Month: December 2025

That’s from credentialed Pentagon reporter Laura Loomer. It’s pretty clear why Hegseth replaced the professional press corp with MAGA influencers.

Here’s the real story:

For nearly nine months, Trump-administration officials have defended top national-security leaders who shared information in a Signal chat about U.S. strikes in Yemen, first reported by The Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, who was inadvertently included in the group. Officials played down the severity of the breach and insisted that the information wasn’t classified.

Now the Pentagon’s top watchdog has concluded that the information Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared in the chat could have put the mission, U.S. personnel, and national security at risk had it fallen into the wrong hands. The information Hegseth shared included the precise times that fighter pilots would attack their targets, the sort of information ordinarily shared only on secure platforms. If Houthi militants had learned those details in advance, they might have been able to shoot down American planes or better defend their positions.

The Defense Department inspector general found that while the mission ultimately was not jeopardized, Hegseth violated his department’s own policies when he used Signal, a commercial messaging app that is not approved for sharing classified information. The IG’s report, scheduled to be published on Thursday, was described to us by numerous U.S. officials familiar with its findings.

The report also found that the information Hegseth shared was classified at the time he received it. (Trump administration officials had tried publicly to argue otherwise.) Battlefield information like what Hegseth shared is routinely classified because of the risk it would pose to U.S. forces were it exposed. U.S. Central Command, which is responsible for military operations in the Middle East, had classified the information about the air strike as secret, according to defense officials who spoke with us on the condition of anonymity.

But the report also found that Hegseth, as the secretary, had the authority to declassify information, Kelly noted. Less clear is why Hegseth thought it was appropriate or necessary to do so. The secretary did not give an interview to the inspector general, according to people familiar with the matter.

[…]

Remember, they also added journalist Jeffrey Goldberg to the signal chat.

The White House stands behind Pete, of course. But the consequences are obvious:

The inspector general’s conclusions seem likely to create an impression among the military rank and file that there are two sets of rules: one for the Defense Department’s presidentially appointed leadership, and one for everyone else.

Well, that’s obviously true.

JThe Bulwark’s J.V. Last has a terrific article today talking about the success of the last 40 years, liberal masochism, neoliberalism and what really motivates MAGA. I could quibble with a few points but I have to agree on the main one which is that liberals need to stop so much navel gazing and confront the fact that the Republicans have become something that’s not recognizably democratic much less economically motivated.

I’ll just share this one excerpt:

George Packer is a nice liberal and he has written a novel, The Emergency, in which a fictionalized version of the MAGA right is militaristic and dangerous, but the woke left is super annoying. His general view seems to be, See? This is how we got here! Both sides have problems!

And I agree. Both sides do have problems. For example, conservatism’s big outrage of the moment is that a teaching assistant in an undergraduate psych class at Oklahoma University gave a student a bad grade. This teaching assistant seems to have been motivated by political animus against conservatives.

That is an example of liberalism’s excess. Of “woke.”

On the other side, the president of the United States is sanctioning war crimes as part of a program of extralegal killings while he kind-of, sort-of pushes toward an unprovoked conflict with Venezuela.

The both-sides thing pretty much always follows this pattern: On one side there will be a person somewhere in private life doing something rude, or stupid, or pernicious, because they are woke. And on the other hand there will be a high government official using the awesome power of the state to cause harm.

There are progressives on Bluesky who are super annoying to Nate Silver.

Also, the Supreme Court majority has authorized masked agents of the state to detain anyone who looks Hispanic or is overheard speaking Spanish.

There are hundreds—maybe thousands—of college activists who do not like Israel. One of them swung a flag near a Jewish student at an Ivy League school and this flag may have grazed her eye. This is very bad. There should be consequences for it.

Also, in 2021 the Republican president and a coterie of conservative legal minds attempted a violent overthrow of the government.

Today the Republican party attempts to remove birthright citizenship while the president of the United States talks about stripping naturalized citizens of their citizenship and the Republicans controlling the federal government engage in Confederate fet-life while actively pushing various white nationalism memes.

