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Johnson says he doesn't know how much footage of strike on alleged drug-trafficking boat should be released
While answering questions from reporters today, Mike Johnson said he doesn’t know how much of the video recording of the second strike on alleged drug-trafficking boat, which reportedly killed two survivors, should be released.
“I’m not sure how much is sensitive with regard to national security,” he said. “I haven’t had a chance to review it, so I’m not going to prejudge it.”
Johnson reiterated that US Navy admiral Frank Bradley made the decision to launch the second strike. “He’s a highly decorated, highly respected admiral in the Navy, and he made that call, and so, you know, we’re going to have to look at that,” Johnson said.
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Trump says national guard will be deployed to New Orleans 'in a couple of weeks'
“We’re going to New Orleans soon” with the national guard, Trump said, adding that the Republican governor (and staunch ally of the president) of Louisiana, Jeff Landry, had called him and asked for help.
“We’re going there in a couple of weeks,” Trump said.
Trump told the cabinet meeting that he would be announcing his selection for the next chair of the Federal Reserve early next year.
He added that he talked to treasury secretary Scott Bessent about taking over the Fed but Bessent didn’t want the job.
Donald Trump’s cabinet meeting started a short while ago a little behind schedule. I’ll bring you all the key lines here.
Schumer calls on Hegseth to release full unedited tape of boat strikes
Also earlier, Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer called Hegseth “spineless” and “a national embarrassment” and called for the defense secretary to release the full unedited tape of the deadly strikes on the alleged drug boat off the coast of Venezuela on 2 September.
Schumer pointed to a recent appearance on Fox News where Hegseth “bragged that he was present at every moment of the operation” but is now claiming Admiral Bradley made the decision about the second strike.
“The minute trouble arises, Hegseth says someone else was making the decision,” Schumer said.
As well as releasing the tape, Schumer said the defense secretary must testify publicly on the matter, as well as briefing the Senate in a classified setting.
Democrats says Hegseth lied about second boat strike and 'threw Admiral Bradley' under the bus
Meanwhile, at the Democrats press conference earlier, representative Ted Lieu of California called on Pete Hegseth to resign, saying the defense secretary lied about the second strike on the suspected drug-smuggling boat and “and threw Admiral Bradley under the bus”.
“Killing shipwreck survivors is a war crime,” said Lieu, a former lawyer with the US Air Force Judge Advocate General’s Corps. He said there was no statute of limitation on war crimes and the justice department should conduct an investigation and hold everyone accountable.
Hegseth “engaged in dishonorable conduct”, Lieu said, adding: “He is a coward, he must resign, you deserve better.”
Fellow California representative Pete Aguilar reiterated that they feel Hegseth should resign but added that Republicans would never go with impeachment.
“Members of the military need to tell the truth,” he said. “We need a full accounting of what happened on that day with that strike”.
Wilson said today that Pentagon can “100% confirm that we know, without a shadow of a doubt, who these Narco terrorists are”.
While Wilson said the department knows what these suspected carters are “carrying, where they’re coming from and where they’re going,” she declined to provide details about the Pentagon’s intelligence efforts. “I don’t want to communicate to the enemy, the ways in which we’re carrying out these strikes,” she added.
Pentagon confirms that Bradley made decision to re-strike suspected drug boat, stands behind operation
At a briefing today, Department of Defense press secretary Kingsley Wilson said that the “decision to re-strike the narco terrorist vessel was made by Adm Bradley”.
Wilson added that Bradley was operating under “clear and longstanding authorities to ensure the boat was destroyed and the threat to the United States was eliminated”.
She re-affirmed that defense secretary Pete Hegseth stands behind Bradley. “Adm Bradley made the right call, and unlike the previous administration, we have our war fighters back at this department,” Wilson said.
Johnson says he doesn't know how much footage of strike on alleged drug-trafficking boat should be released
While answering questions from reporters today, Mike Johnson said he doesn’t know how much of the video recording of the second strike on alleged drug-trafficking boat, which reportedly killed two survivors, should be released.
“I’m not sure how much is sensitive with regard to national security,” he said. “I haven’t had a chance to review it, so I’m not going to prejudge it.”
Johnson reiterated that US Navy admiral Frank Bradley made the decision to launch the second strike. “He’s a highly decorated, highly respected admiral in the Navy, and he made that call, and so, you know, we’re going to have to look at that,” Johnson said.
House speaker plugs Republican candidate in Tennessee's special election
House speaker Mike Johnson quickly plugged the Matt Van Epps, the Republican candidate in the special election for Tennessee’s seventh congressional district.
Ballots are being cast today, in a race that’s become more competitive in a seat that’s been a conservative stronghold in elections past. A reminder, Trump won the district by 22 points in 2024.
“He’s a combat veteran. He flew combat missions, deployed eight times over to the Middle East and dodge missiles and bullets for his country. He worked in Tennessee State Government, and is a highly capable, competent, calm, common sense conservative,” Johnson said of Van Epps.
A recent poll from Emerson College and the Hill had Van Epps leading his Democratic challenger, Aftyn Behn, by just two points.
