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Caribbean Catastrophes: The Hurricane We See and the War We Don't
A deadly force is brewing—and it's not caused by the climate.
Oct 31, 2025
A deadly force, intensifying as it goes, claiming lives and destabilizing nations. Hurricane Melissa’s assault on the Caribbean was devastating. So is President Donald Trump's extrajudicial bombing campaign.
When Melissa hit Jamaica, Cuba, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic, we saw heartrending pictures of homes underwater, families wading through muck, and hospitals with their roofs blown off. The compassion we felt was real, the urgency high, and for a news cycle or two, the media made the world pay attention.
But not too far from Melissa’s flood zone, another kind of disaster has been unfolding in comparative media quiet. This one is caused not by climate, but by our autocratic president, who gave us two month’s warning.
On September 23, in a thuggish address to the United Nations, Donald Trump explicitly threatened to blow “Venezuelan terrorist drug smugglers” “out of existence” in blatant disregard of international law or due process. Sure enough, as of the end of October, US forces had conducted 15 air strikes on multiple vessels in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific.
Politicians, pundits, and the press still have time to get the American people activated enough to stop this country’s next catastrophic war.
The White House thumps on about stopping narcotics flow, but we’ve seen no interceptions, no arrests, no narcotics cargo—only executions.
Melissa took, by an early count, 32 lives. Trump’s warships and drones have officially killed at least 61 people. The survivors and victims include nationals from Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela, and Trinidad, mostly fishermen and boat crews whose families—and governments—dispute all allegations of narco trafficking. The Trump team doesn’t care. Nor does it care to consult Congress—as the War Powers Act requires—or offer proof.
Now, a massive military force is massed just to the south and east of Melissa’s path of destruction. The US deployment reportedly includes tens of thousands of troops, eight major warships, three amphibious assault ships, a guided-missile cruiser, several fighter jets, and a nuclear submarine. The US military has also reopened formerly inactive facilities in Puerto Rico to support these operations.
It’s the largest military buildup in the Caribbean since the invasion of Panama in 1989, and yet it’s generating less media attention than a gale-force storm.
It’s not too late. Politicians, pundits, and the press still have time to get the American people activated enough to stop this country’s next catastrophic war.
The resignation of the military commander overseeing the operation—Admiral Alvin Halsey—head of US Southern Command, should sound an alarm. Meanwhile, “Demolition Don” is making no bones about his plans. After it was revealed that he’d secretly authorized the CIA to conduct covert action in Venezuela, he bragged, “We are certainly looking at land now.”
What are we waiting for? The blatant buildup to this country’s next imperialist war is at least as terrifying as a hurricane—or it should be.
Catch my conversation this Friday, October 31 at 5:00 pm ET with US Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash) and Marine Captain Janessa Goldbeck on the president’s threat to invoke the Insurrection Act, exclusively on Laura Flanders & Friends.
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Stephen Miller Claims Simply Calling Trump Authoritarian 'Incites Violence and Terrorism'
"Trying to criminalize the act of calling a government 'authoritarian,'" one journalist said, "is exactly what an authoritarian government would do."
Sep 25, 2025
Stephen Miller, the White House's deputy chief of staff, signaled how far he is willing to go to criminalize dissent against President Donald Trump in a social media post on Wednesday in which he implied that merely describing the president's actions as "authoritarian" is tantamount to a criminal offense.
Miller's comments came in response to a clip of California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), who appeared Tuesday on "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" on CBS. In the clip, posted to X, the governor is shown describing Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) mass immigration roundups.
"Masked men jumping out of unmarked cars, people disappearing, no due process, no oversight, zero accountability—that's what's happening in the United States today," Newsom said. “People ask, ‘Is 'authoritarianism' being hyperbolic?’ Bullshit we’re being hyperbolic.”
Newsom noted that he had just signed the first bill in the nation forbidding ICE agents from wearing masks while carrying out arrests and requiring them to provide identification.
"I mean, if some guy jumped out of an unmarked car in a van and tried to grab me, by definition, you're going to push back," Newsom continued. "These are not just authoritarian tendencies; these are authoritarian actions by an authoritarian government."
Newsom directly called out comments made by Miller, who recently said on Fox News that the Trump administration should use law enforcement to "dismantle" the left following the assassination of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk.
“This should put chills up spines, “Newsom said. “[Miller] called the Democratic Party an ‘extremist organization,’ basically a terrorist organization, saying he’s going after his enemies."
Newsom also referred to a post made by Trump on Truth Social telling Attorney General Pam Bondi to target certain political enemies for prosecution.
Miller responded to the clip of Newsom, saying: "This language incites violence and terrorism."
As many critics pointed out, none of Newsom's statements in the clip promoted or encouraged violence. They were simply criticisms of the Trump administration’s actions, which have included rounding up immigrants without due process and singling out political opponents for persecution.
