Trump’s Boat Strikes Have Cost U.S. Another Crucial Intelligence Deal

President Donald Trump’s extrajudicial military strikes have cost the United States yet another intelligence ally.

Colombian President Gustavo Petro announced that Bogota would also stop sharing intelligence with the U.S., following a report that the United Kingdom had stopped sharing some intelligence tracking vessels in the Caribbean.

“Issue the order to all levels of the public security forces’ intelligence to suspend the sending of communications and other dealings with U.S. security agencies. Such a measure will be maintained as long as the missile attack on boats in the Caribbean persists,” Petro wrote on X Tuesday. “The fight against drugs must be subordinated to the human rights of the Caribbean people.”

Historically, the U.S. would use intelligence from its foreign allies to identify vessels that could be involved in drug trafficking. Those boats would be stopped by U.S. officials, boarded, and searched. But recently, Trump has opted to just blow them up, killing dozens of crew members and violating international law.

This isn’t the first time Petro has weighed in on this issue. Last month, Petro took to social media to accuse Trump of murder after a military strike on a Colombian vessel, claiming that the September attack had killed a lifelong fisherman. “U.S. government officials have committed a murder and violated our sovereignty in territorial waters,” Petro wrote.

Petro has emerged as an outspoken critic of Trump and his administration, as the U.S. president has called him “an illegal drug leader” and cut off foreign aid to Colombia. At the United Nations earlier this year, Petro compared Trump to Hitler. Last week, during the COP30 climate talks in Belém, Brazil, Petro joined other world leaders in rebuking the absent Trump, saying: “Mr. Trump is against humankind.”

Democrats had previously warned that Trump’s boat strikes and escalating rhetoric against Petro could cost the U.S. one of its main allies in the Western hemisphere.

About a dozen Fannie Mae watchdogs were fired right as they were investigating whether Trump official Bill Pulte illegally obtained the mortgage records of indicted New York Attorney General and Trump administration target Letitia James.

At the time, Pulte, the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, or FHFA, attributed the firings to the team focusing too much on diversity, equity, and inclusion. But new information revealed by The Wall Street Journal Tuesday suggests the removals were both cover for Pulte and punishment for the watchdogs simply doing their jobs.

The ethics and investigations group had gotten internal complaints asserting that senior Fannie Mae officials had improperly ordered staff to access the mortgage records of James and other prominent Democrats. The group sent their findings to the FHFA’s Office of the Inspector General, which then gave it to the U.S. attorney’s office in eastern Virginia. That office is under the leadership of former Trump defense attorney Lindsey Halligan, who received a bar complaint on Tuesday.

Once Halligan got her hands on it, the watchdog staffers were fired, including Chief Ethics Officer Suzanne Libby. General Counsel Danielle McCoy resigned after being forced out by leadership.

The weak fraud indictment against James accuses her of committing mortgage fraud in order to get a better loan rate when she bought a home in Virginia in 2023. Prosecutors claimed that James violated that loan agreement by renting the property out. James had called the indictment baseless, and the evidence is backing her up.

This would be a massive scandal in any other administration if true. But this is President Trump, so it’s just a normal Tuesday.

National Economic Council director Kevin Hassett was optimistic about inflation under the Trump administration—even after he was fact-checked live.

“We’re comfortable that inflation has come way down, the 5 percent on average for Joe Biden, it’s probably a little less than half of that right now, and the trajectory is really, really, really good if you look at it. And inflation is one of those things that has a lot of momentum … and the momentum right now is headed towards the Fed’s target,” Hassett said in a CNBC interview Tuesday with Carl Quintanilla.

Then Quintanilla brought him back down to earth: “Even though it’s been increasing for five months, as of September?”

Hassett tried to explain away the fluctuation. “I guess if you look at it from January, there’s ups and downs, and seasonals.”

The NEC director is technically right that inflation is lower than it was, on average, under Biden—though comparing a four-year average that included the Covid-19 pandemic with less than a year of Trump’s presidency doesn’t seem incredibly illustrative.

As Quintanilla said, inflation increased every month from May to September. (We don’t yet have data for the month of October, thanks to the government shutdown.) It is currently around 3 percent, the same as it was in January before Trump assumed office.

It might be excusable that Hassett is choosing to see the situation through rose-colored glasses if Trump hadn’t been lying about the economy nonstop, from saying that grocery prices are down (they’re not), to saying that inflation is at only 2 percent (it’s not), to saying that he inherited the “highest inflation rate in the history of our country” (he didn’t).

President Donald Trump’s federal law enforcement crackdown has hit a disgusting new low, after federal agents reportedly pepper-sprayed a 1-year-old in Chicago and then lied about it.