As he says, to believe this false equivalence is to aid authoritarianism. It’s absurd, and it has been as long as I can recall whether it was the panic over long hair and loud music back in the 60s or 90s era “political correctness” or this inane “woke” stuff today. And too many liberals end up spending way too much time arguing amongst themselves over that stuff rather than simply dismissing it as an irrelevance in light of right wing tyranny that’s taking place all around us.

I wish they had a gift article feature but if you are thinking of subscribing to anything I recommend the Bulwark. Yes, it’s full of lapsed right wingers and sometimes that can be a bit much. (I know, I know …) But the videos and podcasts are informative and entertaining and the daily newsletters are always worth reading. And, I’m sorry, they have a perspective on things that I often find to be more perspicacious than what a lot of the liberal intelligentsia is putting out. I think they understand the right better than many traditional lefties do and they see us a little clearer as well.

Trump: "It’s a hellhole right now. And those Somalians should be out of here. They've destroyed our country. And all they do is complain, complain, complain. You have her. She’s always talking about the Constitution provides me with – go back to your own country and figure out your constitution."

— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona.bsky.social) 2025-12-03T21:31:58.996Z

Look at that tableau and this is what he’s saying:

Trump: “It’s a hellhole right now. And those Somalians should be out of here. They’ve destroyed our country. And all they do is complain, complain, complain. You have her. She’s always talking about the Constitution provides me with – go back to your own country and figure out your constitution.

What the Somalian people have done to Minnesota is not even believable. It’s not even believable. And a lot of it starts with the governor. A lot of it starts with Barack HUSSEIN Obama, because that’s when people started coming in… They want to kiss our country good night.”

Not one of those racist ghouls looks even the slightest bit uncomfortable.

Bill Browder, a man who knows a thing or two about Putin’s Russia, shares this analysis of what’s really going on with the so-called “peace plan”:

Putin Meets With Witkoff and Kushner for Nearly Five Hours and the two sides did not reach any specific compromises, an aide to President Vladimir V. Putin said, as the United States pushes a plan to end the war in Ukraine. Let me translate for you what this means.

There was never any intention from Russia to settle this conflict (even when they released their 28 point “peace plan”).

This whole thing has been a well executed intelligence operation with two very specific objectives:
1) to derail the devastating oil sanctions that Senator Lindsay Graham has tee’d up and
2) to derail the EU plan to transfer the Russian frozen assets to Ukraine. As a result of these so called “peace negotiations” both of these serious consequences have been kicked into the long grass.

Putin is happy and Trump will say “we can’t impose sanctions on Russia while we’re trying to get peace”. And he will lean heavily on the EU to not confiscate the frozen assets so they don’t “derail these productive negotiations”.

For anyone who understands what Russia cares about, this whole thing is so obvious. It’s a shame we let ourselves get played by Putin. Most importantly, the Russian terrorism against innocent Ukrainians will continue.

Is that true? Who knows? But I wouldn’t surprised. Sure Trump, Witkoff and Kushner all have dollar signs and Nobel Prizes in their eyes and maybe they’ll be able to pull this off. But there’s a good chance that Putin is playing all of them and is buying time for his own purposes. We know one thing. He does not want peace. That’s just ludicrous. I really doubt that he’s driven by the idea of going into business with Donald Trump and Jared Kushner. He could have done that without going to this much trouble.He wants Ukraine and beyond.

Trump keeps saying that he can void all of Joe Biden’s pardons.

Obviously, this is not true and it has nothing to do with whether or not Biden signed the documents with an autopen which, by the way, is perfectly legitimate. It’s because Trump simply does not have the authority to void a previous president’s pardons.

It’s too bad, really, because it would be nice if a future president could void all the pardons Trump is giving and is planning to give to his criminal family, friends, cronies and accomplices. Perhaps he should give a moment’s thought to that.

