Suspect to face upgraded charges of murder in the first degree, says US attorney for DC
Jeanine Pirro, the US attorney for the District of Columbia, this morning announced that charges against the suspected shooter were being upgraded.
Pirro told Fox News on Friday morning: “There are certainly many more charges to come, but we are upgrading the initial charges of assault to murder in the first degree.
“And we are hoping that the more information we can get and the more investigation that is going on 24/7 now, around the clock in Washington, the more we will find out about what actually happened in terms of this individual even being in this country and being in a position to ambush and shoot down an innocent young woman who was doing her duty to the people of this country.”
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Hegseth reportedly gave order to kill everybody in first Caribbean boat strike
Defense secretary Pete Hegseth gave a spoken directive to leave no survivors in the first US strike on a boat in the Caribbean, the Washington Post (paywall) reports, citing two people with direct knowledge of the operation.
“The order was to kill everybody,” one of them said.
As two survivors clung to the smouldering wreck, the Special Operations commander overseeing the 2 September attack ordered a second strike to comply with Hegseth’s instructions, two people familiar with the matter told the Post. Per the Post’s report: “The two men were blown apart in the water.”
The Intercept first reported that the survivors were killed in a follow-up attack.
The Pentagon’s lethal campaign on alleged drug traffickers in the Caribbean and Pacific has killed more than 80 people in at least 23 strikes to date. The United Nations and other humanitarian organisations have described the attacks as extrajudicial executions.
A reminder that the US has failed to provide any evidence that the targeted vessels were actually carrying drugs, and legal experts say that even if they were, they did not pose an immediate threat.
Per the Post: “In briefing materials provided to the White House, JSOC reported that the “double-tap,” or follow-on strike, was intended to sink the boat and remove a navigation hazard to other vessels — not to kill survivors, according to another person who saw the report.
“In subsequent strikes on alleged traffickers that left no survivors, the US military has also fired multiple missiles to remove boats from the waterways, several people familiar with the matter said.”
Chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell declined to address the Washington Post’s questions about Hegseth’s order and other details of the operation, including Special Operations involvement.
“This entire narrative is completely false,” he said in a statement. “Ongoing operations to dismantle narcoterrorism and to protect the Homeland from deadly drugs have been a resounding success.”
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Updated at 13.43 EST
Donald Trump weighed in on Honduras’ tightly contested presidential race again this morning, backing Nasry Asfura of the conservative National Party, saying he can work with Asfura to counter drug trafficking.
“I hope the people of Honduras vote for Freedom and Democracy, and elect Tito Asfura, President!” Trump said on Truth Social.
Hondurans go to the polls on Sunday to vote in an election that remains a toss-up, with polls showing Asfura virtually tied with former defense minister Rixi Moncada, of the ruling leftist LIBRE Party, and television host Salvador Nasralla of the centrist Liberal Party.
In his post, Trump claimed Moncada was a communist while alleging that Nasralla is a “borderline communist” running to take votes away from Asfura. Neither candidate identifies as a communist.
“Will [Venezuelan president Nicolás] Maduro and his Narcoterrorists take over another country like they have taken over Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela?” Trump asked in his post, saying that Asfura would fight against Maduro.
The Trump administration has accused the Venezuelan leader of links to drug trafficking and criminal groups, which Maduro denies.
Asfura’s party forged a close partnership with Washington under former president Juan Orlando Hernandez, who governed from 2014 to 2022. Hernandez was arrested shortly after leaving office and is serving a 45-year prison sentence in the US after his conviction on drug trafficking and firearms charges.
The Organization of American States and the US state department have both raised concerns about Honduras’ electoral process and said they are monitoring it closely.
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Updated at 12.52 EST
Donald Trump has said that South Africa won’t be invited to next year’s G20 summit in Miami, extending a diplomatic row between the countries after the US boycotted the summit in Johannesburg last weekend.
In a post on Truth Social this morning, Trump repeated his widely discredited claims of a “genocide” against white Afrikaners in the country. “They are killing white people, and randomly allowing their farms to be taken from them,” he wrote.
“At the conclusion of the G20, South Africa refused to hand off the G20 Presidency to a Senior Representative from our U.S. Embassy, who attended the Closing Ceremony. Therefore, at my direction, South Africa will NOT be receiving an invitation to the 2026 G20, which will be hosted in the Great City of Miami, Florida next year,” Trump went on.
“South Africa has demonstrated to the World they are not a country worthy of Membership anywhere, and we are going to stop all payments and subsidies to them, effective immediately.”
