The U.S. government is justifying its lethal destruction of a boat suspected of transporting illegal drugs in the Caribbean as an attack on “narco-terrorists.”
Even if, as the U.S. claims, the 11 people killed in the Sept. 2, 2025, U.S. Naval strike were members of the Tren de Aragua gang, it would make no difference under the laws that govern the use of force by state actors.
Nor does the fact that protests from other nations in the region are unlikely, due in large part to Washington’s diplomatic and economic power – and Donald Trump’s willingness to wield it.
Protest is not what proves the law. Unlawful killing is unlawful regardless of who does it, why, or the reaction to it. And in regard to the U.S. strike on the alleged Venezuelan drug boat, the deaths were unlawful.
Domestic U.S. legal issues aside – and concerns have been raised on those grounds, too – the killings in the Caribbean violated the human right to life, an ancient principle codified today in leading human rights treaties.
Through rulings of human rights and other courts, it has been well established that determining when a killing has been arbitrary depends on whether the killing occurred in the context of peace or armed conflict.
Peace is the norm. And in times of peace, government agents are only permitted to use lethal force to save a life immediately. The United Nations’ Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials reinforce this peacetime right-to-life standard, noting “intentional lethal use of firearms may only be made when strictly unavoidable in order to protect life.”
The principle is also supported by the fact the U.S. has bilateral treaties regarding cooperation in drug interdiction. The Coast Guard has a series of successful Maritime Law Enforcement Agreements – known as Shiprider Agreements – with nations in the Caribbean and elsewhere. They commit U.S. authorities to respecting fundamental due process rights of criminal suspects. Such rights obviously do not include summary execution at sea.
Bypassing these bilateral and international treaties to dramatically blow up a ship not only violates law, but it will, I believe, further undermine trust and confidence in these or any other agreements the U.S. makes.
ACIP member critical of COVID and mRNA vaccines to lead review
Lisa
Schnirring, Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, University of Minnesota
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) vaccine
advisory group has long had a work group in place to review the latest COVID-19
vaccine science, including weighing the risks and benefits, but a newly
constituted group will launch a sweeping new review of the vaccines led by a
member who has opposed COVID vaccines.
The Brownstone Institute on August 22 reported that
Retsef Levi, PhD, one of seven members appointed to the Advisory Committee on
Immunization Practices (ACIP) by US Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has been appointed to lead the COVID vaccine review. On
August 20, the CDC posted updated terms of reference for the COVID vaccine work
group, which is lengthy. Some of the topics include impacts from repeated
boosting and mapping policies in other countries.
Levi does not have a biomedical degree or clinical medicine
experience. He has a doctorate in operations research and is a professor of
operations management at MIT Sloan School of Management. On social media, Levi has called mRNA
vaccines dangerous and said they should be removed from the market.
Scaled-back involvement of CDC staff
Levi told the Brownstone Institute that the work group
hasn’t been fully formed yet but will include fellow ACIP members Robert
Malone, MD, and James Pagano, MD. Malone is a vaccinologist and scientist who
was involved in early mRNA vaccine research and an outspoken critic of mRNA
COVID vaccines. Pagano is a retired emergency medicine physician.
The new terms of reference said CDC staff will not serve as
members of the work group but may provide administrative support or technical
support as needed and that work group leadership and others will ensure that
there is no undue influence from the CDC or any special-interest group.
News of the shift in the COVID vaccine work group is the
latest in efforts to steer ACIP toward taking on topics pushed forward by
anti-vaccine groups.
At the first
meeting of the newly appointed group in June, the leaders of the
group signaled there will be changes to the ACIP work groups and that two more
will be added: one on the cumulative effect of vaccines on the recommended CDC
vaccine schedule for children and adolescents and the other to have another
look at vaccines that have been on the market for more than 7 years, such as
the measles, mumps, rubella, and varicella (MMRV) vaccine in children younger
than 5 years.
A month later, the HHS announced that ACIP’s nonvoting
liaison groups from medical and public health organizations are barred
from participating in ACIP work groups, saying that they are
expected to be biased, based on their constituencies. Groups such as the
American Academy of Pediatrics and the American College of Obstetricians and
Gynecologists have often assisted with efficacy and safety reviews, along with
risk-benefit analyses.
Concerns about more data misrepresentation under
Kennedy
Some experts are casting doubt on whether the new COVID
vaccine review will be rigorous and sound. In making unilateral vaccine
recommendations and changes to vaccine recommendations, Kennedy and his
surrogates have cherry-picked and misrepresented data to fit their anti-vaccine
narratives.
Jake Scott, MD, an infectious disease physician and clinical
associate professor at Stanford University who has published responses to Kennedy’s
critiques on vaccines, including claims that led the HHS to cancel 22 mRNA
vaccine projects, told the New York Times,
“I'm concerned that it won't be rigorous science, that it's going to be more
statistical manipulation.”
Scott is also involved with the Vaccine Integrity Project at
the University of Minnesota's Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy
(CIDRAP), publisher of CIDRAP News.
