Here’s the air-raid situation in Ukraine tonight. Note the icons of cruise missile-carrying planes in the air to the east, as well as missile-capable ships in the Black Sea. The white circles are Russian drones currently in the sky. All indications are that this will be an hours-long attack…

This is the big story: 1) The President ordered a killing campaign outside of the law. 2) He got OLC to make up a fake war to justify killing real people. 3) And he got the military to carry out the killings. Purporting to justify those killings is aiding in covering up that plain reality 👇 2/2

Trump keeps picking unqualified lawyers to act as top prosecutors in his revenge campaign. Increasingly, judges are ruling this scheme illegal.

helps to think about the details like any regular crime you'd see on one of the 800 cop shows that run on TV constantly: these guys committed one set of murders, thought it over, and then decided to kill the witnesses as part of the coverup. mention of drugs is just jingling keys at this point

Thread on the huge shift in US policy towards Russia visible in the new National Security Strategy - the biggest change since the collapse of the USSR. 🧵

It's not just the lack of mentions of Russia that's striking, it's the fact Russia isn't ever mentioned as an adversary or threat. This is the first US National Security Strategy not to identify Russia as a threat since 2010, at the height of Obama's Reset policy.

oh my god, he admit it x.com/Acyn/status/...

Every day as news breaks of yet another corrupt pardon by Trump, we become inured. But when @tracinski.bsky.social put it all together @theunpopulist.net, the picture is jaw dropping. My alternative head was "There Are No Words to Describe Trump's Corrupt Pardons." open.substack.com/pub/theunpop...

The Republican hacks on SCOTUS start with whatever ruling will help their fellow Republican partisans and lazily work backwards from there, barely offering an excuse for their egregious hackery. John Roberts keeps complaining no one respects them. Yeah, because we’re actually paying attention.

Kevin Hassett on Trump: "He's the best communicator I've ever seen ... he's solving it seems all the world's problems, stopping wars and everything else"

Europeans are waking up this morning to find the new US National Security Strategy (quietly) released. And what it has to say on Europe could not be clearer. On the „stark prospect of civilizations erasure“ for example. 👇

Whole document is here. You don’t need your morning coffee afterwards. www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/u...

🧵

Simply amazing that the Supreme Court declared an end to legal race discrimination in the affirmative action case two years ago and now allows overt racism in both immigration arrests and redistricting. Using race to help minorities? Bad. Using it to discriminate against them? Very, very good.

Kingsley: “Our intelligence absolutely confirms who these people are." @houlahan.house.gov: “If there is intelligence that ‘absolutely confirms’ this — present it." Kingsley: 🦗🦗🦗(those are crickets) theintercept.com/2025/12/04/b...

WSJ EDITORIAL BOARD: “.. Maybe it’s time to conclude that Mr. Putin doesn’t want peace. He wants Ukraine.” @wsj.com www.wsj.com/opinion/vlad...

NEWS --> Tons of fresh detail on what video of the strike shows: Rep Adam Smith says two men are sitting on capsized boat, drugs aren't visible. Rationale officials gave for killing is they *may* have been able to keep trafficking. "It's bad," Smith says. Read here: newrepublic.com/article/2039...

I wrote a bit for McSweeney's about Isaac Chotiner interviewing Santa Claus. Just a little something for the holiday season. Enjoy!

I cannot imagine the level of moral bankruptcy to describe the actions of people whose boat has just been hit by a missile from nowhere (this was the FIRST such strike) and who were most likely making a desperate attempt not to drown in the ocean as trying to "stay in the fight."

Rand Paul tells me that he wants the full video of the Venezuelan boat strike released. “And I think if the public sees images of people clinging to boat debris and being blown up, I think that there is a chance that finally, the public will get interested enough in this to stop this.”

Reminder about Jan 6: it really happened It was a horror 140+ police were injured A range of violent weapons were used by attackers Chants to hang Mike Pence were heard There was a gallows and guns Pipe bombs diverted police as mob approached

President Donald Trump promoted a bunch of unfounded conspiracy theories during a late-night social media posting spree on Monday.

🚨 BREAKING: French President Emmanuel Macron warned the US could be about to “betray” Ukraine, according to a leaked transcript of a call between European leaders strategizing about how to protect Kyiv.   Read the story: politi.co/4iFVe7R 

If you are wealthy in Trump’s America, you can commit any crime you want with zero consequences. www.cnn.com/2025/12/03/p...

