Good question from Senator Coons. AG Bondi refuses to disclose what legal theory if any from DOJ justifies these premeditated killings in the Caribbean.

The Trump administration has ordered FBI employees in Washington, DC, to immediately search their workstations and digital media for any records pertaining to the disappearance of Amelia Earhart, a law enforcement source told CNN.

Saw “Anemone” and I’m very sorry to report that it includes Daniel Day Lewis’s character (a former 14 Intelligence Co operative in Northern Ireland) saying at the start of an anguished monologue, “War crime?? The *war* is the crime!”

Don’t think these Texas National Guard guys are going to be chasing any immigrants around Chicago on foot

"At the Pentagon, some military lawyers, including international law experts within DoD’s Office of General Counsel, have raised concerns about the legality of the lethal strikes on suspected drug traffickers.... Multiple current and former JAGs ... told CNN that the strikes do not appear lawful."

First instance I’ve seen of CBP paramilitaries inserting for one of these urban operations by helicopter (fast-roped from Black Hawks, presumably CBP AMO ones). Hard to imagine a plausible tactical rationale, but easy to guess another one: this is *great* content for CBP’s aggro recruiting videos.

The IDF has released very few details about the Gaza City operation since it began, so it's hard to judge the extent of new neighborhoods demolitions over the past month as IDF operations pause. This Israeli OSINT account has an estimate of the current front line of IDF advance:

The officer so enthusiastically introducing Hegseth in his partially unbuttoned shirt here is Naval Academy superintendent Lt. Gen. Michael Borgschulte, the Marine aviator Hegseth installed after cutting short the term of USNA’s first woman superintendent, Vice Adm. Yvette Davids

this is wild: while Stephen Miller's guy was in Minnesota for his uncle's funeral, somebody was able to see his entire phone and take pictures of his Signal group chats talking about military deployments to Portland, and brought them to the Strib (gift link: www.startribune.com/trump-offici...)

It's October now, the time when the crisp fall breezes transport us to the fields of northern France and we listen to the soundtrack to Kenneth Branagh's adaptation of "Henry V" whenever we are at our desks to get us in the mood for St. Crispin's Day at the end of the month. Get your mind right.

This is Greg Bovino again, the emerging general of the CBP’s mobile forces. On paper he is in charge of a CBP sector in Southern California, but obviously their command-and-control arrangements are evolving with their rapidly expanding mission. We’re going to be seeing a lot of him.

Anytime I see a Miami Herald link these days, it follows the same format—intriguing headline that vaguely suggests an extinct animal has been rediscovered or crazy new animal discovered, and then a story that doesn’t deliver on that premise at all. But this is a new low (it’s a dwarf *porcupine*):

This is Greg Bovino again, the emerging general of the CBP’s mobile forces. On paper he is in charge of a CBP sector in Southern California, but obviously their command-and-control arrangements are evolving with their rapidly expanding mission. We’re going to be seeing a lot of him.

More like Passé Comitatus amirite

Speaking of war crimes, this new story by Matt Aikins about a 3rd SF Group A-team, its Afghan proxies, and the “Nerkh Nine” prisoners they murdered is extremely thoroughly reported. Matt first covered this case in 2013 and has spent the last 4 years digging back in. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/30/m...

I'd be hopeful about this but they are following illegal orders every time they blow up a boat off of Venezuela

“Only in recent decades did politicians somehow come to believe that our job is to police the far reaches of Kenya and Somalia” Guess no one has told him that Biden reversed his Somalia pullout and that AFRICOM is running the most active remaining GWOT air campaign there

That speech makes clear Hegseth is still a lieutenant in 2006 Iraq in a lot of ways: his references to his squad leaders’ frustration with ROE there, and naming Pete Chiarelli—who retired 15 years ago but tried to fire Hegseth’s brigade commander Mike Steele in ‘06—as an example of a bad general…

Saw the first one of these on Instagram, laughed out loud, googled assuming it was fake, and found that it’s not only real, there are at least three scientific papers about it spanning two decades

Dreamed I was a kid and built a GI Joe-scale model of a CV-22 Osprey and convinced my dad to fly with me to the mall (we can fly by jumping) so my GI Joes could kill the Playmobil Santa Claus, but when we got there there was no Santa in the Playmobil Christmas display because of the War on Christmas

Three days of penguin walk 🐧🐧🐧 -77.26, -33.53

IDF or IDF-contracted bulldozer mounted with a flamethrower for building destruction during operations in Gaza City’s Sheikh Radwan neighborhood

Excellent profile of Tim Kennedy by @michaelsierraa.bsky.social taking apart the various falsehoods he peddles. One of the mothers of his children on why he enlisted: “I do think it was a flare of patriotic nobility. But also, it was a very convenient stage left from two young mothers and babies.”