Today, Johnson reiterated that “anything can happen” in a special election.
“When you’re in a deep red district, sometimes people assume that the Republican, the conservative, will win. You cannot assume that,” Johnson said.
House Republicans are now holding a press conference on Capitol Hill. I’ll bring you the key lines here. We’re particularly keen to hear how GOP lawmakers respond to the ongoing scrutiny facing the Pentagon, after reports that the defense secretary ordered officials to kill the survivors of an initial strike on a suspected drug-trafficking boat.
Following on from my last post, my colleague Maanvi Singh has been reporting on how asylum seekers in the US are contending with the move from the Trump administration to pause asylum decisions indefinitely.
She notes that the new rules could affect nearly 1.5m pending asylum cases with United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).
Legal experts expect that the broader asylum pause and other policy changes will face challenges in court. Advocates have warned that the administration’s policy announcements targeting refugees, asylum seekers and specifically Afghan nationals, after last week’s shooting, amount to collective punishment.
Read Maanvi’s full report below:
DHS secretary calls for 'full travel ban' after DC national guard shooting
The Department of Homeland Security secretary, Kristi Noem, has called for a sweeping and vague “full travel ban” on “every damn country that’s been flooding our nation with killers, leeches, and entitlement junkies”.
Following last week’s shooting in Washington DC, that killed one member of the West Virginia national guard, and left another critically wounded, the Trump administration paused all asylum decisions. The suspect is a 29-year-old Afghan national, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, who entered the country through a Biden-era resettlement program after the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. His asylum claim was ultimately approved after Trump returned to office.
The White House has, however, blamed the previous administration for the “original sin” that allowed Lakanwal to move to the US in the first place.
In a Monday post on X, Noem said that she had spoken with the president, but was not clear about which countries should be included in a travel ban.
“Our forefathers built this nation on blood, sweat, and the unyielding love of freedom,” she wrote. “Not for foreign invaders to slaughter our heroes, suck dry our hard-earned tax dollars, or snatch the benefits owed to AMERICANS. WE DON’T WANT THEM. NOT ONE.”
Tom Phillips
Donald Trump has accused officials in Honduras of “trying to change” the result of the country’s presidential election, as the release of vote counts was paused with two rightwing candidates locked in a technical tie.
The virtual vote count had been slow and unstable before it was interrupted around midday on Monday. The electoral court said a technical problem was to blame and insisted the manual count was continuing.
On his social network, Trump accused officials of “trying to change the results” and warned that “if they do, there will be hell to pay!”.
It was the latest in a string of dramatic interventions by the US president. Before the vote, Trump had thrown his support behind Nasry “Tito” Asfura – who on Monday was ahead of his rival, Salvador Nasralla, by just 515 votes – saying that US support for the country was conditional on an Asfura victory.
He also made the extraordinary pledge to pardon Asfura’s ally, the former president Juan Orlando Hernández, who was convicted of drug trafficking in a New York court last year and sentenced to 45 years in prison for allegedly creating “a cocaine superhighway to the United States”.
As election officials pleaded for patience on Tuesday, Hernández’s wife, Ana García de Hernández, disclosed that the former president had been released from a US prison.
Witkoff and Kushner to meet with Putin in Moscow, as White House remains 'optimistic' about ending war in Ukraine
Today, Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff is set to meet with Vladimir Putin in Moscow. He’ll be joined by the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.
The meeting comes after a US delegation – which included secretary of state Marco Rubio – held “productive” talks with Ukrainian negotiators in Florida over the weekend. On Monday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the administration “feels very optimistic” about the prospect of peace.
My colleague, Jakub Krupa, is covering the latest, including Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s trip to Dublin, where the Ukrainian leader is holding a press conference with Ireland’s prime minister Micheál Martin.
Today, Zelenskyy said “now, more than ever, there is a chance to end this war”. He added that the latest peace plan draft has 20 points, that have been worked on in Geneva and Florida.
But “some things still need to be worked out,” he said.
Follow along here:
Per my last post, it’s worth noting that Michael Dell, the billionaire founder and CEO of Dell Technologies, and his wife, Susan, will donate $6.25bn dollars to the “Trump accounts” scheme, resulting in $250 deposits for roughly 25 million American children.
This contribution is designed to help children 10 or younger, who were born before 2025. It will be available for families who live in zip codes where the median household income is $150,000 or less.
“We know that when children have accounts like this, they’re much more likely to graduate from high school, from college, buy a home, start a business and less likely to be incarcerated,” Dell told CNBC in an interview.
Donald Trump is in Washington today, and due to hold his ninth cabinet meeting, since returning to the White House this year.
That’s due to start at 11:30am ET, and we’ll bring you the latest updates.
Then, the president will make an announcement at 2pm ET, which – according to press secretary Karoline Leavitt – will be about the so-called “Trump accounts”.
A reminder that these are tax-free investment accounts for children under the age of 18 in the US who have a social security number.
The administration has promised a $1,000 seed contribution for those born between 2025 and 2028, whose parents open an account.
