It Can Get Worse
And today is does: On ICE, Venezuela, and Iran.
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Three news stories that breathe life into the adage, “Things are never so bad that they can’t get worse.”
Story #1
IT SEEMS increasingly unlikely that the ICE agent who fatally shot Renee Nicole Good will face criminal charges, The New York Times reports.
Even worse, Times’ sources inside the investigation say federal agents are looking into Good’s possible connections to activist groups protesting President Trump’s immigrant purge.
So let me get this straight. A smiling young mother is shot in the face moments after telling an ICE agent, “I’m not mad at you,” and just five days later investigators conclude:
Her political activism may be a justification for her murder.
Her killer likely won’t be charged.
Prosectutors clearly heard their marching orders from the White House. Before Good’s body was cold, Trump administration officials blamed her for the attack, called her a terrorist, and praised the shooter. Trump went so far as to offer a novel justification for murder: behaving badly.
“At a very minimum, that woman was very, very disrespectful to law enforcement,” he told reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday evening.
Under these conditions, nobody is safe.
Story #2
THE SEPTEMBER 2 attack on a boat of suspected drug traffickers was morally and legally dubious for its “double tap” killing of unarmed men clinging to wreckage. It gets worse: Now it appears the Trump administration also committed “perfidy,” feigning civilian status to fool adversaries into dropping their guard, then attacking and killing them.
That is a war crime.
“The Pentagon used a secret aircraft painted to look like a civilian plane in its first attack on a boat that the Trump administration said was smuggling drugs, killing 11 people last September, according to officials briefed on the matter,” reads a New York Times blockbuster.
The nonmilitary appearance is significant, according to legal specialists, because the administration has argued its lethal boat attacks are lawful — not murders — because President Trump “determined” the United States is in an armed conflict with drug cartels.
The Washington Post added this damning detail:
The crewed aircraft did not have any weapons showing when the attack occurred, two officials said, speaking, like some others, on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter. Instead, the munitions were fired from a launch tube that allows them to be carried inside the plane, not mounted outside on the wing.
My questions:
Why are we just finding out about this?
Is the administration’s failure to make these operational details known evidence that they knew their approach was a potential war crime?
Story #3
The Wall Street Journal says Trump is leaning toward authorizing fresh military strikes on Iran.
“Some senior administration aides, led by Vice President JD Vance, are urging Trump to try diplomacy before retaliating against Iran for killing protesters during a two-week uprising over a flailing economy and regime repression,” the WSJ reports.
This is the sort of story that lands two or three days before a military strike.
Trump hasn’t made a final decision on what he will do, according to officials, and will meet with senior aides Tuesday to determine his approach. The options could include ordering military strikes on regime sites or launching cyberattacks, approving new sanctions and boosting antiregime accounts online.
Some officials have voiced concerns that U.S. military strikes could fuel the regime’s propaganda that the U.S. and Israel are secretly orchestrating the protests.”
In other words, some officials know thing can get worse.
THIS NEWSLETTER connects the dots between three stories in today’s “Morning Read-In,” a pre-dawn feature for paid subscribers to Convulsions. Today’s MRI also included stories on:
My favorite trend in politics and culture: “Competence porn.”
How Fed Chair Jerome Powell stood up to Trump and won.
How a new Michigan poll will spoil Trump’s trip to Detroit today.
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