John Hudson

who's surprised: "Signalgate report contradicts Hegseth’s claim of ‘total exoneration’" www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...

Reps. Adam Smith and Jim Himes: "The video we saw today showed two shipwrecked individuals who had no means to move, much less pose an immediate threat, and yet they were killed by the United States military... this was wrong."

The $148 billion failure: Watchdog's final report excoriates America’s attempt to rebuild Afghanistan After nearly two decades of oversight, SIGAR will conclude its work early next year.

"More than $148 billion was spent by the U.S. government in its failed attempt to build a free Afghanistan," per inspector general www.defenseone.com/threats/2025...

Audit Finds Palestinian Inmates Face Starvation and Beatings in Israeli Prisons

That’s commitment

As The Post first reported, the information Hegseth shared on Signal derived from an email classified “SECRET/NOFORN,” meaning unauthorized disclosure could jeopardize national security www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...

Column | The glaring ‘hypocrisy’ behind Trump’s war on drugs The Trump administration’s pardon of convicted drug trafficker Juan Orlando Hernández raises questions about its war on “narcoterrorism.”

My latest
On the release of Juan Orlando Hernández and the glaring ‘hypocrisy’ behind Trump’s war on drugs
Free to read: wapo.st/446rLOm

Did the Trump administration commit a war crime in its attack on a Venezuelan boat? Washington Post reporter Alex Horton talks about the Sept. 2 U.S. military strike on a boat with alleged "narco terrorists," in which a second strike was ordered to kill two survivors in the water.

I went on @nprfreshair.bsky.social with Terry Gross to lay out what we know and don’t know about the administration’s second deadly strike on Sept 2, which killed two survivors in the Caribbean www.npr.org/2025/12/03/n...

Can Marco Rubio end the war in Ukraine? How the Secretary of State is trying to balance his hawkish instincts against his MAGA doctrine.

Great Today Explained ep yesterday!

I talk to 🐐 @johnphudson.bsky.social about Russia/Ukraine peace talks & specifically the growing influence of Sec of State Marco Rubio. Then @lukeharding1968.bsky.social pours cold water on the whole thing— suggesting this is not about peace at all. It’s business

The Miami meeting between Trump's top aides (Witkoff, Rubio and Jared Kushner) and Ukraine's top negotiators has been going on for 20 minutes now. Here's the list of Ukrainian participants:

Trump says he has ordered closure of Venezuelan airspace wapo.st/3XXT5L4

New: Several Democratic senators are urging Marco Rubio to quickly investigate what a classified government watchdog report has described as “hundreds” of potential human rights violations allegedly committed by the Israeli military in Gaza www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...

U.S. pushing Ukraine to sign peace deal by Thanksgiving or lose support. Kyiv is under "extraordinary pressure" www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/1...

Ambassador Huckabee Held Meeting With Jonathan Pollard, Ex-Spy, at U.S. Embassy in Israel Jonathan J. Pollard, who was convicted of espionage, said in an interview that the meeting, which was highly unusual for a U.S. diplomat to attend, had been friendly.

NYT: Ambassador Mike Huckabee met with Jonathan J. Pollard, an American who spent 30 years in prison for betraying the U.S. and spying for Israel.

“It was a friendly meeting,” Mr. Pollard said www.nytimes.com/2025/11/20/w...

House votes overwhelmingly to compel release of Jeffrey Epstein files

Catholic Bishops Rebuke Trump’s Immigration Tactics in Rare Statement “We feel compelled now in this environment to raise our voices in defense of God-given human dignity,” they said in the statement.

Catholic Bishops Issue Rare Statement Objecting to U.S. Immigration Tactics: “We feel compelled now in this environment to raise our voices in defense of God-given human dignity" www.nytimes.com/2025/11/12/u...

NEW: The classified opinion by Trump's Office of Legal Counsel says the US personnel taking part in lethal strikes on boats would not be exposed to future prosecution, per sources. “It sounds like an admission that there is no legal basis for these strikes” www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...

"it made no lasting dent in Afghan opium production" www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...

“The Justice Department’s Gulfstream G550 took nine trips to Las Vegas—where Kash Patel lived before running the FBI—and seven others to Nashville, according to a WSJ review of flight records.” www.wsj.com/politics/pol...

How Cheney’s Presidential Power Push Paved the Way for Trump to Go Further (Gift Article) Donald J. Trump and Dick Cheney became adversaries, but the former vice president set the stage for Mr. Trump’s bid to expand his executive authority.

How Cheney’s Presidential Power Push Paved the Way for Trump to Go Further www.nytimes.com/2025/11/04/u...

Zohran wins

Trump administration tells Congress it can continue its lethal strikes against boaters in Latin America and is not bound by a decades-old legislation requiring Congress to give approval for ongoing hostilities

wapo.st/3WzQial

Obama Calls Mamdani to Praise His Campaign, Offers to Be Sounding Board Former President Barack Obama told Zohran Mamdani “your campaign has been impressive to watch,” and suggested that he was invested in Mr. Mamdani’s success beyond the election.

New: Obama called Zohran Mamdani on Saturday, praising his campaign and offering to be a “sounding board” into the future. Shane Goldmacher scoops on the private 30-minute phone call www.nytimes.com/2025/11/01/n...

Scoop: Venezuela's president has made multiple requests to Moscow this month, including "overhauls of defensive radars, military aircraft repairs and potentially missiles," according to U.S. government documents obtained by The Post www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/1...

SCOOP: A classified U.S. report finds a backlog of "hundreds" of possible Israeli human rights violations in Gaza that will take "years" to review, raising doubts about future accountability.
www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...

Yep. And if they go full Star Wars, it'll cost many, many trillions of dollars.

Trump's pick, who was scheduled to face the Senate tomorrow, spent most of the last decade as a senior executive at a Swiss subsidiary of Evraz PLC, a Russian steel group co-owned by billionaire Roman Abramovich, per a disclosures obtained by The Post www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/1...

Trump's “Golden Dome” missile defense project is likely to take at least a decade to complete and cost *** a trillion dollars or more ***
www.washingtonpost.com/technology/i...

Ted Cruz & Dave McCormick have effectively torpedoed Trump's pick for ambassador to Kuwait. Amer Ghalib, the mayor of Hamtramck, Michigan, the first Arab American & Muslim to hold that job, endorsed Trump amid deep anger at Biden over the war in Gaza www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...