HHS spokesman Andrew Nixon told the Times that
though individual group members may have initial personal views, “the task
force's work will be guided by data, transparency, open-mindedness and open
deliberation—not by any single opinion.”
This dismantling of the country’s terrorism and extremism prevention programs began in February 2025. That’s when staff of USAID’s Bureau of Conflict Prevention and Stabilization were put on leave.
And on July 11, the countering violent extremism team at the U.S. Institute of Peace, a nonpartisan organization established by Congress, was laid off. The fate of the institute is pending legal cases and congressional funding.
Donald Trump in February had called for non-statutory components and functions of certain government entities, including the U.S. Institute of Peace, to “be eliminated to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law.”
These cuts have drastically limited the U.S. government’s terrorism prevention work. What remains of the U.S. capability to respond to terrorism rests in its military and law enforcement, which do not work on prevention. They react to terrorist events after they happen.
As a political scientist who has worked on prevention programs for USAID, the U.S. Institute for Peace, and as an evaluator of the U.S. strategy that implemented the Global Fragility Act, I believe recent Trump administration cuts to terrorism prevention programs risk setting America’s counterterrorism work back into a reactive, military approach that has proven ineffective in reducing terrorism.
A photo posted by an editor at Reason that
appeared to show officers with multiple federal agencies loading mopeds into a
truck sparked backlash Monday as a waste of tax dollars and distraction from
higher priority issues in Washington, D.C.
Natalię Dowzicky, Reason’s managing
editor of video and podcasts, shared a photo Monday afternoon that she
identified as happening “in Dupont Circle, right outside of the @reason
office.”
In the photo, several law enforcement officers can be seen,
including one with a D.C. Metropolitan Police uniform and several with “HSI,”
or Homeland Security Investigations, a division of the U.S. Department of
Homeland Security.
In the back of a truck that appeared to have a government
logo on the door, multiple mopeds or motorized bikes could be seen.
Dowzicky posted several follow-up tweets noting that the
timing of the bike roundup was “even more ridiculous given the security that
should be at the White House for world leaders,” happening “[l]iterally while
European leaders were 6 blocks away and probably needed security of some sort,”
referring to Trump’s meeting with
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and European
leaders to discuss Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Several others, including some of Dowzicky’s colleagues
at Reason, posted reactions to the photo, with someincluding additionalcriticism of Trump deploying
federal agents in D.C.
Mediaite is pleased
to make its original content available under a Creative Commons Attribution
Non-Commercial License for non-commercial reproduction with credit to the source
site.
Elon Musk protege Edward
"Big Balls" Coristine, 19, was part of the DOGE wrecking crew. He may or not still be a federal
employee. But his mugging in Washington spurred Dear Leader
to declare a virtual state of martial law in the Capital
Donald Trump is
planning to send up to 1,000 members of the National Guard to patrol the
streets of Washington, D.C. this week in a move that critics are warning is
another step toward authoritarian rule.
In a post on his Truth Social page on Monday morning, Trump
framed the decision to deploy the National Guard as necessary to combat crime
in the nation's capital.
UPDATE: At a noontime press conference, Trump confirmed his intention to federalize law enforcement in Washington. Trump claimed there is a "public safety emergency" which is on its face, untrue.
Top of Form
Bottom of Form
"Washington, D.C. will be LIBERATED today!"
Trump claimed. "Crime, Savagery, Filth, and Scum will
DISAPPEAR. I will, MAKE OUR CAPITAL GREAT AGAIN! The days of ruthlessly
killing, or hurting, innocent people, are OVER!"
However, the president's claim that the National Guard is
needed to protect Washington, D.C. residents from purportedly unprecedented
criminal violence does not hold water given that the city has seen a dramatic
fall in crime recently. As noted by CBS
News reporter Scott MacFarlane, violent crime in Washington, D.C. has
fallen by 26% over the last year, highlighted by total homicides declining by
12% year-over-year.
In analyzing the news, some legal analysts were quick to
label Trump's latest move a power grab that was wholly unjustified by the facts
on the ground. (As if actual facts matter to Trump - ed.)
Joyce Vance, the former United States attorney for the
Northern District of Alabama, argued on
her Substack page that Trump's decision to plow ahead with deploying the
National Guard in Washington, D.C. shows he "is going full bore to push
the power of the presidency, even if it means ignoring actual statistics on
crime that contradict his stated justification for acting in the nation's
capital."
Vance added that Trump's actions in this instance also need
to be understood as part of a broad sweep by the president to seize more power
for the executive branch.
About 600 miles off the west coast of Africa, large clusters of thunderstorms begin organizing into tropical storms every hurricane season. They aren’t yet in range of Hurricane Hunter flights, so forecasters at the National Hurricane Center rely on weather satellites to peer down on these storms and beam back information about their location, structure and intensity.
The satellite data helps meteorologists create weather forecasts that keep planes and ships safe and prepare countries for a potential hurricane landfall.