South Africa called the move “punitive” and “regrettable”. The presidency said in a statement: “It is regrettable that despite the efforts and numerous attempts by President Ramaphosa and his administration to reset the diplomatic relationship with the US, President Trump continues to apply punitive measures against South Africa based on misinformation and distortions about our country.”
Donald Trump ambushed South Africa’s president Cyril Ramaphosa in the Oval Office on 21 May with allegations of ‘genocide’ against white farmers. Photograph: Evan Vucci/AP
Trump had already said in February that he was stopping aid to South Africa, accusing the government of discriminating against white minority Afrikaners, who ruled the country during apartheid and remain on average many times wealthier than black South Africans, including inciting violence against white farmers and confiscating their land.
South Africa’s government and many of its citizens have repeatedly pushed back against these claims, noting that land expropriation is only allowed under limited circumstances and that South Africa’s high crime rate affects everyone in the country.
The Trump administration in May began offering white South Africans refugee status in the US, while stopping all other refugee arrivals.
My colleague Rachel Savage has more on this story:
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Updated at 11.49 EST
Jason Wilson
Hacked materials from the powerful rightwing thinktank the Heritage Foundation show that applicants to a Project 2025-branded effort to create a talent pool for the Trump administration cited the influence of Nazi political theorists and other far-right thinkers on their political views.
Not all applicants revealed in the hack ended up with Trump administration jobs, but some current appointees did make applications.
And amid a developing “civil war” on the right about the influence of the antisemitic far right – which has included internal dissension at Heritage – the materials show that at least seven members of a nationwide network of men-only, nativist and antisemitic clubs applied to work in the administration, revealing the extent to which the Republicans and the far-right have converged.
A reminder that Project 2025 was a policy project by Heritage designed to influence and power the agenda of the second Trump administration along radical conservative lines.
Here’s the full story:
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West Virginia senator Shelley Moore Capito on Thursday defended the deployment of National Guard troops from her state to Washington, DC.
Capito, a Republican, told Fox News that crime in the city had declined and questioned whether Democratic lawmakers criticizing former President Donald Trump’s decision to send troops to Washington had spoken with Guard members on the ground.
The two Guard members shot on Wednesday had been assigned to duty in Washington since August, the West Virginia National Guard said in a statement.
West Virginia Governor Patrick Morrisey deployed the troops at Trump’s request.
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West Virginia governor Patrick Morrisey reaffirmed his support for the state’s National Guard members deployed in Washington, DC.
“When you have these terrorists, when you have these evildoers, you’re not going to back down when they go after our servicemen and women,” Morrisey, a Republican, told CNN.
He said pulling back the Guard’s mission would amount to yielding to those responsible for the attack.
“The last thing we should do is reverse course and let the bad guys win,” he said, calling the perpetrators individuals who had “violated every law and societal norm.”
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New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani said he was “devastated” by the death of Sarah Beckstrom.
In a post on X, he asked followers to take a moment to think of those “who have been plunged into unimaginable grief”.
He wrote:
I’m devastated to learn of the passing of Specialist Sarah Beckstrom, a member of the West Virginia National Guard. She was only twenty years old.
As families across the nation come together today to celebrate Thanksgiving, let us take a moment to think of those in West Virginia who have been plunged into unimaginable grief.
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Guardsman Andrew Wolfe still in critical condition
Guardsman Andrew Wolfe, 24, was “fighting for his life” following the attack, US president Donald Trump said.
Meanwhile, attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro said on Friday that he remained in critical condition.
“We still have hope. He’s still in critical condition,” Pirro said. “We are doing everything we can to assist his family and to make sure that they have everything they need during this difficult time for them.
“We are all praying for Andrew Wolfe.”
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Updated at 09.36 EST
Gary Beckstrom, the father of West Virginia National Guard member Sarah Beckstrom, said in a Facebook post on Thursday that his daughter had died.
“My baby girl has passed to glory,” he wrote, adding that the loss was a “horrible tragedy” and asking friends not to be offended if he was unable to speak with them.
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Suspect to face upgraded charges of murder in the first degree, says US attorney for DC
Jeanine Pirro, the US attorney for the District of Columbia, this morning announced that charges against the suspected shooter were being upgraded.
Pirro told Fox News on Friday morning: “There are certainly many more charges to come, but we are upgrading the initial charges of assault to murder in the first degree.
“And we are hoping that the more information we can get and the more investigation that is going on 24/7 now, around the clock in Washington, the more we will find out about what actually happened in terms of this individual even being in this country and being in a position to ambush and shoot down an innocent young woman who was doing her duty to the people of this country.”