I’m sure this is just schtick. He knows he can’t do it. So why does he persist in saying it? (This is not the first time he’s made this “declaration.” ) I suspect it’s just a form of mental masturbation, giving himself a thrill by issuing royal orders against the man he loves to blame for all of his own failures. The question is why so few of his followers, especially the officials in Washington, have had even the slightest objections or concerns about having a person of such low character, psychological impairment and compromised intelligence running the country. My conclusion after all this time is that they must be exactly the same way. And that means tens of millions of our fellow Americans are as well.

Getting Trump off the stage won’t solve that problem, I’m afraid.

Babies and kids are going to die because Trump made one of his awesome “deals” with Bobby Jr to win the presidency. His deals usually end up hurting people so no surprise there.

Check it out:

Kirk Milhoan — a pediatric cardiologist and church pastor tapped by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Monday to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP — will preside over the committee later this week as it considers key changes to the national childhood vaccine schedule. He replaces Martin Kulldorff, a biostatistician who stepped down this week to take on the role of chief science officer at HHS.

At meetings on Thursday and Friday, the committee will consider a slate of changes to the CDC’s current vaccine schedule, including whether to continue its recommendation that infants receive a hepatitis B shot at birth — a vaccine that has prevented hundreds of thousands of childhood infections. Experts warn that without the birth dose, hepatitis B will infect thousands of babies again each year. Most infected infants will develop chronic infection and 1 in 4 of those are at risk to die from chronic liver disease as adults.

It wasn’t immediately clear what other changes the panel would be considering this week, or how Milhoan might affect those decisions. Milhoan told The Washington Post the committee planned to examine whether the childhood immunization schedule — and specifically aluminum salts in vaccines (a safe adjuvant that triggers an immune response) — could be causing increases in allergies and autoimmune disorders, a claim with little support that anti-vaccine activists have long touted.

[…]

“We have to say it out loud, this was a bioterror weapon,” Milhoan said of Covid in remarks before a Texas church congregation in October. “I believe what it was, it was actually a test release in Wuhan. And then there were people in Italy and there’s an exchange between Wuhan and Italy. And then it got transferred there and then it went, slowly, as respiratory viruses do, across the way. So from a medical standpoint, it was and the U.S. has to own this, because they funded it all.”

In the same remarks — first reported by Endpoints News — Milhoan compared vaccination efforts during the Covid-19 pandemic to the Holocaust and called mRNA technology “the biggest threat to humanity.” He also cautioned audience members against trusting public health experts, suggested vaccines cause miscarriages, and characterized the CDC as having blood on its hands.

This “pastor” skipped big parts of the Bible like most right wingers who call themselves Christians. He’s a nutcase, obviously. But he’s hostile to vaccines so Bobby’s putting him in charge of the vaccine recommendations.

I assume that most doctors will ignore anything coming out of the government health agencies for the duration of the regime. But the damage is going to be severe for a long time to come.

🚨 CNBC on latest jobs numbers: "A big miss on the ADP payrolls. The private payroll company saying private payrolls shed 32,000 workers in November. That's the fourth negative number in the past six months. The estimate was for plus 40,000, so the street was off on this one …… pic.twitter.com/KaQw8P36K8

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) December 3, 2025

US private employers lost 32,000 positions in November, with job creation seemingly locked in a standstill, according to the private payroll processor ADP.

The firm’s revised data showed a gain of 47,000 jobs in October, coming off losses in September and August. Job creation has essentially been flat in the second half of this year, ADP said, and small businesses in particular appeared to struggle in November.

“Hiring has been choppy of late as employers weather cautious consumers and an uncertain macroeconomic environment,” ADP chief economist Nela Richardson said in a statement. “And while November’s slowdown was broad-based, it was led by a pullback among small businesses.”

About 46% of all US employees work for small businesses, according to government data.

Sounds great!

Hegseth’s Department of Defense needed four

Marcy Wheeler (emptywheel) takes up the Pete Hegseth war crime story with this observation:

Twenty-eight paragraphs into the story that first focused attention on the murder Pete Hegseth ordered back in September (though as it notes, Nick Turse first revealed the second shot just days after the attack) is this revelation: it took four strikes to kill first the people then destroy any debris from the targeted boats.