Now, meteorologists are about to lose access to three of those satellites.
On June 25, 2025, the Trump administration issued a service change notice announcing that the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program, DMSP, and the Navy’s Fleet Numerical Meteorology and Oceanography Center would terminate data collection, processing and distribution of all DMSP data no later than June 30. The data termination was postponed until July 31 following a request from the head of NASA’s Earth Science Division.
How hurricanes form. NOAA
I am a meteorologist who studies lightning in hurricanes and helps train other meteorologists to monitor and forecast tropical cyclones. Here is how meteorologists use the DMSP data and why they are concerned about it going dark.
In five years, from 2020 to 2024, private firms received
$2.4 trillion in contracts from the Pentagon, approximately 54% of the
department’s discretionary spending of $4.4 trillion over that period.
During these five years, the U.S. government invested over
twice as much money in five weapons companies as in diplomacy and international
assistance.
Between 2020 and 2024, $771 billion in Pentagon contracts went to
just five firms: Lockheed Martin ($313 billion), RTX (formerly Raytheon, $145
billion), Boeing ($115 billion), General Dynamics ($116 billion), and Northrop
Grumman ($81 billion).
By comparison, the total diplomacy, development, and
humanitarian aid budget, excluding military aid, was $356 billion.
Annual U.S. military spending has grown significantly this
century, as has the portion of the budget that goes to contractors: While 54%
of the Pentagon’s average annual spending has gone to military contractors
since 2020, during the 1990s, only 41% went to contractors.
Under pressure from the Trump administration, the University
of Virginia’s president of nearly seven years, James Ryan, stepped
down, declaring that while he was committed to the university
and inclined to fight, he could not in good conscience push back just to save
his job.
The Department of Justice demanded that Ryan resign in order
to resolve an investigation into whether UVA sufficiently complied with
Trump’s orders banning
diversity, equity, and inclusion.
UVA dissolved its DEI office in March, though Trump’s
lackeys claim the university didn’t go far enough in rooting out DEI.
This is the first time the Trump regime has explicitly tied
grant dollars to the resignation of a university official. It’s unlikely to be
the last.
On June 30, the Trump regime said Harvard University violated
federal civil rights law by failing to address the harassment of Jewish
students on campus.
On July 1, the regime released $175 million in previously
frozen federal funding to the University of Pennsylvania, but only after the
school agreed to block transgender women athletes from female sports teams and
erase the records set by swimmer Lia Thomas.
Let’s be clear: DEI, antisemitism, and transgender athletics
are not the real reasons for these attacks on higher education. They’re excuses
to give the Trump regime power over America’s colleges and universities.
Why do Trump and his lackeys want this power?
They’re following Hungarian President Viktor Orban’s
playbook for creating an “illiberal democracy” — an authoritarian state
masquerading as a democracy. The playbook goes like this:
First, take over military and intelligence operations by
purging career officers and substituting ones personally loyal to you. Check.
Next, intimidate legislators by warning that if they don’t
bend to your wishes, you’ll run loyalists against them. (Make sure they also
worry about what your violent supporters could do to them and their families.)
Check.
Next, subdue the courts by ignoring or threatening to ignore
court rulings you disagree with. Check or in process.
Then focus on independent sources of information. Sue media
that publish critical stories and block their access to news conferences and
interviews. Check.
From kids playing sports to battle damage to soldiers, traumatic brain injury can ruin lives
By Juan Siliezar, Brown University
Traumatic
brain injuries are a pervasive yet elusive health problem, affecting millions
worldwide. According to recent data, an estimated 2 million people experience a
traumatic brain injury each year in the U.S.
From kids and adults on playing
fields, to soldiers and sailors on battlefields, the risk of brain injury
includes everything from mild concussion to chronic traumatic encephalopathy
(CTE) — a progressive disease often associated with football players who suffer
repeated blows to the head.
Despite alarming trends about these types of injuries, they
remain frustratingly difficult to diagnose and even harder to prevent. The
applied mechanics laboratory at Brown University’s School of Engineering is part of
an effort to develop solutions. The 10-person team — which includes
postdoctoral researchers, graduate and undergraduate students — is led by
Haneesh Kesari, an associate professor of engineering. The lab’s focus is
centered on traumatic brain injury and blunt trauma the body can endure.
.jpg)
Mediaite is pleased
to make its original content available under a Creative Commons Attribution
Non-Commercial License for non-commercial reproduction with credit to the source
site.
About 600 miles off the west coast of Africa, large clusters of thunderstorms begin organizing into tropical storms every hurricane season. They aren’t yet in range of Hurricane Hunter flights, so forecasters at the National Hurricane Center rely on weather satellites to peer down on these storms and beam back information about their location, structure and intensity.
Between 2020 and 2024, $771 billion in Pentagon contracts went to
just five firms: Lockheed Martin ($313 billion), RTX (formerly Raytheon, $145
billion), Boeing ($115 billion), General Dynamics ($116 billion), and Northrop
Grumman ($81 billion). 