Striking image by AFP photographer Jack Guez of what a fully demolished Gaza neighborhood in the border buffer zone looks like (i.e. one that IDF earthmovers have been through, not just one heavily damaged by air and artillery strikes).

Amazing excuses from S.L.A. Marshall covering the possibility that what he’s recounting may be completely wrong: “since I am not a scientist…such details do not stay in my mind” and “If that’s the wrong date (or the wrong school) it’s because I kept no file on the business, feeling no interest”

If you’re wondering how Hegseth is gathering impressions about the military’s commanders around the world, here’s a glimpse: his former first sergeant from the 101st—the one who was accused of war crimes during Operation Iron Triangle in 2006—travels around as his “senior advisor” and reports back.

IDF evacuation orders now cover 79 percent of Gaza—the latest orders added the coastal quadrant of the Netzarim Corridor, but removed some little bits of Khan Younis (the vast majority of which is still under evacuation orders).

The South Korean Ministry of Defense has awarded medals of merit to 11 officers for disobeying direct orders of superiors during the martial law fiasco, orders that they deemed to be contrary to the constitution and endangerment to democracy. www.chosun.com/english/nati...

On Aug 25, Israeli defense forces attacked a Gaza hospital, killing our colleague Hussam al-Masri. We spent the last few weeks reviewing footage and interviewing witnesses. The visual evidence contradicts Israel’s official story. www.reuters.com/investigatio...

Baking cakes that depict military campaigns and battles

And here's a 0.85-square-mile rectangle of Beit Hanoun, the satellite city of 50,000 that used to be northeast of Gaza City, in Jan 2024, Dec 2024, and Sept 2025. The IDF started razing Beit Hanoun in Dec 2023 when they began the buffer zone and finished this past summer (it is effectively gone):

Here's the same thing for a 3-square-mile rectangle of Zeitoun and Tal al-Hawa, the southernmost districts of Gaza City, with snapshots of the extent of IDF demolitions by June 2024 (after the establishment of the Netzarim Corridor south of the city), Dec 2024, and mid-Sept 2025:

An old BBC clip of Saddam gathering party leadership to conduct a purge of opponents and people whom he perceived to lack personal loyalty to him. www.bbc.com/news/av/worl...

Just woke up from the following topical dream: It’s the morning before Christmas, and I venture out into the snow for a walk. Suddenly a bunch of Marines appear in an experimental camo pattern, which is fun, although useless in the snow. They are conducting an exercise of some sort. A ways on…

Best case scenario, he’s just going to be personally administering body-fat-percentage tests to all of them or something like that

Wesley has documented something, under cover of a ‘war’ in Gaza that for a while now has actually a campaign of total, demolitional extirpation

The area in red on the first map here is 1.25 square miles of Gaza City's Shejaiyah district, which the IDF has very thoroughly demolished with earthmovers over the past year. The next 3 images show the extent of demolitions in that rectangle of Shejaiyah by Dec 2024, May 2025, and mid-Sept 2025:

Nothing to worry about, it’s just the kurultai assembling to elect a new khagan

Looks like two more US strikes against ISIS in Somalia early this week. Source is Puntland CTO. No AFRICOM press release / acknowledgment yet. Details: www.newamerica.org/future-secur...

These scientists are really playing with my emotions. Who do I root for, the huge crocodilian that ate dinosaurs or the even huger dinosaur that ate crocodilians? Will another crocodilian that ate the megaraptors that ate the big crocodilians that ate the other dinosaurs be next? Where does it end?

The former home of the Army’s Asymmetric Warfare Group (created for the wars in Iraq and Afg) has now been taken over by CBP SRT. It’s just because it’s an available facility (AWG was shut down in 2021), no connection between the units…but feels like gloomy “imperial boomerang” symbolism.

Although there are Navy and Marine forces afloat in the area, I think it’s very unlikely they’re actually executing these boat strikes. Armed MQ-9 Reapers have been photographed in western Puerto Rico—this is a special operations task force, likely from JSOC, working on behalf of SOUTHCOM.

David Petraeus greeting Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa at the Concordia Summit in NYC. When Petraeus was a 3-star in Iraq in 2004-6, Sharaa was fighting the US as a member of the al-Qaida branch there; when Petraeus was a 4-star, Sharaa was teaching fellow Camp Bucca detainees classical Arabic

Today I learned that the French Army still uses barrel-fired rifle grenades, and I am enchanté

Timely piece from @davelevinthal.com One difference between ICE and CBP during the first Trump administration and the second is that both are now designated security agencies. This puts them in the same category as the FBI and gives them more leeway to hide info from FOIA re agency personnel.

The Soviets built Bagram for the Afghan government in the fifties lol