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Published On 3 Dec 2025
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Sabrina Carpenter condemns ‘evil’ use of her music in White House video
Published On 3 Dec 2025
The use of their music and imagery by US President Donald Trump’s administration has been disapproved by Sabrina Carpenter, a popular singer, and Franklin the Turtle, a well-known children’s book publisher.
In a video montage featuring US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids, Carpenter responded on social media by using her song Juno from her 2024 album Short n’ Sweet. Never use my music or me to advance your cruel plan.
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Have you ever tried this song, lyrics by Carpenter were quoted in the clip’s caption, “Have you ever tried this one? ” Bye-bye”.
Abigail Jackson, a spokesman for the White House, responded in a statement with “we won’t apologize for deporting dangerous criminal criminal illegal murderers, rapists, and pedophiles from our country. Anyone who would stand up for these sick monsters must be foolish, or will it just go away slowly?
Meanwhile, publisher Kids Can Press, a publisher of Franklin the Turtle, condemned US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s post on X that featured a manipulated image of him shooting a bazooka at boats on Monday.
The image was shared by Hegseth with the caption “Franklin Targets Narco Terrorists”
In a post shared on social media, Kids Can Press wrote that “Franklin the Turtle is a beloved Canadian icon who has inspired generations of children and stands for kindness, empathy, and inclusivity.”
The statement further stated that “we firmly condemn any denigrating, violent, or unauthorized use of Franklin’s name or image that directly conflicts with these values.”
Hegseth shared the video as he continues to face allegations that he ordered a second, deadly strike on two survivors of an alleged drug-smuggling boat attack in the Caribbean Sea in September. Following the incident, potential war crimes have been reportedly investigated.
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Other artists have voiced opposition to the music used by Trump and his team.
Kenny Loggins, an American singer and guitarist, recently demanded that the president’s song “Dangerous Zone” be removed from the film Top Gun.
Trump was depicted in the video dropping excrement on political opponents using AI-generated images.
Beyonce’s remark in response to Celine Dion’s song “My Heart Will Go On” being used in a campaign video in 2024, and Celine Dion also criticized the song’s use in Freedom the same year.
However, Trump lists a number of musicians among his supporters, including Village People’s only original member Victor Willis.
Trump says he has revoked Biden’s autopen pardons: But can he do it?
Donald Trump, the president of the United States, claims that he has revoked all of his predecessor’s pardons and commutations using an autopen.
On Tuesday evening, Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social, “Any and all Documents, Proclamations, Executive Orders, Memorandums, or Contracts signed by the now infamous and unauthorised ‘Autopen,’ within the Administration of Joseph R. Biden Jr., are hereby null, void, and of no further force or effect.”
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Anybody who receives “Pardons,” “Commutations,” or any other legal document signed, please be informed that the document has been completely and legally terminated and has no legal effect, he said.
However, legal experts contend that the president’s decision is unenforceable.
What documents did Biden sign with the autopen, who will be affected, and is Trump’s move legal?
What documents did Biden and his autopen sign?
Trump has argued on numerous occasions that Biden’s use of the autopen, a mechanical device that makes it possible to sign documents without holding a hand, was indicative of the former president’s physical and mental frailty.
According to the non-partisan Pew Research Center, Biden has issued a record 4,245 clemency acts in his four years in office, more than any other US president since the start of the 20th century.
The majority of these actions involved sentence reductions or commutations. Although he only issued 80 individual pardons, which was the second-lowest number over the same time period, he was more well-known for enacting “pardons by proclamation,” which affected a wide range of people.
According to the Pew Research Center, these included pardons by proclamation for former military personnel who had been found guilty of abusing a gay sex ban, which has since been overturned.
However, it is unclear how many and which pardons and commutations Biden’s orders were executed using an autopen.
Trump’s decision: legal or not?
Trump does not have the authority to revoke pardons or commutations, according to Bernadette Miller, a Stanford University expert on US and UK constitutional law.
This declaration is legally unenforceable. Any laws or pardons that Biden has authorized remain effective. An executive order, she said, “would be the only exception that an executive order can have until it is overturned by the same president or another president.”
Trump might revoke those orders, so presumably this statement would undo any such orders. However, laws and pardons are still effective.
A separate study from PolitiFact, a fact-checking website run by the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, found that “there is no constitutional mechanism for overturning pardons, and an 1869 judicial ruling determined that a pardon is final.”
According to PolitiFact, the US Constitution does not require a pardon to be formally endorsed by hand.
Who might be impacted by Trump’s action?
Trump has previously argued that autopen signed a number of “preemptive” pardons that Biden gave US legislators as part of their investigation into the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol.
The Capitol was attacked by a mob of Trump supporters who claimed the 2020 election was a fraud and were trying to stop Biden from being elected president by Congress. Trump and his supporters have repeatedly failed to demonstrate widespread election fraud.
Republicans who opted to investigate Trump, such as ex-members of Congress Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, are seen by the US president and his allies as traitors of their movement.
Because they were issued by Autopen, Trump claimed on Truth Social in March that these legislators’ pardons were “VOID, VACANT, AND OF NO FURTHER FORCE OR EFFECT.”
Biden was the first to employ an autopen.
According to PolitiFact, Biden was not the only US president to rely on an autopen.
Similar devices have been around for the majority of American history, but autopens’s design has changed as technology has developed.
