Rubio, Hegseth refuse release of ‘double-tap’ strike footage after Congress briefing

Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth insisted they won’t release the full video of the Sept. 2 strikes on an alleged drug boat and controversial second strike on survivors after briefing members of Congress on Tuesday morning on military action in the Caribbean.

“In keeping with longstanding Department of War policy, Department of Defense policy, of course, we’re not going to release a top secret full, unedited video of that to the general public,” Hegseth told reporters after Tuesday’s briefing with senators.

His office has released dozens of other videos of boat strikes on social media. “Appropriate committees will see it, but not the general public,” Hegseth said.

Tuesday’s meetings came amid growing criticism from Democrats and from human rights groups accusing the United States of carrying out dozens of extrajudicial killings in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific, and as President Donald Trump talks about potential land strikes.

—Miami Herald

US is spending big on child mental health, addiction treatment, study says

As a children’s emergency room doctor in San Francisco, Ashley Foster has found herself treating an increasing number of adolescents for substance abuse, anxiety, depression and other behavioral health issues over the last decade. Often, they arrive at the hospital in crisis, she said.

Foster’s experience aligns with a well-known and disturbing trend in American health care: more children are having mental health problems. In 2023, 40% of high school students reported persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness, and 20% had seriously considered attempting suicide, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study.

Studies also found that more young people are going to emergency rooms for care — an expensive option that can cost thousands of dollars.

Foster wondered how much that care was costing families and the broader U.S. health system. In a new study published Monday, she and a team of researchers found that the U.S. spent $42 billion on behavioral health care for youth in 2022 — about 40% of all health care spending on infants, children and teens. That share of spending doubled between 2011 and 2022, the study found.

—The Mercury News

She fought segregation in 1951. Now her statue stands in the US Capitol

WASHINGTON — Barbara Rose Johns was just 16 years old when she led her Farmville, Va., classmates in a student strike protesting unequal education. That 1951 student-led protest paved a path toward the Supreme Court and the landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling desegregating public schools across the country.

On Tuesday, a bronze-cast statue of Johns — standing next to a lectern, holding a book high above her head — joined the National Statuary Hall collection in the Capitol, which allows each state to display up to two statues honoring historically significant individuals.

“She was a trailblazer and a pioneer in the fight for equal education,” Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said during an unveiling ceremony in Emancipation Hall attended by Virginia politicians and roughly 200 of Johns’ descendants and extended family members. “At the remarkable age of 16, she conceived of a single simple act of protest that would go on to shape the lives of millions of American students across the nation.”

Johns’ path to the Capitol began in 2020, when Virginia’s then-Gov. Ralph Northam requested the removal of the state’s statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee amid a widespread effort to take down public statues honoring Confederates and rename buildings across the country. The Virginia state legislature launched a commission, chaired by state Sen. L. Louise Lucas, to select a replacement.

—CQ-Roll Call

Ukraine says US pledged Congress to back security guarantee

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he has an agreement with the U.S. to make security guarantees legally binding through a vote in Congress as part of a deal to end Russia’s war.

He offered no details in online audio comments to Ukrainian media late Monday. The disclosure came hours after a U.S. official said President Donald Trump’s administration had offered strong “Article 5-like” security guarantees to Ukraine in the latest negotiations, a reference to NATO’s mutual-defense clause.

Two days of talks in Berlin underscored what looked to be fresh momentum in Trump-brokered efforts to end Russia’s nearly four-year war, with U.S. and European officials offering upbeat assessments. But with negotiations weighed down by until-now intractable questions over territory and security guarantees, attention is shifting to Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s response, with little indication he’s ready to end his attacks.

“It would be almost a miracle if the Russian side would not now find reasons to yet again say no,” Wolfgang Ischinger, a German diplomat who heads the Munich Security Conference, told Bloomberg Television.

—Bloomberg News