Category: Military

by Caleb Lunetta / San Diego Union-Tribune / Nov. 15, 2025

Scottie Williams, a U.S. Army veteran and Ocean Beach resident, lived with intention, his family said Friday. When the 28-year-old said he’d do something — like finishing a job or committing to hanging out with someone — he’d do it.

On Sunday, Nov. 9 he approached the Silver Strand Half Marathon with that same level of commitment, strongly finishing the race in the same fashion he had completed so many other half marathons before. But after crossing the finish line and receiving his medal, the seemingly healthy Williams collapsed and died.

“It was a normal day,” said Sarah Lloyd, his older sister. “And then he just collapsed. They worked on him for a long time, and they just couldn’t bring him back.”

“We don’t have any answers,” she added.

Any talk of a quick invasion and easy ‘regime change’ is dangerously misleading.

By Mark Hertling / The Bulwark – Reader Supported News / Nov 13, 2025

OVER THE PAST FEW MONTHS, the United States has embarked on a controversial maritime campaign in the Caribbean Sea and Eastern Pacific targeting small Venezuelan and Colombian vessels alleged to be engaged in drug smuggling. Under an asserted “narcoterrorist” deterrence operation, the United States has thus far carried out nineteen twenty lethal strikes on small boats in international waters, killing at least seventy-six people, all undertaken without the transparency, oversight, or legal foundation that normally governs the use of American force.

The Trump administration insists these are long-needed and decisive counternarcotics operations. But U.N. human-rights experts warn that the strikes may “amount[] to extrajudicial executions,” and allies with territory and citizens in the Caribbean are raising alarms about legal exposure, civilian risk, and regional instability. With the USS Gerald R. Ford carrier strike group near to arriving on station and President Trump threatening “hundreds more” strikes, the mission looks less like enhanced interdiction and far more like the early shaping operations for regime-change in Venezuela.

The Trump administration’s murderous strikes on small boats at sea constitute unlawful extrajudicial killings.

By Marjorie Cohn / Truthout / October 30, 2025

As the Trump administration continues to murder people in small boats on the high seas and mounts the largest U.S. military buildup in decades in the Caribbean, it is moving inexorably toward an all-out, illegal attack and forcible regime change in Venezuela.

Despite Team Trump’s feeble attempts to legally justify its ocean strikes, which have now killed 57 people since early September, those extrajudicial killings are also unlawful.

Donald Trump’s murderous campaign came into focus on February 20, when the State Department designated eight drug trafficking organizations, including Tren de Aragua, as foreign terrorist organizations. Although the administration has attempted — so far unsuccessfully — to use that designation to justify sending immigrants to a notorious prison in El Salvador, Trump is now invoking it in an effort to validate his illegal strikes at sea.

Moreover, on March 15, Trump issued “A Proclamation,” alleging that Tren de Aragua has been engaged, in association with Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, in “irregular warfare” in the United States, with no explanation of what is meant by irregular warfare. But on February 26, most U.S. intelligence agencies had made a finding that Tren de Aragua was neither controlled by the Venezuelan government, nor was it committing crimes in the United States on its orders.

Ruling will decide what, if any, limits exist to president’s use of military in the U.S.

By David G. Savage / Los Angeles Times / Oct. 25, 2025

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court is set to rule for the first time on whether the president has the power to deploy troops in American cities over the objections of local and state officials.

A decision could come at any time.

And even a one-line order siding with President Trump would send the message that he is free to use the military to carry out his orders — and in particular, in Democratic-controlled cities and states.

Trump administration lawyers filed an emergency appeal last week asking the court to reverse judges in Chicago who blocked the deployment of the National Guard there.

by Ernie McCray

Looking at our president
as he maniacally spoke
to his generals and admirals
reminded me it’s time for us to invoke
the 25th Amendment
and send him on his un-merry way
because it addresses
removing from office
those who are mentally incapacitated
and this man we’ve got
is losing it in real time
all the time every day –
in a batshit crazy kind of way,

By David Greenwald / Vanguard / October 21, 2025

SAN FRANCISCO – The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has moved to reconsider one of its most consequential rulings of the year, signaling potential full-court review in State of Oregon and City of Portland v. Donald J. Trump et al., a case testing the limits of presidential power to federalize a state’s National Guard over its governor’s objection.

On Monday, October 20, Circuit Judge Sidney R. Thomas, acting as En Banc Coordinator, issued an order stating that “a judge of this Court has sua sponte requested a vote on whether this case should be reheard en banc.”

The order directs all parties to file simultaneous supplemental briefs by midnight Pacific Time on Wednesday, October 22, 2025, addressing whether the case should be reheard before the full court. Each brief must not exceed 14,000 words.

The procedural move followed a divided three-judge panel’s decision earlier in the day lifting a lower court’s temporary restraining order that had blocked the Trump administration from deploying 200 federalized members of the Oregon National Guard to Portland.

By CBS News – Sacramento /  October 22, 2025 

Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Wednesday that he will be deploying state National Guard members as well as California Volunteers to help staff food banks amid the ongoing government shutdown.

