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US Drones Continue 'Massive' Operations in Third Day of Attacks
Flurry of strikes continues
Apr 21, 2014
A suspected U.S. drone strike hit Yemen on Monday morning, the third such attack in as many days, killing people described as "militants" as part of "massive and unprecedented" operations targeting al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
According to reporting by the Associated Press, the most recent strike "targeted the mountainous area of Mahfad between the provinces of Abyan and Shabwa," located in the southern part of the impoverished country.
Neither the number of casualties nor who they are is clear at this point.
An unnamed, "high-level Yemeni government official" told CNN that a "massive and unprecedented" scale of operations targeting AQAP was underway.
The day's attack follows a weekend of U.S. strikes on the country. On Saturday at least 15 people were either killed or wounded, including at least three civilians, when a missile from a U.S. drone struck vehicles traveling on a road in the central province of al-Bayda, and on Sunday a separate attack killed 55 "militants," the Yemeni ministry now says.
U.S. and Yemeni officials told NBC News Monday that the series of attacks was the result of a joint operation by the two countries.
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A suspected U.S. drone strike hit Yemen on Monday morning, the third such attack in as many days, killing people described as "militants" as part of "massive and unprecedented" operations targeting al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
According to reporting by the Associated Press, the most recent strike "targeted the mountainous area of Mahfad between the provinces of Abyan and Shabwa," located in the southern part of the impoverished country.
Neither the number of casualties nor who they are is clear at this point.
An unnamed, "high-level Yemeni government official" told CNN that a "massive and unprecedented" scale of operations targeting AQAP was underway.
The day's attack follows a weekend of U.S. strikes on the country. On Saturday at least 15 people were either killed or wounded, including at least three civilians, when a missile from a U.S. drone struck vehicles traveling on a road in the central province of al-Bayda, and on Sunday a separate attack killed 55 "militants," the Yemeni ministry now says.
U.S. and Yemeni officials told NBC News Monday that the series of attacks was the result of a joint operation by the two countries.
____________________
A suspected U.S. drone strike hit Yemen on Monday morning, the third such attack in as many days, killing people described as "militants" as part of "massive and unprecedented" operations targeting al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
According to reporting by the Associated Press, the most recent strike "targeted the mountainous area of Mahfad between the provinces of Abyan and Shabwa," located in the southern part of the impoverished country.
Neither the number of casualties nor who they are is clear at this point.
An unnamed, "high-level Yemeni government official" told CNN that a "massive and unprecedented" scale of operations targeting AQAP was underway.
The day's attack follows a weekend of U.S. strikes on the country. On Saturday at least 15 people were either killed or wounded, including at least three civilians, when a missile from a U.S. drone struck vehicles traveling on a road in the central province of al-Bayda, and on Sunday a separate attack killed 55 "militants," the Yemeni ministry now says.
U.S. and Yemeni officials told NBC News Monday that the series of attacks was the result of a joint operation by the two countries.
____________________
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LATEST NEWS
House Progressives Demand Answers From Noem on Masked ICE Agents
"These state-sanctioned fear tactics are opening the door for vulnerable communities to be abused and must not become the norm," said Rep. Summer Lee.
Jul 25, 2025
Pressing the Trump administration to explain its rationale for allowing federal agents to don masks and drive unmarked vehicles when carrying out immigration raids and arrests, two Democratic members of Congress on Friday pointed to numerous times in recent months when authorities working under President Donald Trump have eroded "public trust and fundamental constitutional rights" by concealing their identities.
"In Los Angeles, agents were photographed in June 2025 wearing face covers during residential raids," wrote Reps. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) and Summer Lee (D-Pa.) in a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. "In Chicago, witnesses reported masked agents detaining individuals without identification. Similarly, in New York City, then-mayoral candidate Brad Lander was arrested by masked federal agents."
The two progressive lawmakers sit on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, with Garcia serving as ranking member and Lee serving as ranking member of the Federal Law Enforcement Subcommittee. They reminded Noem that the panel has "broad authority to investigate 'any matter' at 'any time' under House Rule X" as they requested documents regarding Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) protocols "governing agent identification and accountability during operations in civilian settings."
DHS, said Garcia and Lee, has been "in direct violation" of the Fourth and Fifth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution as it has allowed ICE and other federal agents to conceal their identities and the agencies they work for while raiding workplaces and residential neighborhoods, and waiting outside courtrooms and daycare centers to arrest immigrants.