The boat in the first strike was hit a total of four times, twice to kill the crew and twice more to sink it, four people familiar with the operation said.

It took the most powerful military in the history of the world four shots the get the job done.

The first strike meant to destroy the boat and kill the crew. The second was intended to murder survivors in the water. The last two were supposed to send remaining evidence to the bottom of the sea.

ABC News:

Hegseth also clarified his earlier comments about watching the attack live.

“As you can imagine, the Department of War, we got a lot of things to do. So I didn’t stick around for the hour and two hours, whatever, where all the sensitive site exploitation digitally occurs,” he said. “So I moved on to my next meeting. A couple of hours later, I learned that the commander had made the — which he had the complete authority to do.”

“Admiral Bradley made the correct decision to ultimately sink the boat and eliminate the threat. He sunk the boat, sunk the boat, and eliminated the threat. And it was the right call. We have his back,” Hegseth added.

I suggested yesterday that if one were to conceive a plan for reducing the world’s last superpower and guarantor of world peace to a laughingstock, it would not look any different from Trump 2.0.

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes

Wheeler writes this morning about the idiocracy those four shots reveal:

That fact lies at the core of a whole bunch of other senselessness about Trump’s feckless rule. There’s Trump’s release of Juan Orlando Hernández, a proven high-level threat, even as forces that normally prevent turbulence in the Middle East gather off of Venezuela’s oil fields. There’s the many ways, starting with the destruction of USAID and definitely including Trump’s trade war, that has added to global instability. There’s the cost involved in drone-striking small boats. There’s the neutering of legal advisors who might have saved Admiral Frank Bradley from being underbussed by the guy who promoted him. There’s the pretend press corps filled with nutballs and cranks that ensures that Whiskey Pete will never be challenged with actual knowledge.

But at root, you’ve got Pete Hegseth sitting atop that most powerful military boom boom boom boom, treating it like a children’s game.

CNN with a useful timeline of all the bullshit Trump and his minions have said abt the September 2 strike.edition.cnn.com/2025/12/03/p…

— emptywheel (@emptywheel.bsky.social) 2025-12-03T14:45:44.632Z

For a handy timeline of conflicting statements about the incident, CNN has you covered.

* * * * *

Is this a private fight, or can anyone join?

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More emotional content, please

Democrat Aftyn Behn did not upset Republican Matt Van Epps in Tennessee’s 7th district special election on Tuesday. That does not mean Republicans won’t be upset. Donald Trump won the deep-red district in 2024 by 22 points. Epps held it by only nine even after his party and its leaders spent and campaigned heavily. A 13-point slide.

Ed Kilgore writes that Democrats weighed in for Behn as well:

Democrats heavily backed Behn financially as well. What distinguished this progressive activist from the usual red-district Democrat is that she didn’t have the usual protective coloration of cultural traditionalism or ideological moderation. She campaigned in this southern-fried district with AOC and DNC chairman Ken Martin, and Kamala Harris made her first post-2024 campaign appearance at a GOTV event aimed at helping the candidate. Even Al Gore pitched in. But reputation aside, Behn ran on the same affordability themes that progressive and centrists alike have been embracing, in yet another trial heat for the 2026 midterms. She probably benefited somewhat from frigid election day weather; Democrats were more likely than Republicans to vote early. Overall turnout was exceptionally high for an off-year special election.

“But the relatively tight margin in such a deep-red district nonetheless represents a warning shot about the party’s vulnerabilities heading into the 2026 midterm elections,” The New York Times observes regarding a district drawn to elect Republicans.

Nate Cohn writes:

A 13-point shift may seem extraordinary or jaw-dropping. For Republicans this year, it’s simply the norm. Heading into Tuesday night, Republicans had underperformed Mr. Trump’s showing by an average of 13 points across dozens of state and federal special elections. And while the Republican Party’s problem in special elections is particularly pronounced — in part because Democrats enjoy a major advantage among the most motivated voters — this basic story isn’t new. It has played out for every president over the last two decades.

