6/ CNN confirms:

"The survivors were also waving at something in the air, the sources said Bradley told them, although it’s unclear whether they might have been surrendering or asking the US aircraft they had spotted for help."

By @natashabertrand.bsky.social

5/ source (Gift Link):

Video of Boat Strike Shows Survivors Waving Before Fatal Follow-Up Attack
www.nytimes.com/2025/12/05/u...

4/ Even worse on these officials account, it seems if the third view is correct, that was a reason to kill the survivors.

You read that right, and I am not exaggerating.⤵️

A shipwrecked person beckoning others to come rescue them is a basis for killing them.

3/ "But some lawmakers viewing the video rejected that interpretation. There were no other unknown aircraft or boats in visual range, and no other boats involved in drug trafficking could have rescued them."

And even worse, if I am understanding this logic correctly, ...

2/ What Adm. Bradley and Gen. Caine told Congress raises credibility concerns.

"The military officers briefing Congress on Thursday said the survivors could have been trying to beckon to other alleged drug traffickers in a plane or boat to come get them...."

But ... get this ...

literally 'the court responsible for fact-finding should have just assumed nicer things about the government instead!' 🥴

Anyway, I'm no grand scholar of the judiciary, and all of this is just my own two cents and perhaps I'm overreading the extent to which the lower courts are going to be upset, but as someone who cares deeply about *facts,* I'm mostly just frustrated about the extent to which this Court doesn't.

The reason the judiciary functions is because judges understand that despite everyone being human beings who hold grudges and have stupid opinions and peccadilloes and flaws, there is a sense that you have to justify what you're doing on more than "because I say so."

This Court is undermining that.

It's not just liberal judges they're doing this to. They're doing this to plenty of conservative judges too; judges who actually spent weeks and weeks poring over the details and with their arms deep in the guts of thousands of pages of documents and days of testimony.

Those judges are pissed.

I don't think the Justices understand the extent to which they are playing with fire. The more they do this, the more District Courts will engage in open disrespect of the Supreme Court, because what other response is there to open disrespect directed at them? That's bad for the Judiciary, period.

The Supreme Court majority has decided that they are the fact-finders, and the facts are what they want them to be, and quite frankly if District Courts disagree, they can pound sand because they're not the ones in charge.

They're right about the last part. But the damage they're doing is longterm.

As Justice Kagan begins her dissent by pointing out, what is even the point of trial, of fact-finding, of clear error, of standards of review, when the Supreme Court simply ignores every single part of that and decides everything purely on the papers without any real consideration of the facts?

As Kagan notes, SCOTUS has given states a cheat code to enact illegally racist voting laws: just pass them close enough to an election that the Purcell principle will bar judicial review!

Under this logic, courts couldn’t block actual Jim Crow laws within a year of an election. It can’t be right.