We begin with this clip from a cabinet meeting earlier this week, in which Pete Hegseth described to a journalist his participation in a deadly September 2 strike on an alleged Venezuelan drug smuggling boat, and a second missile fired that killed first-strike survivors.
Secretary of Defense fakes screwing in a sign misidentifying the Department of Defense of the Department of War, a name he likes because it sounds more lethal. Photo credit: U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Madelyn Keech/Wikimedia Commons
News Summary:
* In a closely watched special election, MAGA Republican Matt Van Epps defeated Democrat Aftyn Behn by 9 points in a race to fill a seat vacated by Republican Mark Green, in TN-07. Van Epps was endorsed by Trump; Behn, a former community organizer, was endorsed by DSA. Good news for Mike Johnson’s tiny majority; not such good news for MAGA 2026, since Trump won this district only a year ago by 22 points, and Democrats clawed back a bigger percentage of the vote in every county.
* For the first time since 1988, the Trump administration declined to commemorate World AIDS day. The State Department issued a statement this week saying that “an awareness day is not a strategy,” but it is also the case that the Trump administration has no strategy beyond pretending that AIDS does not exist. Funding cuts to fight AIDS globally have declined by almost 40%. Almost all funding for domestic AIDS prevention has been eliminated for 2026, and programs aimed at developing a vaccine for the HIV virus have been eliminated.
* In a story we have been following in one way or another for several weeks, Speaker Mike Johnson is holding on by a thread in the face of criticism from his caucus—criticism led out by very high profile women. Johnson’s foes include Elise Stefanik (NY-21) who has accused him of lying and “getting rolled” by Democrats. Stefanik has also launched her campaign for governor, which means she can’t run for her House seat in 2026.
* As Democrats circulate a discharge petition to renew existing health insurance subsidies under the ACA for three years, Republicans can’t agree on how to respond to the hole they have dug for themselves. A new poll by KFF, a nonprofit health policy research shop, reveals that a quarter of those who are now insured through the ACA would drop their insurance completely, and about half say it would affect how, or even whether, they vote in the midterm elections. Although those polled had little faith in politicians of either party to solve the problem, the majority were critical of Republicans.
Your hosts:
Claire Potter is a historian of politics and media, a writer, a podcaster, and the sole author and editor of the Political Junkie Substack. Her most recent book is Political Junkies: From Talk Radio to Twitter, How Alternative Media Hooked Us on Politics and Broke Our Democracy (Basic Books, 2020), and she is currently writing a biography of feminist journalist Susan Brownmiller.
Neil J. Young is a historian of religion and politics, a journalist, and a former co-host of the Past Present podcast. His most recent book is Coming Out Republican: A History of the Gay Right (University of Chicago Press, 2024).
Like other members of the Trump administration, Hegseth enjoys sporting uniforms he is not entitled to wear. Here, he cosplays as a fighter pilot at Naval Air Station Fallon, Nevada, on October 19, 2025. Photo credit: U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Madelyn Keech/Wikimedia Commons
News focus: Lyin’ Pete Hegseth
* Hegseth was a controversial nominee for SecDef in the first place: reports of financial mismanagement, sexual assault, and an unresolved alcohol addiction dogged the nomination process. He barely squeezed through with Vice President JD Vance casting a tie-breaking vote in a Republican-majority Senate.
* A military veteran with two Bronze stars, Hegseth was one of a number of high-level Trump appointments plucked out of the Fox News pool: here is a short bio. At 45, he is on his third wife. Hegseth’s second wife was said to have requested aid for spousal abuse on more than one occasion. He was said to habitually drink to the point of passing out, and family members said they feared him when he was drunk.
* Hegseth has also been characterized as a Christian nationalist, and is a self-admitted Islamophobe who believes that Western Civilization is under attack. He has at least two tattoos that suggest he is a white supremacist, and he is a member of the arch-conservative Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches. Not surprisingly, perhaps, Hegseth has initiated and presided over the expulsion of transgender people from the military, has women in combat roles as inherently unqualified, and has reduced the visibility of lesbian and gay people in the military service. He has characterized LGBTQ troops serving openly as part of a “Marxist agenda,” although Marx had little or nothing to say about homosexuals.
* Hegseth’s command decisions have demoted a disproportionate number of Black and female officers, or forced them into retirement. A policy that bans beards is projected to prompt the resignation of significant numbers of Black men, who can develop a painful skin condition from shaving, as well as soldiers who wear beards for religious reasons. Last week, Hegseth barred all soldiers who currently have beard waivers from one of his speaking events in South Korea.
* In a September meeting for which general and flag officers from around the globe were brought to Quantico, VA, Hegseth promoted the return of hazing, bullying and harassment as part of an effective training process. The U.S. military has worked to eliminate hazing since 1874.