Newsom said the action mirrors a step he took early in the COVID-19 pandemic when he also dispatched California National Guard members, again to support food banks.

The governor stated that the Guard troops won’t be acting as law enforcement during the deployment.

“I’m expediting state funds for food banks and directing the California National Guard and California Volunteers to help distribute this food to families,” Newsom stated.

Newsom has been warning that the continued government shutdown could disrupt the CalFresh program, known federally as SNAP, which provides food benefits to around 5.5 million California residents. Food banks across the state have said they are bracing for the potential increase in need.

The governor called out President Trump in his Wednesday announcement of the deployment.

The fall-out (pun indented) from the weekend’s live fire by Marine howitzers over I-5 into Camp Pendleton during Vance’s visit is still falling.

Yesterday’s (Tuesday, Oct. 21) main headline at the LA Times spoke out: “How military’s live fire over I-5 went awry”.

Here’s a few points the article made:

• At first when Federal officials first announced the live fire last week they insisted it would be done with “all safety precautions in place” and said no public highways would be closed.
• Then California officials expressed fears about the live rounds being fired over I- 5.
• On Friday, Oct. 17 – the day before the No Kings Day — the Marines did a test run, and fired live rounds over I-5 while motorists drove on the freeway.
• Early Saturday morning, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced the closure that day of a 17-mile stretch of the interstate — from just south of San Clemente to just north of Oceanside — during the event.
• During the live fire, a CHP cruiser parked on an onramp of Interstate 5 was hit by falling shrapnel after an artillery round exploded midair. Obviously, way before it was supposed to. A CHP officer heard what sounded like falling pebbles hit his bike and the ground.
• This incident forced “an early end to the artillery demonstration. Upon learning of the midair explosion, the Marines canceled the remaining 55 rounds they’d planned to fire.

By Unknown North County Poet / Escondido Grapevine / October 20, 2025

You can’t say America doesn’t know how to celebrate a birthday. For the Marine Corps’ 250th anniversary down at Camp Pendleton, they decided to party the old-fashioned way — with artillery.

A 155-millimeter shell was fired in salute. It didn’t quite wait for the finale. Somewhere between ignition and impact, it skipped the schedule and dropped shrapnel on the California Highway Patrol detail guarding Vice President JD Vance.

No one was hurt, which already puts this in the “success” column for a government event. The fragments landed politely — a pebble here, a dent there — on vehicles parked along a closed stretch of Interstate 5.

That freeway had been shut down by Governor Gavin Newsom, who, in one of those rare moments when politicians prove useful, said maybe shooting live explosives over a freeway wasn’t the best use of a Saturday.

4:56 pm Latest march numbers – from No Kings 2.0
4:33 pm PDT Aerial footage from NBC7

4:07 pm Photos from downtown San Diego keep rolling in. Here’s a batch by Rag writer David Hutchinson.

By Scott Nover / Washington Post / October 15, 2025

The nation’s military and defense journalists exited the Pentagon in unison Wednesday afternoon, having had their accreditation revoked after refusing to agree to the Defense Department’s new restrictions on their newsgathering activities.

The new rules, which among other things bar reporters from soliciting information that the government hasn’t authorized for them, prompted journalists from The Washington Post and dozens of other outlets to turn in their press credentials and decamp for possibly the last time during Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s tenure.

More than 30 members of the Pentagon press corps walked out of the building together before the 5 p.m. deadline, crossing a foot bridge and descending a long staircase that empties out on the northeast end of the five-sided building.

“This is a sad day for those who support a free press,” said Nancy A. Youssef, a staff writer for the Atlantic and a longtime Pentagon correspondent. “But I’m incredibly honored to be part of a press corps that stuck together and was committed to protecting our First Amendment rights.”

The Trumpian Republican campaign to smear the “No Kings Day” protest is utterly failing, as more and more October 18 events are popping up across the country. There’s now over 2500 events planned — with 17 in San Diego County alone.

On Wednesday, Oct. 15, House Speaker Mike Johnson framed the upcoming “No Kings Day” as a “Hate America rally.” He doubled down.

“Let’s see who shows up for that. I bet you see pro-Hamas supporters. I bet you see antifa types. I bet you see the Marxists in full display.”

Other Republicans stumbled over themselves in joining Johnson smears. Representatives Steve Scalise and Lisa McClain also referred to the protest as the “Hate America rally.” Last week, Johnson began the tilt of villainizing constitutionally protected protest when he inexplicably claimed that the “No Kings Day” demonstration was somehow to blame for the government shutdown. “It’s being told to us that they won’t be able to reopen the government until after that rally, ’cuz they can’t face their rabid base,” Johnson said of Democrats at the time.

Yet, this campaign is backfiring. There is more and more talk about the protests, more and more events are being planned, more and more pissed off Americans are planning to attend. Millions are expected. Just 4 months ago, in June, more than 5 million Americans demonstrated in small towns and major cities across the country. And the coordinated “No Kings” protests became one of the largest single-day demonstrations in U.S. history—  definitely the largest since Trump returned to the White House for a second term.