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The Guardian’s Washington DC bureau chief David Smith wrote this analysis after the shooting earlier this week:
“Washington DC is considered a safe zone,” Donald Trump declared on Tuesday, veering off topic at the national Thanksgiving turkey pardoning ceremony at the White House. “This was one of the most unsafe places anywhere in the United States. It is now considered a totally safe city.”
A day later, two national guardsmen from West Virginia were shot in a busy area a few blocks from the White House in downtown Washington. The ambush took place outside the Farragut West Metro railway station within sight of the Guardian’s office (I had been in the station three hours earlier and witnessed national guard troops milling around).
In a speech from his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida on Wednesday evening, Trump said the suspect entered the US from Afghanistan in 2021. For the president it was a political opportunity and he was determined to exploit it. Immigration? Check. Law and order? Check. All Joe Biden’s fault? Check.
Trump accused his predecessor of allowing millions of violent criminals into the US and launched a xenophobic attack on Somalis in Minnesota: “Hundreds of thousands of Somalians are ripping off our country, and ripping apart that once great state.” Notably, the previous evening, his aide Stephen Miller had decried “the Somalification of America”, telling Fox News: “Look how powerful the Democrat Party became in Minnesota once they flooded it with 100,000 Somalians!”
Then Trump announced a review of the status Afghan nationals in the US. “We must now reexamine every single alien who has entered our country from Afghanistan under Biden, and we must take all necessary measures to ensure the removal of any alien from any country who does not belong here or add benefit to our country.”
Raising the spectre of a newly aggressive crackdown by ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement), the remarks came as little surprise from a president who has made illegal immigration central to his political identity. The White House regularly sends out lists and images of undocumented immigrants convicted of crimes and could not resist playing up the suspect’s nationality.
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Trump was elected on a promise to crack down on illegal migration and his second term has been characterized by a campaign of mass deportations.
Construction sites and schools have been frequent targets. The prospect of more deportations could be economically dangerous as America’s foreign-born workers account for nearly 31m jobs, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The Guardian’s immigration crackdown tracker has been keeping count of Trump’s enforcement drive:
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Trump’s late-night Truth Social post was full of anti-immigrant invective.
The president blamed immigrants for problems from crime to housing shortages as part of “social dysfunction” in America and demanding “REVERSE MIGRATION”.
Trump’s threat to stop immigration would be a serious blow to a nation that has long defined itself as welcoming immigrants.
The president asserted without evidence that millions of people born outside the US and now living there were to blame for America’s societal ills.
“Only REVERSE MIGRATION can fully cure this situation,” Trump wrote. “Other than that, HAPPY THANKSGIVING TO ALL, except those that hate, steal, murder, and destroy everything that America stands for — You won’t be here for long!”
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Updated at 08.39 EST
One of two US national guard soldiers shot in a targeted attack near the White House this week has died, while the second is fighting for his life, Donald Trump has announced.
As part of his Thanksgiving call to US troops late on Thursday, the US president said he had been informed that Sarah Beckstrom, 20, had succumbed to her wounds.
“Sarah Beckstrom of West Virginia, one of the guardsmen that we’re talking about, highly respected, young, magnificent person … She’s just passed away. She’s no longer with us,” Trump said in his first live remarks since the shooting on Wednesday.
Staff Sgt Andrew Wolfe, 24, is ‘fighting for his life’, Trump said. Photograph: Nathan Howard/Reuters
Trump added that the second guard member, Staff Sgt Andrew Wolfe, 24, was “fighting for his life”.
Beckstrom’s father had told the New York Times in a phone call earlier in the day that his daughter was unlikely to recover. “I’m holding her hand right now,” Gary Beckstrom said. “She has a mortal wound. It’s not going to be a recovery.”
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Trump steps up immigration crackdown after national guard member dies in DC attack
Donald Trump has said he will “permanently pause migration from all third world countries,” a day after two national guard members were shot in Washington DC in an attack that has become a political flashpoint in the president’s ongoing crackdown on immigration.
In a social media post beginning with “a very happy Thanksgiving,” sent after 11pm on Thursday, the US president said his administration would “end all federal benefits and subsidies to noncitizens” and remove “anyone who is not a net asset to the United States”.
It as not clear how the president would enact such a “pause” in migration. Previous bans issued by his administration have faced challenges in the courts and in Congress.
Earlier in the night, Trump announced the death of Sarah Beckstrom, one of the two guard members shot in the attack close to the White House on Wednesday. Authorities suspect the shooting was carried out by Rahmanullah Lakanwal, an Afghan national who entered the US in September 2021 under a Biden-era programme that evacuated and resettled tens of thousands from Afghanistan after the chaotic US withdrawal from the country.
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Updated at 08.48 EST
