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drones
Extrajudicial Killings From Barack Obama to Donald Trump
If Obama could kill a 16-year-old American boy without accountability, why wouldn’t Trump believe he has the same power to snuff out the lives of civilians with no due process?
Dec 16, 2025
In May 2013, as President Barack Obama delivered a major foreign-policy speech in Washington, I managed to slip inside. As he was winding up, I stood and interrupted, condemning his use of lethal drone strikes in Yemen, Pakistan, and Somalia.
“How can you, a constitutional lawyer, authorize the extrajudicial killing of people—including a 16-year-old American boy in Yemen, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki—without charge, without trial, without even an explanation?”
As security dragged me out, Obama responded, “The voice of that woman is worth paying attention to.” Perhaps my questions touched a chord in his conscience, but the drone attacks did not stop.
Just before that incident, I had returned from Yemen, where a small delegation of us met with Abdulrahman’s grandfather, Nasser al-Awlaki—a dignified man with a PhD from an American university, someone who genuinely believed in the values this country claims to represent. He looked at us, grief etched into his face, and asked, “How can a nation that speaks of law and justice kill an American child without apology, without even a justification?”
Under Obama, drone strikes killed thousands of people. Entire communities lived under the constant terror of buzzing drones—never knowing whether a flash in the sky meant death for them, their children, or the neighbors who ran to help.
We heard these horrors firsthand in 2012, when CODEPINK traveled to Pakistan to meet with victims’ families. A tribal leader from Waziristan described attending a peaceful jirga—a gathering of elders—when a US missile obliterated the meeting. Dozens were instantly killed. As survivors rushed to help the wounded, a second missile struck.
Forty-two people died, including elders and local officials. No one in Washington was held accountable. Not one person.
Faced with mounting outrage, Obama eventually scaled back the drone program—not because the killings were illegal, immoral, or strategically disastrous, but because the political cost was rising. The truth is that Obama’s drone war normalized the idea that the United States can kill whoever it wants, wherever it wants, without due process or oversight.
That normalization is the bridge to where we are today.
The Trump administration is now carrying out extrajudicial assassinations at sea, including “double taps.” With the latest December 15 strikes, 95 people have been blown to bits in the bombing of 25 boats. Meanwhile, the administration is refusing to release the memo that supposedly explains the legal basis for these killings or to release the video showing the September bombing that killed two shipwrecked sailors who survived an initial strike.
But let’s be clear: the actions of the Trump administration are not an aberration—they are the logical sequel to Obama’s drone killings. If Obama could kill a 16-year-old American boy without accountability, why wouldn’t Trump believe he has the same power to snuff out the lives of civilians with no due process?
One of the victims of Trump’s maritime strikes was Alejandro Carranza Medina, a Colombian fisherman killed on September 15 when a US missile tore apart his vessel. His family has filed a complaint with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. The family says he was working—fishing, not fighting—when the US government ended his life.
And even in cases where drugs are on board, let’s say the obvious: Smuggling narcotics does not turn the open sea into a battlefield, and it does not strip civilians of their right to due process simply because the Trump administration says so. The US cannot declare people “enemy fighters” to disguise what are, in reality, unlawful killings.
Civil liberties groups are suing the government to secure the release of the Office of Legal Counsel opinion and other documents related to these strikes on civilian boats in international waters. The public deserves to see this information. The American people also deserve to see the full video of the September “double tap” that killed two survivors desperately clinging to their overturned boat, as a bipartisan group of lawmakers is demanding. We deserve transparency, accountability, and answers—the same things we demanded under Obama and never received.
For more than twenty years, human rights advocates have warned that unchecked drone warfare would shred the boundaries between war and peace, between combatants and civilians, between military force and basic law enforcement.
Trump’s maritime killings are the predictable collapse of a system the Obama administration cemented into place: killing people far from any battlefield, without legal authority, without congressional approval, and without the slightest regard for human rights.
Once an administration insists that due process in the use of lethal force is optional, every future president inherits a blank check for murder.
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Yet Another Trump Jr.-Backed Company Receives Massive Pentagon Deal
One legal expert said the contract "falls under the cloud of conflicts of interest we have seen throughout this administration."
Dec 04, 2025
For the second time this year, a little-known company backed by Donald Trump Jr. has scored a major contract with the US Department of Defense.
The Financial Times reported on Wednesday that Vulcan Elements—a tiny startup of 30 employees that specializes in producing rare-earth magnets used in drones, radars, and other pieces of military equipment—has scored a $620 million loan from the Pentagon as part of "a $1.4 billion deal to increase the supply of magnets for industries alongside partner ReElement Technologies."
Vulcan has received funding from 1789 Capital, a venture capital firm founded by pro-Trump donors in 2023 that brought Trump Jr. in as a partner last year. According to the Financial Times' analysis, "at least four of 1789’s portfolio companies have won contracts from the Trump administration this year, amounting to more than $735 million."
Revelations about the Vulcan Elements contract come just weeks after the Florida-based drone startup Unusual Machines, in which Trump Jr. has held a $4 million stake, received a contract from the US Army to manufacture 3,500 drone motors. Additionally, reported the Financial Times, the Army indicated that it planned "to order an additional 20,000 components" from the Trump Jr.-backed firm next year.