"This causes a dangerous erosion of public trust, due process, and transparency in law enforcement. It also makes it nearly impossible for individuals to determine whether they are being detained by legitimate law enforcement agents or unlawfully abducted," wrote Garcia and Lee. "These tactics contradict long-standing democratic principles such as the public's right to accountability from those who enforce the law and pave the way for increased crime, making our communities less safe."
The lawmakers noted that federal agents' use of masks and unmarked cars has allowed some people to leverage "the opacity and fear surrounding immigration operations to commit serious crimes," such as an armed man who entered an auto repair shop in Philadelphia wearing a tactical vest labeled "Security Enforcement Agent" and restrained a female employee before stealing $1,000. Another man in Houston recently claimed to be an ICE agent as he used his vehicle to block another driver's car and stole $1,800 and a Guatemalan ID from the victim.
"These cases starkly illustrate how the use of masks, unmarked vehicles, and minimal identification by actual ICE agents does not just erode trust—it effectively hands bad actors a roadmap to exploit vulnerable communities," said Lee and Garcia.
In a statement, Lee accused federal agents, with the Trump administration's approval, of "cowardly concealing their identities behind masks."
"Federal agents under the Trump administration are operating like a secret police force on U.S. soil. These agents must identify themselves," said Lee. "Every person—regardless of immigration status—has a constitutional right to due process and protection from unlawful searches and seizures. These state-sanctioned fear tactics are opening the door for vulnerable communities to be abused and must not become the norm."
Lee and Garcia also noted that lawyers representing ICE and the Trump administration have begun concealing their identities by refusing to give their names when appearing in court to argue immigration cases.
The lawmakers quoted one immigration law expert who told The Intercept last week, "Not identifying an attorney for the government means if there are unethical or professional concerns regarding [DHS], the individual cannot be held accountable."
'The Orban Playbook': Trump Assault on Media Matters Seen as Dire Warning to Other Critics
"The speed of the collapse in the media environment is something I had not foreseen," wrote John Hopkins University economist Filipe Campante.
Jul 25, 2025
U.S. President Donald Trump and his allies have been waging legal war for months against liberal media watchdog Media Matters for America, and a report from The New York Times on Friday claimed that the organization is now in dire financial straits as it's been racking up millions in legal expenses.
According to the Times, Media Matters has incurred legal expenses of $15 million in its efforts to defend itself against lawsuits from X owner Elon Musk, as well as investigations launched by the Federal Trade Commission and two Republican state attorneys general. The expenses from the lawsuits have also had the add-on effect of making donors to the organization "skittish," writes the Times, and the organization has had to slash its staff in half.
To make matters worse, even victories in court for Media Matters bring it little reprieve given that Musk, with his limitless resources as the world's wealthiest man, will file appeals that will force the organization to shell out even more legal fees.
John Hopkins University economist Filipe Campante, who regularly writes about authoritarian threats to democracy, commented on Bluesky that the plight of Media Matters is linked to Trump's other efforts to clamp down on the free press, such as his lawsuit against CBS News that resulted in parent company Paramount agreeing to pay out $16 million shortly before the Federal Communications Commission signed off on its $8 billion merger with studio Skydance.
In fact, he likened the Trump administration's current actions to those of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who has successfully strangled independent media in his country over the span of several years.
"This, yet again, is competitive authoritarianism in practice," wrote Campante. "The speed of the collapse in the media environment is something I had not foreseen... weaponization of lawsuits, persecution by regulators, donors scared away. It's the Orbán playbook, on steroids."
And Campante isn't the only expert making comparisons to Orbán.
Gábor Scheiring, a former Hungarian member of parliament who is now an assistant professor of comparative politics at Georgetown University Qatar, told CNN's Brian Stelter on Friday that Trump's strategy for taming the news media is almost the exact same strategy he once saw Orbán employ. Scheiring zeroed in on CBS' recent announcement that frequent Trump critic Stephen Colbert would have his show canceled next year as particularly Orbán-esque.
"Most of Orban's tactical weapons to take over the media resemble the moves that led to Colbert's cancellation," he explained. "The legal warfare, the lawsuit against CBS, the regulatory capture and threats, the financial pressures, the sale of the parent company, and the new owner's apparent friendliness to Trump."
Scheiring added that Orbán was able to achieve this result by isolating media owners and picking them off one by one to ensure they never forged a sense of solidarity with one another.
"Media owners, both foreign and domestic, largely capitulated individually rather than mounting collective resistance, which enabled Orbán's systematic capture strategy," he said.