Cohn observes that the winning presidential candidate’s party has gone on to lose “each of the next five midterms — and four of the next five presidential elections.” Trump’s slide, Cohn believes, is because “like other recent presidents” he has pushed “too far in pursuit of an ideological agenda.” But considering Barack Obama and Joe Biden spent much of their presidencies cleaning up economic messes left over from the prior Republican administrations, it’s not clear what immoderate ideologoical agendas Cohn sees behind Democratic losses during their midterms.

The always upbeat Simon Rosenberg sees the narrowed gap in TN-07 as portending good things for Democrats in 2026:

It is clear now that the national playing field has tilted significantly towards the Dems. We’ve seen it in special elections across the country this year; in the blowout November elections; and now tonight in deep red TN-7. There are 40 House seats held by Republicans who won by 12 points or less, and a double digit point shift in the national map would make the AK, IA, OH and TX Senate races competitive and put the Senate in play.

2026 is clearly shaping up to be a year of opportunity for us and for the pro-democracy movement.

the avg special swing for special elections in the 2026 cycle is 13 points to the left, according to The Downballot — so we are seeing an above average shift here in TN-07, even with Trump's late intervention docs.google.com/spreadsheets…

— G Elliott Morris (@gelliottmorris.com) 2025-12-03T01:54:05.410Z

Affordability continues to be a buzzword candidates and the press use as shorthand for the anxiety Americans feel in an economy wracked by a widening gulf between the elite and the rest. I wish Democrats would drop it. “Affordability” speaks to people’s heads when what people feel is more important. The term lacks — What was it Bruce Lee said to his student in Enter the Dragon? — emotional content.

“Don’t think. FEEL! It is like a finger pointing away to the moon.”

Let Trump rail about affordability. It means he’s losing.

Trump: "There's this fake narrative that the Democrats talk about — 'affordability.' They just say the word. It doesn't mean anything to anybody. They just say it. 'Affordability.' I inherited the worst inflation in history … the word 'affordability' is a con job by the Democrats"

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2025-12-02T16:55:47.907Z

* * * * *

Is this a private fight, or can anyone join?

No King’s One Million Rising movement 
50501 
May Day Strong
Freedom Over Fascism Toolkit
The Resistance Lab
Choose Democracy
Indivisible: A Guide to Democracy on the Brink 
You Have Power
Chop Wood, Carry Water
Thirty lonely but beautiful actions
Attending a Protest Surveillance Self-Defense

Well, except for all the crimes they’re covering up:

President Donald Trump argued Tuesday that former special counsel Jack Smith’s final report — chronicling the criminal case against him for hoarding classified documents at Mar-a-Lago — should never be made public.

Trump urged U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon in a new court filing to extend her 11-month-old order blocking the Justice Department from releasing the full report, which Smith submitted shortly before Trump’s second inauguration.

Anything less, his attorney Kendra Wharton wrote, would “perpetuate Jack Smith’s unlawful criminal investigations and proceedings.”

Trump’s request is a break from the Justice Department’s handling of all special counsel reports in recent decades. Typically, those reports are provided to Congress and made public, even when they have included damaging findings about the incumbent administration. DOJ released another report Smith compiled detailing his findings about Trump’s bid to subvert the 2020 election shortly before President Joe Biden left office.

Trump’s effort could complicate efforts by congressional Republicans to grill Smith about the substance of his investigation. Cannon’s order bars the Justice Department from disseminating the results of its investigation to outsiders, including Congress. While Smith’s final classified documents report remains under seal, he may not have authority to discuss its findings with lawmakers.

I’m quite confident that Cannon will keep those files under wraps. She has Supreme Court stars in her eyes.

This is yet another cover-up, just like Epstein. Trump knows what he did and he knows that if people are reminded of the details they will see him for the criminal he is. I don’t know if they can just destroy the files but if they can they will. I’ll be shocked if we ever see this report.