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gregory meeks
As Hegseth Refuses to Release Video of Boat Murder, AOC Calls Briefing a 'Joke'
"Obviously, they have issues with what is in that video, and that’s why they don’t want everybody to see it," Sen. Mark Kelly said of administration officials after the meeting.
Dec 16, 2025
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Tuesday that the Pentagon will not release unedited video footage of a September airstrike that killed two men who survived an initial strike on a boat allegedly carrying drugs in the Caribbean Sea, a move that followed a briefing with congressional lawmakers described by one Democrat as an "exercise in futility" and by another as "a joke."
Hegseth said that members of the House and Senate Armed Services committees would be given a chance to view video of the September 2 "double-tap" strike, which experts said was illegal like all the other boat bombings. The secretary did not say whether all congressional lawmakers would be provided access to the footage.
“Of course we’re not going to release a top secret, full, unedited video of that to the general public,” Hegseth told reporters following a closed-door briefing during which he and Secretary of State Marco Rubio fielded questions from lawmakers.
As with a similar briefing earlier this month, Tuesday's meeting left some Democrat attendees with more questions than answers.
“The administration came to this briefing empty-handed,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) told reporters. “If they can’t be transparent on this, how can you trust their transparency on all the other issues swirling about in the Caribbean?”
That includes preparations for a possible attack on oil-rich Venezuela, which include the deployment of US warships and thousands of troops to the region and the authorization of covert action aimed at toppling the government of longtime Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
Tuesday's briefing came as House lawmakers prepare to vote this week on a pair of war powers resolutions aimed at preventing President Donald Trump from waging war on Venezuela. A similar bipartisan resolution recently failed in the Senate.
Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY), the ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and co-author of one of the new war powers resolution, said in a statement: “Today’s briefing from Secretaries Rubio and Hegseth was an exercise in futility. It did nothing to address the serious legal, strategic, and moral concerns surrounding the administration’s unprecedented use of US military force in the Caribbean and Pacific."
"As of today, the administration has already carried out 25 such strikes over three months, extrajudicially killing 95 people," Meeks noted. "That this briefing to members of Congress only occurred more than three months since the strikes began—despite numerous requests for classified and public briefings—further proves these operations are unable to withstand scrutiny and lack a defensible legal rationale."
Briefing attendee Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.)—who is in the administration's crosshairs for reminding US troops that military rules and international law require them to disobey illegal orders—said of Trump officials, "Obviously, they have issues with what is in that video, and that’s why they don’t want everybody to see it."
Defending Hegseth's decision to not make the boat strike video public, Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) argued that “there’s a lot of members that’s gonna walk out there and that’s gonna leak classified information and there’s gonna be certain ones that you hold accountable."
Mullin singled out Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), who, along with the Somalian American community at large, has been the target of mounting Islamophobic and racist abuse by Trump and his supporters.
“Not everybody can go through the same background checks that need to be cleared on this,” he said. “Do you think Omar needs all this information? I will say no.”
Rejecting GOP arguments against releasing the video, Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said after attending Tuesday's briefing: “I found the legal explanations and the strategic explanations incoherent, but I think the American people should see this video. And all members of Congress should have that opportunity. I certainly want it for myself.”
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After 'Years of Neglected Oversight,' House Votes to Repeal Authorization Used by Presidents to Wage 'Forever Wars'
One foreign policy expert said these congressional authorizations "have become like holy writ, documents frozen in time yet endlessly reinterpreted to justify new military action."
Sep 11, 2025
Almost exactly 24 years after the September 11, 2001 attacks, the US House of Representatives voted Tuesday to finally repeal a pair of more than two-decade-old congressional authorizations that have allowed presidents to carry out military attacks in the Middle East and elsewhere.
In a 261-167 vote, with 49 Republicans joining all Democrats, the House passed an amendment to the next military spending bill to rescind the Authorizations for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) passed by Congress in the leadup to the 1991 Persian Gulf War and 2003 War in Iraq.
The decision is a small act of resistance in Congress after what the Quincy Institute's Adam Weinstein described in Foreign Policy magazine as "years of neglected oversight" by Congress over the "steady expansion of presidential war-making authority."
As Weinstein explains, these AUMFs, originally meant to give presidents narrow authority to target terrorist organizations like al-Qaeda and use military force against Saddam Hussein, "have been stretched far beyond their original purposes" by presidents to justify the use of unilateral military force across the Middle East.
President George W. Bush used the 2002 authorization, which empowered him to use military force against Iraq, to launch a full invasion and military occupation of the country. Bush would stretch its purview throughout the remainder of his term to apply the AUMF to any threat that could be seen as stemming from Iraq.
After Congress refused to pass a new authorization for the fight against ISIS—an offshoot of al-Qaeda—President Barack Obama used the ones passed during the War on Terror to expand US military operations in Syria. They also served as the basis of his use of drone assassinations in the Middle East and North Africa throughout his term.
During his first term, President Donald Trump used those authorizations as the legal justification to intensify the drone war and to launch attacks against Hezbollah in Iraq and Syria. He then used it to carry out the reckless assassination of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani in Iraq.
And even while calling for the repeal of the initial 2001 and 2002 authorizations, former President Joe Biden used them to continue many of the operations started by Trump.
"These AUMFs," Weinstein said, "have become like holy writ, documents frozen in time yet endlessly reinterpreted to justify new military action."
The amendment to repeal the authorizations was introduced by Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.) and Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas).
Meeks described the authorizations as "long obsolete," saying they "risk abuse by administrations of either party."
Roy described the repeal of the amendment as something "strongly opposed by the, I'll call it, defense hawk community." But, he said, "the AUMF was passed in '02 to deal with Iraq and Saddam Hussein, and that guy's been dead... and we're now still running under an '02 AUMF. That's insane. We should repeal that."
