsuit alleges that almost immediately upon becoming director of the bureau, Patel began working to terminate all agents that had kneeled on June 4, 2020 — and it goes so far as to argue that the agents would not have been fired had they had the same perceived political affiliations as those who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.”
“NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch has agreed to remain atop the nation’s largest police department once mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani takes over in January.
Her decision caps months of speculation over whether the high-society scion would work for a democratic socialist mayor and creates immediate tension for the embryonic administration.”
It is not normal for the justice department or the FBI to release the internal files of an investigation. Such files have lots of speculations and falsehoods in them, and releasing them can falsely destroy people’s reputations.
“The Fifth Amendment to the Constitution says, with only a handful of exceptions: “No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury.” In practice, though, grand juries rarely fail to indict. The entire process is nonadversarial, meaning prosecutors make their case to jurors without an opposing attorney making any counterarguments, and the burden of proof is much lower than it would be at trial. As the old saw has it, a prosecutor could get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich. But failing to get indictments has been a hallmark of the second Trump administration.”
“President Donald Trump has sought to justify the summary execution of suspected drug smugglers by arguing that the United States is engaged in an “armed conflict” with criminal organizations that supply prohibited intoxicants. Yet the Trump administration also insists that U.S. forces are not engaging in “hostilities” when they blow up boats believed to be carrying illegal drugs.
Those positions are consistent with Trump’s disregard for legal limits on his use of the military to prosecute a literalized war on drugs. But they are otherwise hard to reconcile with each other, and their implications underline the immorality and lawlessness of his bloodthirsty antidrug tactics.”
“To convict Comey, prosecutors would have to persuade a jury that there is no reasonable doubt about either of those propositions. It is therefore not surprising that Erik Siebert, Halligan’s predecessor, was not keen to pursue this case, or that Trump managed to get what he wanted only by intervening at the last minute. He replaced Siebert with Halligan, a neophyte prosecutor whose main qualification was her willingness to overlook the weaknesses that had deterred her predecessor, and he publicly ordered Attorney General Pam Bondi to prosecute Comey before it was too late.
“We can’t delay any longer,” Trump told Bondi. “JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!” Five days later, Siebert delivered the indictment that Trump had demanded, although it was such a hasty job that the details of the allegations against Comey are only now coming into focus. Those details reinforce the impression that Trump was determined to get Comey one way or another, regardless of the law or the evidence.”
“”Criminals posing as US immigration officers have carried out robberies, kidnappings, and sexual assaults in several states, warns a law enforcement bulletin issued last month by the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” Dell Cameron and Caroline Haskins write at Wired. “The bulletin cites five 2025 incidents involving fake immigration officers and says criminals are using Immigration and Custom Enforcement’s heightened profile to target vulnerable communities, making it harder for Americans to distinguish between lawful officers and imposters while eroding trust in law enforcement.””
“In dozens of interviews in villages on Venezuela’s breathtaking northeastern coast, from which some of the boats departed, residents and relatives said the dead men had indeed been running drugs but were not narco-terrorists or leaders of a cartel or gang.
Most of the nine men were crewing such craft for the first or second time, making at least $500 per trip, residents and relatives said. They were laborers, a fisherman, a motorcycle taxi driver. Two were low-level career criminals. One was a well-known local crime boss who contracted out his smuggling services to traffickers.
The men lived on the Paria Peninsula, in mostly unpainted cinderblock homes that can go weeks without water service and regularly lose power for several hours a day. They awoke to panoramic views of a national park’s tropical forests, the Gulf of Paria’s shallows and the Caribbean’s sparkling sapphire waters. When the time came for their drug runs, they boarded open-hulled fishing skiffs that relied on powerful outboard motors to haul their drugs to nearby Trinidad and other islands.
The residents and relatives interviewed by the AP requested anonymity out of fear of reprisals from drug smugglers, the Venezuelan government or the Trump administration. They said they were incensed that the men were killed without due process. In the past, their boats would have been interdicted by the U.S. authorities and the crewmen charged with federal crimes, affording them a day in court.
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The Trump administration has justified the strikes by declaring drug cartels to be “ unlawful combatants ” and said the U.S. is now in an “armed conflict” with them. Trump has said each sunken boat has saved 25,000 American lives, presumably from overdoses. The boats, however, appear to have been transporting cocaine, not the far more deadly synthetic opioids that kill tens of thousands of Americans each year.
Sean Parnell, the Pentagon’s chief spokesman, said in a statement to the AP that the Defense Department has “consistently said that our intelligence did indeed confirm that the individuals involved in these drug operations were narco-terrorists, and we stand by that assessment.”
So far, the U.S. military has blown up 17 vessels, killing more than 60 people.
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After seeing clips on social media that mentioned his death, relatives broke the news to his mother, but not until after ensuring she had taken her blood pressure medication. Sánchez’s youngest son, a third grader, could not accept for days that his father was gone. He kept asking adults if his father could have survived the explosion, noting he might still be at sea.
“As of this writing, the U.S. military has killed at least 61 people.
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According to Philippe Sands, who frequently argues before international tribunals, the administration’s actions are “contrary to the basic precepts of international law.” The question, of course, is what that means as a practical matter and whether foreign governments — including the countries whose citizens have been killed in the attacks — might try to do anything about it.”
“The Pentagon is directing every state and U.S. territory to create “quick reaction forces” within their National Guards, which will be trained to respond to civil disturbances and emergencies
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The memo instructs the National Guard Bureau to train these forces in riot control tactics, rapid deployment procedures, and the use of nonlethal weapons. The federalized forces will complement the National Guard Reaction Forces, which have existed for decades to provide emergency relief
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These units are expected to fully mobilize within 24 hours of activation, with an initial contingent of roughly 200 troops that will be pulled from the guard’s unit that specializes in chemical and nuclear disaster response, ready by New Year’s Day. By April, the new quick reaction force will reach 23,500 soldiers strong
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Critics see the move as establishing a permanent, federally coordinated crowd-control infrastructure. Janessa Goldbeck, a Marine veteran and CEO of Vet Voice Foundation, told The Guardian that the memo represents “an attempt by the president to normalize a national, militarized police force.”
It’s unclear whether the new order—or any future deployments under it—would pass legal muster. Federal law generally prohibits the use of federal troops in civilian law enforcement, while the Insurrection Act allows exceptions only under narrow circumstances.”