As Popular Information reported earlier this year, Unusual Machines first brought Trump Jr. on as an adviser just weeks after his father won the 2024 presidential election, even though he had "no notable experience with drones or military contracting."
A Popular Information report published Thursday noted that "both Vulcan CEO John Maslin and Unusual Machines CEO Allan Evans said that Trump Jr. played no role in securing the government contracts," although the report flagged statements by Trump Jr. made earlier this year about helping to screen candidates for key positions in the Pentagon who would be in position to reward companies he's backing without him having to make a direct appeal.
Kedric Payne, general counsel at the Campaign Legal Center, told the Financial Times that that the government deals scored by Trump Jr.-backed companies look ethically dubious even if the president's son didn't directly use his influence to procure them.
“Presidents are expected to avoid even the appearance that they are using their office to financially benefit themselves or their family,” he said. “While we do not know for certain if, or how, the president may have influenced this loan, it falls under the cloud of conflicts of interest we have seen throughout this administration.”
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Italy Deploys Naval Ship to Aid Sumud Flotilla Following Drone Attack
"States have a responsibility to ensure the safe passage of the flotilla," said Amnesty International.
Sep 24, 2025
The Italian government says it has sent a naval ship to assist the Global Sumud Flotilla after it was attacked by several drones.
Organizers of the flotilla said that the boats, which are carrying humanitarian aid for the starving people of Gaza, were attacked by a swarm of 15 drones early Wednesday morning, with the convoy in the Mediterranean Sea about 600 nautical miles from the enclave.
According to Drop Site News, at least eight attacks and six explosions were reported as flash bang grenades hit at least six of the boats. One person has been injured, and two of the boats have been damaged. They also reported that an "unidentified chemical device" was dropped onto one of the boats before falling off into the water.
In a statement issued Wednesday, Italy's defense minister Guido Crosetto said: "Regarding the attack suffered in recent hours by the Sumud Flotilla vessels, which also include Italian citizens, carried out using drones by currently unidentified perpetrators, we can only express the strongest condemnation. In a democracy, even demonstrations and protests must be protected when they are conducted in compliance with international law and without resorting to violence."
"To ensure assistance to the Italian citizens on the flotilla," Crosetto said that he had "authorized the immediate intervention of the Italian Navy's multi-purpose frigate Fasan," which he said was "already en route to the area for possible rescue operations."
The deployment comes after labor unions in Italy led a nationwide strike in solidarity with Gaza on Monday, with hundreds of thousands of people in 75 cities and towns rallying to support Palestinians as well as the Global Sumud Flotilla.
Hundreds of other elected representatives to the European Union also issued calls on Wednesday for their own governments to provide protection to the flotilla.
While the perpetrator of the attack is not yet known, the flotilla organizers have suggested that "Israel and its allies" were responsible. Israel blocked two other efforts by activists to reach Gaza earlier this summer.
The flotilla's roughly 350 participants—which include humanitarians, doctors, journalists, lawyers, and other activists from at least 44 countries around the world—have repeatedly insisted that they are unarmed and that their goal is to peacefully protest Israel's siege of Gaza and deliver about 250 tons of food and medical aid to the people of Gaza, who are starving en masse under a near-total blockade by Israel.
On Tuesday, Israel's foreign ministry threatened to take "the necessary measures" to prevent what it described as the "Hamas flotilla" from breaking what it called a "lawful" blockade of Gaza.
In a statement posted to Instagram, the flotilla organizers said, "We welcome the recognition by Minister Crosetto of the democratic and non-violent nature of our mission, and his condemnation of the recent attacks on our vessels."
The group called on other UN member states, "in particular those whose nationals are aboard our ships—to ensure and facilitate effective protection, including maritime escorts, accredited diplomatic observers, and an overt protective state presence." The group emphasized that "such measures must remain protective and facilitative in nature, consistent with the principles of non-interference and the humanitarian purpose of our mission."
Israel ordered the group to turn over its humanitarian aid to Israel for it to be distributed in the strip. Organizers have refused to do this, arguing that Israel's blockade of aid, which has allowed only small amounts of aid into the strip, is illegal under international law.
Brazilian organizer Thiago Ávila, has said there is no reason to believe Israel's promises to distribute aid.
“We can never believe an occupying force who is committing genocide that they will deliver aid–it’s not in their interests,” Ávila said on his Instagram.
Last week, a commission of independent experts at the United Nations released an extensive report concluding that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza. This has included its blockade of aid entering the strip, which has resulted in the deaths of more than 400 people, including at least 145 children, with many dying in recent months.
At least 65,419 Palestinians have also been killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza since October 2023, and at least 167,160 have been wounded.
In a statement Wednesday morning, Amnesty International condemned the attacks on the flotilla and Israel's "threatening and dehumanizing statements" against its organizers, which it described as "a shameless attempt to intimidate them and their supporters."
"States have a responsibility to ensure the safe passage of the flotilla, especially as they have repeatedly failed to get Israel to comply with its most basic obligations to ensure Palestinians in Gaza have adequate access to food, water, medicine, and other supplies indispensable to their survival," Amnesty said. "They must step up pressure on Israel to ensure safe passage for the flotilla and to lift the blockade once for all."
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