THE FBI STORY: The FBI is seeking interviews with six Democratic lawmakers who made a video urging members of the military to refuse to obey illegal orders. President Trump called the video “seditious.”

  Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin said; “The President’s reaction and the use of the FBI against us is exactly why we made the video. He believes in using the federal government against his perceived adversaries, and he is not afraid to use the arms of the government against people he disagrees with.”

  The video did not specify any orders to disobey but Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth posted on Twitter/X; “The despicable video urging @DeptofWar troops to ‘refuse illegal orders’ may seem harmless to civilians — but it carries a different weight inside the military. This was a politically-motivated influence operation.”

  All six who appeared in the 90-second video served in the military or intelligence and their advice echoed the code of military justice. But Hegseth said, “As veterans of various sorts, the Seditious Six knew exactly what they were doing — sowing doubt through a politically-motivated influence operation. The @DeptofWar won’t fall for it or stand for it.”

THE WAR ROOM:  Russia continues to pound Ukraine, killing civilians, while displaying little indication that it will sign on to the peace deal under discussion. Seven people were killed yesterday in Kyiv.

  US and Russian officials have been talking in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates. President Trump claims to have made “tremendous progress with respect to ending the War between Russia and Ukraine.”

THE REGIME: 

— Secretary of Health Robert F. Kennedy Jr. appears to have surreptitiously appointed a vaccine skeptic to be deputy in charge of the Centers for Disease Control. The name of Dr. Ralph Abraham appeared on the CDC website as second in command without any publicity.

  As surgeon general of Louisiana, Abraham ordered the state health department to stop promoting vaccinations and called the Covid shot “dangerous.” He has been a proponent of a malaria drug and the animal medicine Ivermectin to combat Covid.

  Abraham has also advised avoiding the use of Tylenol during pregnancy because of what is an unproven link to autism in the infant. 

— The mother of White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt’s nephew has been detained by ICE, accused of being in the country illegally. Bruna Caroline Ferreira, “a criminal illegal alien from Brazil,” was taken into custody in Revere, Mass., for overstaying her tourist visa that expired in June 1999, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson told NBC News.

  Ferreira came into the country as a child. She and Leavitt’s brother, Michael, are not together as a couple.

— The Trump administration is snapping up ownership shares of private companies they believe are vital to national security. They’ve already spent $10 billion and have a growing portfolio of ownership in at least nine companies that produce steel, minerals, nuclear energy, and semiconductors, The New York Times reports.

— President Trump Monday signed an executive order to bolster national scientific research through the use of artificial intelligence “to train scientific foundation models and create A.I. agents to test new hypotheses, automate research workflows, and accelerate scientific breakthroughs,” according to the order. 

— Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is moving to sever the Pentagon’s ties with Scouting America, formerly The Boy Scouts of America, claiming the organization has become “genderless” while promoting diversity, equity and inclusion, NPR reports.

  The military has had a relationship with the Scouts for more than 100 years.

THE OBIT PAGE: Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, who under his birth name H. Rap Brown was a face of Black militancy in the 1960s calling for armed resistance to white oppression, died at age 82 in a federal prison in North Carolina where he was serving life for murder.

  Al-Amin changed his name and lived as a Muslim cleric and shopkeeper until he was arrested in 2000 for the murder of a sheriff’s deputy, died on Sunday in a federal prison hospital in North Carolina. He was 82.

  In the turbulent 1960s, Al-Amin as H. Rap Brown declared that violence was necessary to lift oppression. “Violence is a part of America’s culture,” he said. “It is as American as cherry pie.”Speaking on the streets and college campuses in the late 60s he used to say, “Black folk built America, and if it don’t come around, we’re gonna burn America down.” 

   He’d say, “You’ve got to arm yourself. If you’re going to loot, loot yourself a gun store.”

  Al-Amin was almost perpetually the target of police investigations, most of which went nowhere, but he did do a five-year stint in Attica. In 2000 a sheriff’s deputy was killed in a shootout outside Al-Amin’s store and he was convicted on the basis of some sketchy evidence. The police testified that they wounded the shooter … there was blood on the grind … and Al-Amin had no wounds.

THE SPIN RACK:  Word now comes that the Virginia high school football coach, who went missing at the end of an undefeated season, was being investigated for possession of child pornography and attempts to have sex with a minor. The hunt is on. — Fire ripped through two Hong Kong high rise apartment buildings today, killing 13 people and injuring 15. Hundreds of firefighters fought the intense blaze for hours. — Brazil’s Supreme Court ordered right-wing former president Jair Bolsonaro to begin serving his 27 year prison sentence for attempting a coup after losing the  2022 election. — Four more people … two men and two women …  have been arrested the for theft of royal jewels from the Louvre in Paris, bringing the number to eight, but the jewels have not been recovered.

BELOW THE FOLD: President Trump yesterday pardoned two turkeys in advance of  Thanksgiving, Gobble and Waddle. Later he said he didn’t know who they were.

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