* More recently, Hegseth has announced that his department will sever all ties with Scouting America (formerly Boy Scouts of America) which, he claims, promotes DEI and is not a “boy-friendly” space.
* Calls for an investigation into Hegseth’s running of the department have escalated in the past week after yet another deadly attack on a Venezuelan vessel, one followed up by a second strike to kill two survivors adrift in the water.
* One important question is who authorized the second strike, which may violate the laws of war. But legal scholars have also questioned the legality of any strikes on people who, regardless of the Trump administration’s designation of them as terrorists, are still legally civilians.
* But there are bigger issues: Signalgate is back! On Thursday, a Pentagon watchdog report concluded that in March, Hegseth violated his own department’s policies by discussing a military operation against the Houthis on a Signal app installed on his personal device. You can read the report here. In a bizarre twist, Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell issued a statement that report exonerated Hegseth from charges that he breached security protocols, and in a xeet, Hegseth claimed “Total exoneration.” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Vice President JD Vance may also be involved in the cover-up.
* Also on Thursday, the New York Times filed a lawsuit that named numerous administration officials, including Hegseth and Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell. Prompted by new Department of Defense rules that require journalists to take an oath they will not report anything not been approved for release, the suit charges that this requirement violates provisions of the First and Fifth Amendments. The new requirement caused dozens of experienced reporters to walk off the job in October, only to be replaced by influencers and luminaries from right-wing propaganda outlets like Gateway Pundit, One America News, Turning Point USA’s Frontlines, The Federalist and LindellTV.
What we want to go viral:
* Neil is excited about Bobby Smith II’s essay, “History Shows How Cooking Can be a Pivotal Tool for Activism,” (Made By History, TIME, November 8, 2025). Smith tells the story of Georgia Gilmore, a Black female chef fired for her civil rights activism, turned her cooking skills to fund—and feed—the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
* Claire is excited about James Reginato’s, “Oscar Wilde’s Only Grandchild Investigates the ‘Atom Bomb’ of the Oscar Wilde Scandal,” (Vanity Fair, November 28, 2025), which follows the Wilde family’s disintegration after the scandal of their patriarch’s arrest and imprisonment for homosexuality.
Short takes:
* Today, the Supreme Court agreed to hear a challenge to President Donald Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship, one of the most consequential constitutional amendments passed after the Civil War to eliminate barriers to full Black citizenship. The Trump administration argues that the amendment was intended to apply to Black Americans and no one else, but that would repudiate a century of legal precedent. “In a landmark 1898 case, the Supreme Court ruled Wong Kim Ark, a man born to Chinese immigrants in San Francisco, was a U.S. citizen under the 14th Amendment,” Justin Jouvenal writes at The Washington Post. “Roughly 250,000 babies were born to mothers who are in the country illegally or on a temporary basis in 2023, the latest year figures were available, according to the Center for Immigration Studies, which aims to curb immigration.” (December 5, 2025)
* A big driver behind MAGA back in 2015 was the populist revulsion for opportunistic wars, mostly driven by the toll the 20-year War on Terror took on working-class America. But how does Trump’s apparent eagerness for regime change in Venezuela jive with an “America First” agenda? “So far, Trump’s base supports his pivot to hawkish interventionism in Venezuela: 66 percent of MAGA Republicans would favor the United States taking military action in the country, according to a recent poll by CBS News and YouGov,” Conor Friedersdorf writes at The Atlantic. However, “Among Americans as a whole, fully 70 percent oppose a war with Venezuela. But assuming Trump does not usurp the constitutional order by trying for a third term, he will never again face voters, so if there are political consequences for a failed war in Venezuela, as there were for the war in Iraq, other politicians––perhaps Rubio or Vance––will suffer them.” (December 5, 2025)
* Donald Trump is exactly the kind of venal self-dealer our founders worried might ascend to the presidency, Jamelle Bouie writes at The New York Times, and his abuse of the pardon power is a prime example. “But if there’s an issue that demands constitutional amendment, it’s this one. Americans should give serious consideration to whether they want to amend the Constitution to restructure the president’s pardon power—to limit its scope and make it more subject to the checks and balances that are supposed to structure the American system,” Bouie proposes. “Even without an amendment on the table, a future Congress could use its power and authority to speak about the Constitution to condemn the Trump pardons as an unconstitutional abuse of power. That Congress could say, through legislation, that the pardons are invalid. It could investigate the pardons and force the White House to explain itself. And in the almost certain event that this would then reach the Supreme Court, congressional action could push the court to state its view, so that the American people know where they stand if they decide to rein in the president’s authority.” (December 3, 2025)
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