Challenging Trump

Jumping right back in, there seems to be a lot of news today.

Members of both parties, Democrats and Republicans, “raised alarms” today after a report said that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth had issued an extra strike order after a boat strike in September. The Washington Post said the report claims Hegseth, after ordering a hit on a boat allegedly carrying drugs, issued a second order to “kill everbody.” Apparently two men were hanging off the side of the boat after the first strike. If this is true, this could constitute a war crime.

Former judge advocate generals (JAGs), military lawyers, in the Former JAGs Working Group declared unanimously that it “considers both the giving and the execution of these orders, if true, to constitute war crimes, murder, or both,” and called for “anyone who issues or follows such orders [to] be prosecuted for war crimes, murder, or both.”

In Heather Cox Richardson’s post over the weekend, she wrote that the Former JAGs Working Group was organized in February 2025 after Hegseth purged JAGs from the Army and Air Force, thus systematically dismantling the military’s legal guardrails. “Had those guardrails been in place,” they wrote, “we are confident they would have prevented these crimes.”

Talking Points Memo noted: “This is genuinely big news…. Republicans are challenging Trump now because he seems weak. No one wants to back a weak horse.”

Trump’s GOP is splintering. On ABC’s This Week yesterday discussing Ukraine, Representative Don Bacon (R-NE), said, “Putin’s the invader, he’s the dictator, he’s murdered all his opponents. But I just don’t see that moral clarity coming from the White House. We saw that Wall Street Journal article yesterday that many people around the president are hoping to make billions of dollars—these are all billionaires in their own right—from…Russia, if they get a favorable agreement with Ukraine. That alarms me tremendously. I want to see America being the leader of the free world, standing up for what’s right, not for who can make a buck…. I don’t want to see a foreign policy based on greed. I want to see it based on doing the right thing.”

Today, Heather Cox Richardson wrote: The Trump administration is replacing American democracy with a kleptocracy, a system of corruption in which a network of ruling elites use the institutions of government to steal public assets for their own private gain. It permits virtually unlimited theft while the head of state provides cover for his cronies through pardons and the uneven application of the law.

Trump and his family are attempting to benefit financially from their positions of power in the US government. My guess is that MAGA is breaking into two. Trump will always have his hard core supporters, those who just believe that everything he does is right. Their beliefs are fueled by an anger, an extreme hatred towards Democrats and liberals, and not by information. The other half of MAGA are people who voted for Trump and supported him because they believed he would work for them, lowering prices and helping ordinary Americans. This group is seeing the glaring disparity between what Trump said he would do and what he is currently doing. They see all the gold, the huge ballroom, the prices rising, and are beginning to turn against him.

Trump plans to pardon former Honduran president, Juan Orlando Hernández, who last year, was convicted in NY on drug trafficking and weapons charges and sentenced to 45 years in prison. Prosecutors said Mr. Hernández was key to a scheme that lasted more than 20 years and brought more than 500 tons of cocaine into the United States. This has to be a pardon for money.

Another blow to Trump: a federal appeals court said today that his attorney Alina Habba had been serving unlawfully as the U.S. attorney in New Jersey, most likely setting up a showdown at the Supreme Court.

And still, the Epstein files have not been released.

I hope your Monday has been a good one. Thanks for being here, I’ll see you tomorrow!