8/ A public service reminder: This entire exercise is an absurd, imaginary world for legal experts. That's because the truth is: It's not an armed conflict. The laws of war thus don't apply. The more restrictive rules of human rights apply. It's extrajudicial killing under that law.

His argument is they tried to radio for help and that meant they were calling for the cartel to come pick up whatever non-vaporized drug bundles were still floating in the water, so he had to kill them. The literal Nazis we put in front of firing squads for doing this came up with better excuses.

Trump's attacks against the Somali community are racist, vile, & predictable. As prices rise & his popularity plummets, Trump is resorting to hate and division — hoping he can get you to blame your neighbors, so you'll forget about his failures. Don't drink his poison.

Those survivors, who supposedly failed to "cease all combat activities" by trying to radio for help while clinging to flaming wreckage after their boat suddenly exploded for reasons completely unknown to them, died having no idea they were ever in "combat" with the US Navy at all.

Exclusive: The four-star admiral in charge of Caribbean operations had concerns about the legality of the boat strikes. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth asked him to retire shortly after they started.

This is the head of the company that CNN just partnered with, insisting that prediction markets are a great way to cut through the noise and determine what’s true and what isn’t. No, really, listen to him. It’s actually that stupid.

One of the all-time greats - guitarist, songwriter, producer, icon. Rest easy, Steve. variety.com/2025/music/n...

Normalize Congress firing the President’s poorly performing employees for him

NEW: The commutation Trump issued to David Gentile wipes away all further fines & restitution. Gentile had been sentenced to 7 years for his role in a $1.6B scheme that defrauded thousands of investors. Prosecutors had been seeking $15.5M in forfeiture. www.justice.gov/pardon/media...

I cannot understand why more prominent Dems aren't speaking out against the Trump-Witkoff-Kushner attempt to vaporize the Western alliance that has kept us safe for more than 75 years.... bsky.app/profile/soci...

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."

The original White House--like the Capitol--was deliberately NOT garish.They were supposed to reflect republican governance: not monarchies, not aristocracies.They were supposed to show a commitment to We the People. The current decorations are the precise opposite. www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-...

Watch til the end. How has no one asked her this before www.youtube.com/shorts/yhhWj...

"If the person is a U.S. citizen or otherwise lawfully in the United States, that individual will be free to go after the brief encounter." --Brett Kavanaugh, Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo

Giving the president the pardon power was a mistake. The most corrupt president in American history is conducting a jailbreak for his fellow criminals.

SCOOP: Sources tell me Donald Trump's name was added to the exterior of the US Institute of Peace building ahead of Thursday's peace agreement signing between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), which will be held inside the building. Confirming if it's been officially renamed.

Agents in Key Largo, Florida ripped this woman wearing medical scrubs out of her car as she screamed she is a US citizen. Agents cuffed her and put her in one of their cars. She was eventually let go, per David Goodhue of the Miami Herald, who also took this footage:

[S] The search for Hegseth's successor is OVER...

🚨 BREAKING: Oversight Dems have received never-before-seen photos and videos of Jeffrey Epstein's private island that are a harrowing look behind Epstein’s closed doors. See for yourself. We won’t stop fighting until we end this cover-up and deliver justice for the survivors.

There's a reason DC, with all its Roman architecture and nomenclature, doesn't have a triumphal arch. They are imperial. The practice is older, but they're primarily associated with the later surviving ones, exclusively reserved for emperors. Thus why the one in Paris is a Napoleonic monument.

Lesson one: Yes, you can do a lot of things if you break the law. Lesson two: Doing something is not the same as doing a good thing - it is harder to build than it is to destroy. Trump has built nothing like the TVA. His lawbreaking is not "freeing the stuck wheels of bureaucracy."

Trump has pardoned: (1) A former Honduran president convicted of drug trafficking (2) Ross Ulbricht, who operated Silk Road, the dark web marketplace where illegal drugs were sold (3) Binance founder Zhao who failed to stop criminals from using Binance to move money tied to drug trafficking. 1/

Trump announces a pardon of Henry Cuellar: "I am hereby announcing my full and unconditional PARDON of beloved Texas Congressman Henry Cuellar, and Imelda. Henry, I don’t know you, but you can sleep well tonight — Your nightmare is finally over!"

Trump pardons Henry Cuellar, an indicted felon who took money from Azerbaijan and a bunch of Mexican banks to secretly work for them in Congress. But, of course, he did nothing that Trump himself hasn't done.