The third US president, Thomas Jefferson, used a technique known as a polygraph, which is a pair of pens rigged so that the second can imitate the first’s actions.
John F. Kennedy used a more contemporary version of the autopen in the early 1960s. Barack Obama has occasionally used autopens, more recently.
Venezuela denounces US-ordered ‘forced sale’ of oil company Citgo
Colombia’s Petro invites Trump to cocaine lab demolition amid attack threat
After Trump warned that any nation that imports drugs into the United States could be attacked, “not just Venezuela,” Colombian President Gustavo Petro has invited US President Donald Trump to visit his country and take part in the destruction of cocaine laboratories.
Trump criticized Colombia for producing cocaine and selling it into the US during a Cabinet meeting on Tuesday at the White House.
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“I’ve heard that Colombia, the nation of Colombia, produces cocaine. Trump claimed that they have cocaine factories, okay, and then sell it to us.
He said, “Anyone who does that and sells it into our country is attacked.”
Petro quickly responded to Trump by claiming that “without missiles” his government had destroyed 18,400 cocaine labs.
“Come to Colombia, Mr. Trump,” Petro remarked.
To stop cocaine from reaching the US, Petro said, “Come with me, and I’ll show you how they are destroyed, one laboratory every 40 minutes.”
Petro cautioned against “threatening Colombia’s sovereignty,” which he claimed would “wake up a Jaguar.”
Avoid compromising two centuries of diplomatic relations. You have already slandered me; don’t go back in that direction, Petro said, making an apparent reference to Trump’s earlier claims that the Colombian leader was a part of the drug trade.
Colombia is the only nation that has assisted in preventing the influx of thousands of tonnes of cocaine from being consumed by North Americans, Petro said.
Venga seor Trump travels to Colombia on an invitation to participate in the demolition of the nine diabolical labor camps so that no one can compete against the EEUU.
Sin misiles, he was destruid in my home of 18.400 laboratorios, venga conmigo, and the enseense that led to his destruction… https://t.co/8WOKnclDK7
Colombia continues to be the main gateway to the US market for cocaine, with 84 percent of the cocaine seized there in 2024 coming from Colombia.
At least 83 people were killed when Trump’s administration launched missile attacks on ships in the Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea while using the pretext to stop the flow of drugs to the US from Venezuela.
Trump was seated next to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who is under investigation for a so-called “double-tap” strike in September that left two survivors of an earlier US attack on a vessel in the Caribbean Sea, which had already killed nine people, as he made his remarks about the expansion of attacks against narcotics-exporting nations.
According to legal experts, the second killing of the two survivors as they clung to the wreckage of the devasted vessel could have been a war crime, and both Democrat and Republican lawmakers have pledged to look into the circumstances surrounding the killings.
Hegseth defended the secondary strike, but he claimed on Tuesday that he had not witnessed the second deadly US attack or the first attack despite having witnessed the first one on the suspected drug smuggling vessel in person.
The Pentagon director claimed that he only learned shortly after the second strike on survivors from US Admiral Frank Bradley, the head of special operations command.
US defence chief says he did not see survivors before follow-up boat strike
Published On 3 Dec 2025
Prior to the second deadly strike, which sparked calls for an investigation into possible war crimes, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has denied seeing any survivors from a military strike on an alleged drug-smuggling boat in the Caribbean Sea in September.
Hegseth claimed at a Cabinet meeting at the White House on Tuesday that he had witnessed the contentious follow-up strike but had not witnessed the initial strike.
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At the meeting presided over by President Donald Trump, Hegseth stated, “We have a lot of things to do at the Department of War, so I didn’t stick around.” Despite the president’s claim that he is a peacemaker and has broken numerous ceasefire agreements, the Trump administration refers to the department as the “Department of War.”
Hegseth claimed that Admiral Frank Bradley, who was the mission commander for the September 2 attacks and heads special operations in the US military, had made the “right call” to launch the second strike and “destroy the threat.”
Hegseth continued, noting that the strike’s location had been obscured by fire and smoke. “I did not personally see survivors,” he said.
The fog of war refers to this.
Hegseth claimed that Bradley was fully supported by the Trump administration and that it had given commanders the authority to carry out “difficult things on behalf of the American people in the dead of night.”
Hegseth’s remarks came as Democrats and legal experts demanded more transparency regarding the double-tap strike, which Democrats and legal experts have deemed to be a likely war crime.
According to US Senator Chris Van Hollen, who spoke on X about Hegseth’s previous work as a host on Fox News, “Secretary Talk Show host may have been experiencing the “folk of war” [#]].
“Peter Hegseth is unfit to serve, and one thing is for certain.” He must leave now.
Since The Washington Post reported last week that military commanders had launched a second strike on two survivors who were clinging to the wreckage of the ship in accordance with his command to ensure that no one was left alive, Hegseth’s reputation has grown.
Hegseth criticized The Washington Post report as “fake news,” “fabricated,” and “inflammatory,” citing two unnamed people with whom the matter had been a source of conversation.
The Pentagon’s own book on the “laws of war” declares that firing orders against survivors of shipwrecked vessels “clearly illegal.”
In a contentious military operation to combat alleged drug traffickers, the Trump administration has launched strikes on at least 22 vessels in the Caribbean Sea and Eastern Pacific.
The strikes, which are considered extrajudicial killings and are against international law, have claimed the lives of at least 83 people.