#aclu
3 entries with this tag
The U.S. Military Has Blown Up More Than 220 People on Alleged Drug Boats — Without Trial, Warning, or Public Evidence — Under a Secret Legal Memo Experts Call "a License to Kill." Now a Pentagon Report Claims It Killed Zero Civilians, a New Yorker Investigation Points to an Innocent Ecuadorian Fishing Boat, and the Prosecutor Investigating the Strikes Was Assassinated
Since September 2025, the Trump administration has carried out a campaign of lethal military strikes on small boats in the Caribbean and Pacific, and now on land in Latin America — killing more than 220 people it labels "narcoterrorists," without trial, without warning, and without publicly showing the evidence. Legal experts across the spectrum call the strikes extrajudicial killings inconsistent with international law: the administration asserts, in a secret legal memo, that the victims are "unlawful combatants" in a "non-international armed conflict" between the United States and a classified list of drug cartels. Former Defense Department attorney Sarah Harrison said the policy asserts "a license to kill"; former State Department lawyer Charlie Trumbull called it "more problematic than Iran" because it rests on "the president just waving a magic wand"; Rep. Jason Crow, who reviewed the memo, called it "a pretty farcical analysis." Now the accountability is collapsing on every front at once. In August 2026, the Pentagon released a review claiming its 2025 strikes killed no civilians — a report The Intercept called a "total whitewash," given the more than 120 civilians documented killed. A New Yorker investigation into the disappearance of the Ecuadorian fishing vessel Fiorella suggests the U.S. is striking boats it will not even acknowledge, opening a "hidden front" under Operation Southern Spear. And an Ecuadorian prosecutor investigating the boat strikes was assassinated. Rights groups, the families of dead men, and the Pentagon's own inspector general are all now demanding answers the administration is fighting to withhold.
After 23 States and Two Federal Courts Blocked It as Unconstitutional, Trump Asked the Supreme Court to Let His Mail-Voting Order Take Effect Before the Midterms — an Order That Would Bar the Postal Service From Mailing Ballots to Anyone Not on State-Submitted Lists, Put DHS in Charge of Screening Voter Rolls, and Prioritize Prosecuting Election Officials
On July 27, 2026, the Trump administration asked the Supreme Court — via an emergency "shadow docket" application filed by Solicitor General D. John Sauer — to lift lower-court blocks and let a sweeping executive order restricting mail voting take effect in time for the November midterms. The March executive order would: require states to submit lists of eligible mail voters to the U.S. Postal Service, which would be barred from sending a ballot to anyone not on those lists; give the Postal Service and the Department of Homeland Security new roles screening state voter rolls for supposed noncitizens; mandate individualized barcodes on ballot envelopes; and "prioritize" federal prosecution of state election officials who send ballots to ineligible voters. Twenty-three Democratic-led states sued, noting the Constitution leaves the running of elections to the states, not the White House. U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani blocked it as a separation-of-powers violation, and the Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that block over the weekend, finding the order would "sow confusion" and "threaten disenfranchisement of many eligible voters." Sauer argued the injunction was "extraordinary" and that the order "merely sets forth general policy guidance." Voting-rights groups called it "plainly unconstitutional... yet another attempt by the president to unlawfully take control of elections from the states, deter eligible voters from casting ballots, and sow chaos as the November midterms approach." It is the same campaign documented here through the FEMA counterterrorism-funding blackmail, the purge of the Election Assistance Commission, and the primetime "China stole 220 million voter files" speech — now escalated to the Supreme Court, asking the justices to green-light federal control over an election the president has spent months insisting will be stolen.
FCC Chair Threatened ABC: "Easy Way or Hard Way" — Kimmel Suspended, Then Reinstated
After Kimmel's monologue on the Charlie Kirk assassination, FCC Chair Brendan Carr threatened: "We can do this the easy way or the hard way." ABC affiliates pulled the show. ABC suspended Kimmel. Trump celebrated. 400+ artists signed an ACLU letter. Kimmel returned to 15.3M YouTube views.