"For decades, presidents abused these AUMFs to send Americans to fight in forever wars in the Middle East," said Rep. Chris Deluzio (D-Pa.) shortly before voting for the amendment. "Congress must take back its war powers authority and vote to repeal these AUMFs."
Although this House vote theoretically curbs Trump's war-making authority, it comes attached to a bill that authorizes $893 billion worth of new war spending, which 17 Democrats joined all but four Republicans Republicans in supporting Wednesday.
The vote will also have no bearing on the question of President Donald Trump's increasing use of military force without Congressional approval to launch unilateral strikes—including last week's bombing of a vessel that the administration has claimed, without clear evidence, was trafficking drugs from Venezuela and strikes conducted in June against Iran, without citing any congressional authorization.
Alexander McCoy, a Marine veteran and public policy advocate at Public Citizen, said, "the 1991 and 2002 AUMFs" are "good to remove," but pointed out that it's "mostly the 2001 AUMF that is exploited for forever wars."
"Not to mention, McCoy added, "we have reached a point where AUMFs almost seem irrelevant, because Congress has shown no willingness whatsoever to punish the president for just launching military actions without one, against Iran, and now apparently against Venezuela."
In the wake of Trump's strikes against Iran, Democrats introduced resolutions in the House and Senate aimed at requiring him to obtain Congressional approval, though Republicans and some Democratic war hawks ultimately stymied them.
However, Dylan Williams, the vice president of the Center for International Policy, argued that the repeal of the AUMF was nevertheless "a major development in the effort to finally rein in decades of unchecked use of military force by presidents of both parties."
The vote, Williams said, required lawmakers "to show where they stand on restraining US military adventurism."
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Trump State Dept Announces Withdrawal From UNESCO Over Palestine Inclusion
Like: Palestinian officials responded by urging the U.S. not to "bind its own international standing to the crimes and violations committed by Israel."
Jul 22, 2025
The Trump administration's unrelenting backing of Israel was on display Tuesday as the U.S. State Department withdrew support for the United Nations agency tasked with promoting education and cultural understanding—but the organization's leader pledged that it would continue its work while welcoming "all the nations of the world."
State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce cited the decision by the U.N. Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to accept the state of Palestine as a member state as part of the reason for the Trump administration's withdrawal.
The inclusion of Palestine is "contrary to U.S. policy, and contributed to the proliferation of anti-Israel rhetoric within the organization," Bruce claimed without citing examples.
Audrey Azoulay, director-general of the agency, said the U.S. withdrawal—which President Donald Trump also imposed during his first term, and which will eliminate about 8% of UNESCO's international funding—was "regrettable," but that the organization would continue operating without a reduction in staff, having prepared for the president's exit.
"In spite of President Donald Trump's first withdrawal in 2017, UNESCO stepped up its efforts to take action wherever its mission could contribute to peace and demonstrated the pivotal nature of its mandate," said Azoulay, noting that UNESCO adopted a "global standard-setting instrument on the ethics of artificial intelligence," developed major programs for education in conflict settings, took action to defend biodiversity, and oversaw the reconstruction of Mosul, Iraq—all without the participation of the United States.
Azoulay added that the reasons for the U.S. withdrawal, which will go into effect in December 2026, "contradict the reality of UNESCO's efforts, particularly in the field of Holocaust education and the fight against antisemitism."
"Palestine firmly rejects the justifications provided by the United States for its withdrawal, considering them an unacceptable politicization of UNESCO's work and a failed attempt to deflect attention from the violations committed by Israel."
The Trump administration, along with many establishment Democratic and Republican lawmakers, has explicitly equated expressions of support for Palestinians and criticism of Israel with antisemitism. UNESCO has denounced the Israeli government and military for their destruction of schools and cultural sites and their killing of journalists in Gaza.
Azoulay emphasized that UNESCO is "the only United Nations agency responsible" for promoting Holocaust education and for the global fight against antisemitism, "and its work has been unanimously acclaimed by major specialized organizations such as the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C., the World Jewish Congress and its American Section, and the American Jewish Committee (AJC)."
"UNESCO will continue to carry out these missions," she said, "despite inevitably reduced resources."
The agency is also well known for designating World Heritage sites, more than 20 of which are in the United States.
U.S. Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.), ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, called the withdrawal from UNESCO "another assault by the Trump administration on international cooperation and U.S. global leadership."
Along with promoting education about the Holocaust, Meeks said, UNESCO "directly benefits the U.S. economy through its Creative Cities and World Heritage programs, through which the United States has recently secured two new World Heritage inscriptions in Ohio and Pennsylvania—promoting to the world the beauty, culture, and heritage of American cities."
Before Trump withdrew from UNESCO for the first time in 2017, the Obama administration cut funding to the organization after it admitted Palestine as a member state in 2011.
The state of Palestine's Ministry of Foreign Affairs expressed "deep regret" over the Trump administration's decision on Tuesday.
"Palestine firmly rejects the justifications provided by the United States for its withdrawal, considering them an unacceptable politicization of UNESCO's work and a failed attempt to deflect attention from the violations committed by Israel, the illegal occupying power, against heritage, culture, and archaeological sites in Palestine, as well as in other areas such as education, science, media, and the environment," said officials.
The ministry also advised the U.S. not to "bind its own international standing to the crimes and violations committed by Israel."
"Otherwise," it said, "it would find itself compelled to withdraw from the entire multilateral international system, in order to shield Israel from accountability, thus encouraging it to continue perpetrating its crimes as a rogue state operating outside the framework of international legality."
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