Rafael Veraza, 25, claimed at a press conference Sunday that federal agents had deployed chemical agents on him and his family—including his young daughter—as they attempted to avoid an immigration raid at a Sam’s Club in Cicero, a Chicago suburb, the day before.

A video shared to X by Gregory Royal Pratt, an investigative reporter for the Chicago Tribune, showed the incident and its aftermath. In one clip filmed from the inside of Veraza’s car, a large black truck sped in the opposite direction to the family. As the truck passed, the people inside appeared to spray a substance through the driver’s window of Veraza’s car, and the driver started rubbing his eyes.

Another clip showed the family out of the car, as Veraza’s wife, Evelyn, wiped her crying daughter’s face. “This is what ICE does. This is what these terrorists do to babies,” said a voice off-screen.

At the press conference Sunday, Veraza said he hadn’t noticed his daughter, who was sitting in the back seat, had been exposed to the chemicals until his wife instructed him to pull the car over. He said his daughter struggled to open her eyes and appeared to have labored breathing.

“We’re not protesters. We were not even attacking them,” Veraza said.

The Department of Homeland Security flatly denied Veraza’s account and the video evidence to the contrary. “DHS LAW ENFORCEMENT DOES NOT PEPPER SPRAY CHILDREN,” the agency wrote on X Monday afternoon.

“Here are the FACTS: during an operation rioters began throwing objects at agents and blocking the road. This did NOT occur in a Sam’s Club parking lot. Border Patrol deployed crowd control measures, and safely cleared the area,” the post read. “When rioters impede law enforcement operations they are putting officers, themselves, and others in danger.”

The statement did nothing to explain why agents would use crowd-control measures on a vehicle that was driving away from the area. The DHS has routinely provided false or misleading accounts of excessive force used by law enforcement. The agency’s statements have omitted essential details about arrests, contradicted witness testimony, and in one case, even gotten every single detail wrong.

This isn’t the first allegation that the DHS used chemical irritants on children. Just a few weeks ago, agents allegedly tear-gassed a group of children on their way to a Halloween parade.

Last week, a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction barring the use of force against protesters “unless such force is objectively necessary to stop an immediate threat,” citing a systemic use of force that “shocks the conscience.” In her ruling, the judge slammed Border Protection Commander Gregory Bovino, who reportedly led the aggressive operation Saturday, for lying about his own use of force against protesters.

The injunction requires officers to issue two clear warnings before administering crowd-control measures, to place identifiers conspicuously on their person, and to wear a body camera. In the video, it appears that no warnings were given as agents deployed irritants into the car and then continued driving.

The Trump administration has asked for a stay on the judge’s order while it files for appeal, so may continue its reign of terror on Chicago residents—including those in diapers.

Watchdog organization Campaign for Accountability has filed a bar complaint against Lindsey Halligan, the Trump-appointed interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. Halligan is currently leading the president’s retaliatory prosecutions against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James. Halligan is also one of Trump’s former defense attorneys.

“CfA asked the Florida and Virginia Bars to investigate Interim US Attorney Lindsey Halligan,” the organization wrote on X on Tuesday. “By using the power of her office to prosecute Former FBI Director James Comey and New York AG Letitia James despite a dearth of evidence, Halligan may have violated myriad bar rules.”

The complaint also highlights Halligan’s Signal messages to Lawfare journalist Anna Bowers last month, arguing that they’re a clear violation of Virginia Bar rules, as well as the Federal Records Act.

“Screenshots of Ms. Halligan’s texts indicate she had ‘set disappearing message time to 8 hours.’ In other words, each message Ms. Halligan sent and each message she received would automatically disappear from her device 8 hours after she sent it. Ms. Halligan was clearly aware that her messages would autodelete. After Ms. Bower reached out to DOJ’s Office of Public Affairs, Ms. Halligan texted Ms. Bower that ‘the whole convo is off the record. There’s disappearing messages and it’s on signal.’ It therefore appears Ms. Halligan was using Signal deliberately because records would not be preserved,” the complaint reads.

“Making the proactive decision to use a message app that does not preserve records for the purpose of an official conversation regarding Ms. Halligan’s actions as Interim U.S. Attorney appears to be a flagrant violation of the FRA. Ms. Halligan’s actions in contacting a journalist through Signal, setting her messages to disappear in 8 hours and retroactively claiming the exchange was off the record in an effort to secretly influence media coverage of the James case appears a deliberate violation of the FRA and, therefore, a violation of RCP 8.4(b).”

The 17-page complaint then calls for investigations into Halligan’s Bar license in both Virginia and Florida. Read it in full here.