Even media moguls ideologically allied with the president haven't escaped his wrath, as Trump filed a lawsuit against right-wing media mogul Rupert Murdoch earlier this month after the Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal published a story detailing an obscene birthday card the president allegedly gave to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
'A Horror So Vast, It Could No Longer Be Ignored': US Media Finally Centering Starving Gazans
However, one critic lamented that corporate media "continues to act like starvation is the unfortunate byproduct of 'war.'"
Jul 25, 2025
As more and more Palestinians, mostly children, starve to death due to Israel's 657-day obliteration and siege of Gaza, reliably pro-Israel U.S. corporate media outlets in recent days have centered the starvation crisis—which began in October 2023—while critics have decried passive language and anti-Palestinian tropes used in some reporting.
The Washington Post published at least two articles on the subject in as many days, including an Associated Press story by Wafaa Shurafa, Sarah El Deeb, and Lee Keath titled "Dozens of Kids and Adults in Gaza Have Starved to Death in July as Hunger Surges" and an internal piece by Louisa Loveluck, Heba Farouk Mahfouz, Siham Shamalakh, Miriam Berger, and Abbie Cheeseman with the headline "Mass Starvation Stalks Gaza as Deaths Rise From Hunger." The authors of the latter article noted that "Israel has severely limited the amount of food entering Gaza, where society is on the brink of collapse."
The New York Times on Friday published a morning newsletter article by Lauren Jackson titled "The Starvation Spreading in Gaza," which stressed that "hunger in Gaza is not new" amid an Israeli blockade that has choked the strip "for nearly two decades." Jackson's piece followed a Thursday front-page story by Rawan Sheikh Ahmad, Isabel Kershner, and Abu Bakr Bashir, with images by Palestinian photographer Saher Alghorra, headlined "Gazans Are Dying of Starvation."
Palestinian peace activist Ihab Hassan, who heads the Agora Initiative's Human Rights for Gaza project, said on the social media site X, "Starvation in Gaza made it to the front page of The New York Times—a horror so vast, it could no longer be ignored."
Carnegie Middle East Center senior editor Michael Young wrote on X, "Don't underestimate that a mainstream media outlet in the U.S. is finally stating the obvious, that Gazans are dying of starvation."
"But it's not as if they're just dying, for no reason; they are being denied adequate amounts of food by Israel, therefore are being killed," Young added. "Nonetheless, that the NYT presents the story in so blunt a way, under a heartbreaking photograph, must qualify as a turning point of sorts given how reluctant U.S. media outlets are to say anything bad about Israel."
Assal Rad, a fellow at the Arab Center Washington D.C. and frequent media critic, offered a more accurate headline for the Times story—"ISRAEL IS STARVING PALESTINIANS TO DEATH."
Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting's Counterspin blog took aim at the Post's "Mass Starvation Stalks Gaza" headline, noting that "it's actual human beings stalking Gaza, who could right now choose to act differently."
Still, there have recently been remarkable discussions about Gaza in U.S. corporate media outlets that would have been all but unimaginable during past Israeli attacks on Palestine.
CNN's "NewsNight" with Abby Phillip on Thursday aired a panel discussion titled, "Why Is the U.S. Silent About the Starvation in Gaza?" The segment featured journalist Peter Beinart, who highighted the International Criminal Court's issuance of arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes including forced starvation, U.S. support for Israel's ethnic cleansing of Gaza, and the Israeli government's ban on foreign journalists entering the strip.
"To say the United States is silent, it's much worse than that," Beinart said. "We are profoundly complicit and deeply responsible. It is our weapons that enforce this starvation. It is our diplomatic efforts that prevent international justice from being done."
"The blood is on our hands!" he stressed.
The CNN segment also featured a video clip of United Nations World Food Program Director Cindy McCain, whose warnings of a looming starvation emergency in Gaza began in October 2023.
Asked by Phillip if the images of starving Gazans making headlines around the world marked "an inflection point," Beinart replied, "Why did it take this long?"
Meanwhile, Israel's oldest newspaper, Haaretz, ran an editorial Thursday titled "Israel Is Starving Gaza."
"Gaza is starving, and Israel is responsible," the Haaretz editors wrote. "According to the Gaza Health Ministry, 111 people have died from malnutrition since the war began, most of them children. Alarmingly, 43 of those deaths occurred just in the past week."
"The famine that has been created is another facet of Israel's cruel inhumanity towards the people of Gaza," the editors added. "It constitutes a war crime and a crime against humanity and is a clear violation of the orders issued a year and a half ago by the International Court of Justice in The Hague."
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