US law has historically set an extraordinarily high bar for what speech constitutes "incitement" to violence.
As Lee Rowland of the New York Civil Liberties Union explained, "The Supreme Court recognizes, rightfully, that political speech often involves really passionate, sometimes violent rhetoric. And unless and until it creates a specific and immediate roadmap to violence against others, it cannot be criminalized consistent with our First Amendment."
But Miller's comments indicate a concerted effort within the Trump administration to widen what protected political speech can be deemed violent.
On the day of Kirk’s assassination, Trump blamed “those on the radical left” for the murder, saying they “have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world’s worst mass murderers and criminals. He added that “This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today, and it must stop right now.”
Earlier this week, Trump signed an executive order designating “antifa,” short for antifascist, as a “domestic terrorist organization"—although it is not, in fact, an organization at all. Without a concrete group to target, critics have warned that the designation will instead be used to label those who describe Trump as “fascist” or “authoritarian” as threats in and of themselves.
Bondi suggested last week, in comments that were met with derision across the political spectrum, that the administration would use law enforcement to go after "hate speech," which is generally protected by the First Amendment.
But the characterization of criticism being equal to violence only amplified following Wednesday's shooting at an ICE facility in Dallas, which killed one detainee and critically injured two others. JD Vance made a similar suggestion that critical rhetoric toward ICE was to blame for the attack.
“When Democrats like Gavin Newsom ... say that these people [ICE] are part of an authoritarian government, when the left-wing media lies about what they’re doing, when they lie about who they’re arresting, when they lie about the actual job of law enforcement... What they’re doing is encouraging crazy people to go and commit violence," said Vance.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), likewise, blamed the shooting on "every politician who is using rhetoric demonizing ICE and demonizing [Customs and Border Protection]."
Miller's comments, which directly refer to criticism of the Trump administration as "inciting violence and terrorism," may be the most direct indication yet of an intent to criminalize First Amendment-protected dissent.
Ironically, these threats have only made criticisms of Trump as an authoritarian grow louder.
“Trying to criminalize the act of calling a government ‘authoritarian,‘” said journalist James Surowiecki, “is exactly what an authoritarian government would do.”
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Class Action Suit Challenges Trump's Unconstitutional Attack on Due Process
“All people in the United States are entitled to due process—without exception,” said an attorney at the ACLU of Massachusetts.
Sep 24, 2025
Several New England affiliates of the American Civil Liberties Union have filed a new class-action lawsuit that challenges the immigration detention policies of US President Donald Trump.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Massachusetts announced on Tuesday that it is joining with the ACLU of New Hampshire, the ACLU of Maine, ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, the law firm Araujo and Fisher, the law firm Foley Hoag, and the Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinic to sue the Trump administration over its policy of denying bond hearings to people detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
The ACLU of Massachusetts described the denial of bond hearings for ICE detainees as "a violation of statutory and constitutional rights" that are "upending decades of settled law and established practice in immigration proceedings." The end result of this, the ACLU of Massachusetts warned, is that "thousands of people in Massachusetts will be denied due process."
The complaint contends that the US Department of Justice (DOJ) has been denying ICE detainees their rights by "systematically reclassifying these people from the statutory authority of 8 U.S.C. § 1226, which usually allows for the opportunity to request bond during removal proceedings, to the no-bond detention provisions of 8 U.S.C. § 1225, which does not apply to people arrested in the interior of the United States and placed in removal proceedings."
The ACLU of Massachusetts said that the administration's misclassification of detainees stems from actions taken by the Tacoma Immigration Court in Washington, which in 2022 started "misclassifying § 1226 detainees arrested inside the United States as mandatory detainees under § 1225, solely because they initially entered the country without permission."
The lawsuit has been filed on behalf of Jose Arnulfo Guerrero Orellana, an immigrant who resides in Massachusetts and has no criminal record, but who was detained by ICE last week and has been denied the right to challenge his detention. The complaint asks that due process be restored for Orellana and others who have been similarly detained and held unlawfully.
Daniel McFadden, managing attorney at the ACLU of Massachusetts, argued that the administration's actions violate fundamental constitutional rights.
“All people in the United States are entitled to due process—without exception,” he said. “When the government arrests any person inside the United States, it must be required to prove to a judge that there is an actual reason for the person’s detention. Our client and others like him have a constitutional and statutory right to receive a bond hearing for exactly that purpose."
Annelise Araujo, founding principal and owner at Boston-based law firm Araujo and Fisher, argued that the administration's detention policy "violates due process and upends nearly 30 years of established practice."
"The people impacted by this policy are neighbors, friends, and family members, living peacefully in the United States and making important contributions to our communities," she said. "Currently, the only recourse is to file individual habeas petitions for each detained client—a process that keeps people detained longer and stretches the resources of our courts."
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