September 2025 EVENTS

On Tuesday, Trump said the U.S. military blew up a vessel in the Caribbean, killing 11 people. The administration said the boat had departed from Venezuela and described the operation as a narco-trafficking bust against Tren de Aragua gang members. 

The Trump administration quickly produced a blurry video of the explosion, but the images don’t prove who was aboard, what they were doing or whether drugs were even present. The White House has offered no hard evidence that the dead were members of a gang. “Pentagon officials were still working Wednesday on what legal authority they would tell the public was used to back up the extraordinary strike in international waters,” The New York Times reported.

Defending the decision to reporters in Mexico City on Wednesday, Rubio said that “instead of interdicting it, on the president’s orders, we blew it up — and it’ll happen again.” He argued that ordinary seizures don’t deter traffickers, adding, “What will stop them is if you blow them up. The president is going to wage war on narco-terrorist organizations.”

Florida State Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo, a long-time vaccine skeptic who also led a push to ban flouride in drinking water, has announced that Florida would move to end all state school requirements for vaccines.

“Every last one of them is wrong and drips with disdain and slavery,” Ladapo said about Florida’s vaccine requirements. “Who am I to tell you what your child should put in their body? I don’t have that right. Your body is a gift from God.”

Florida currently has a variety of immunization requirements for those entering schools and colleges, including shots for measles, polio and chickenpox. The state does allow for exemptions, and the recent data shows nearly 89 percent of students entering kindergarten are immunized.

DeSantis said Wednesday that he backed Ladapo. This change will require action by the state Department of Health and the Republican-controlled Florida Legislature. He also touted Ladapo as a possible head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC director was just ousted amid a conflict that included disagreements over vaccine requirements.

Minnesota epidemiologist Dr. Michael Osterholm called the announcement a “reckless decision” that “will needlessly endanger the health of children in Florida.”

“It flies in the face of a mountain of evidence that clearly shows the benefits of vaccinating kids before they enter school, and it makes the entire state less safe to visit or live in,” said Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy. “Every parent of a child who dies or who is hospitalized with a vaccine-preventable disease will know exactly why.”

Victims of Jeffrey Epstein shared emotional accounts of sexual abuse as they called for lawmakers to release all of the Epstein files on the steps of the US Capitol.

During the two-hour news conference on Wednesday, nine female Epstein accusers detailed their experiences and abuse.

One of the women, Lisa Phillips, said the group had begun compiling a confidential list of Epstein associates who they say were involved in abuse.

"We will confidentially compile the names we all know were regularly in the Epstein world," she said. "It will be done by survivors, and for survivors."

Phillips urged the US Department of Justice to release all the documents and information it has from the investigation, adding that many victims were afraid of repercussions if they went public with names themselves.

A lawyer for the accusers said that they were scared of being sued or attacked because "nobody protected them the first time".

Liz Stein, who sued Epstein and his associate Ghislaine Maxwell, told the BBC that she spoke at the Capitol rally to "humanize survivors" because she was tired of them being ignored.

"It's really important for us all to remember that this is a crime. It's a crime of sex trafficking. This isn't a political issue, but it's being politicized because of the people involved," Stein said.

Trump will sign an executive order Friday to alter the name of the Department of Defense to the Department of War. 

The executive order calls for using the Department of War as a secondary title for the Department of Defense, along with phrases like "secretary of war" for Hegseth, according to a White House fact sheet.

In the wake of the Minneapolis Catholic church shooting, senior Justice Department officials are weighing proposals to limit transgender people’s right to possess firearms, according to two officials familiar with the internal discussions.

The preliminary talks appear to be based on the recent Minneapolis shooting at Annunciation Catholic Church, an attack that police say was carried out by a 23-year-old transgender woman.

From January 2013 to the present, of the more than 5,700 mass shootings in America (defined as four or more victims shot and killed), only five shooters were confirmed as transgender, according to Mark Bryant, founding executive director of the Gun Violence Archive.

The goal of the potential ban, according to the Justice official, is “to ensure that mentally ill individuals suffering from gender dysphoria are unable to obtain firearms while they are unstable and unwell.”

During around three hours of testimony in a Senate hearing on Thursday, Kennedy repeated vaccine misinformation, was unable to answer questions which any head of the CDC should know, went after the CDC, gave differing explanations on his vision for reshaping the agency, and got in shouting matches with Senators.

Some examples include:

 WARNER: Do you accept the fact that 1 million Americans died from covid?

RFK Jr: I don't know how many died

WARNER: You're the secretary of health and human services. You don't have any idea how many Americans died from covid?

RFK Jr: I don't think anybody knows that because there was so much data chaos coming out of the CDC 

and

 RFK Jr.: We are the sickest country in the world. That's why we have to fire people at the CDC. 

and

SEN. CASSIDY (R) : “Do you agree Trump deserves the Nobel Prize for Operation Warp speed?”

RFK JR.: “Absolutely.”

SEN. CASSIDY: “But you just told Senator Bennet the COVID vaccine killed more people than COVID.”

RFK JR.: “….”