The Trump administration is facing blowback after putting out conflicting reports from top officials at multiple agencies — and after offering no explanation initially — as it closed a U.S. airport, initially for ten days, only to reopen it hours later. Reports revealed communications snafus between the Department of Defense and the FAA, and alleged causes being foreign drones or a “party balloon.”

“A U.S. official confirmed to Fox News that the U.S. military earlier this week shot down what was later determined to be a party balloon near El Paso, Texas, after initially assessing it as a possible foreign drone,” the news outlet reported. “The misidentification eventually led to a total shutdown of airspace around the El Paso, Texas, airport.”

“A separate U.S. administration official had told Fox News that Mexican cartel drones breached U.S. airspace near El Paso, Texas, and that counter-drone measures were taken to disable them,” Fox added.

CNN reported that a “Pentagon plan to use a high-energy, counter-drone laser without having coordinated with the Federal Aviation Administration about potential risks to civilian flights prompted Wednesday’s unprecedented airspace shutdown over El Paso, Texas.”

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CBS News reported that the “unexpected but brief airspace closure” had “stemmed from disagreements” between FAA and Pentagon officials over drone-related tests.

“Two sources identified the technology as a high-energy laser,” CBS added.

The FAA Administrator, Bryan Bedford, “on Tuesday night decided to close the airspace — without alerting White House, Pentagon or Homeland Security officials, sources said.”

But Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth offered a different explanation, saying that the FAA and the Pentagon “acted swiftly to address a cartel drone incursion. The threat has been neutralized, and there is no danger to commercial travel in the region. The restrictions have been lifted and normal flights are resuming.”

Critics blasted the administration.

Pointing to one administration official’s claim about “Mexican cartel drones,” Aaron Fritschner, deputy chief of staff for U.S. Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA) wrote: “As everyone knows, the standard response to an incursion by ‘Mexican cartel drones’ is a sudden unexplained and poorly communicated 9/11 esque shutdown of all air traffic for ten days that is clumsily revoked a few hours later.”

“This is so obviously a lie,” he charged.

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Veteran journalist Kevin Baron, who has a background in global security, defense, intelligence, and foreign policy, called the closure and rapid re-opening, “unnecessarily alarming.”

Astrophysicist and associate professor Robert Rutledge remarked, “We are being lied to by @SeanDuffyWI [Secretary Sean Duffy] and the FAA. This is obviously b — —.”

“There have now been three different explanations given by government sources to reporters for the shut-down of the El Paso airport,” he continued. “If any one of them were correct, the shut down would still be a completely bonkers, unacceptable situation.”

CNN national security analyst Juliette Kayyem slammed the Defense Department.

“The Pentagon is dangerous,” she wrote. “This is totally outrageous and risky. The American public’s safety is not a pawn in Hegseth and Duffy’s fighting over DOD and DOT control of skies. Hegseth totally at fault here, it seems.”

Responding to an FAA statement, former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance asked, “Who is running this clown show?”

Meteorologist Justin Stapleton remarked, “y’all need to get your story straight. This isn’t ok.”

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This article has been updated to include Kayyem’s remarks. 

It’s time for Democrats to stop blaming President Donald Trump for every GOP policy failure and start placing the blame on Republicans.

That’s according to communications strategist Steven Singer, in an opinion piece at The Hill.

“When immigration enforcement officers killed two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis, Democrats blamed President Trump and his team,” Singer writes. “Too many Republicans said little, and once again, Democrats let them off the hook. It’s time to try something different.”

“These are not ‘Trump’s goons,’ but Republican goons,” suggests Singer. “This isn’t a Trump war on blue states; it’s a Republican war on American cities. It’s not that Stephen Miller, Kristi Noem and Trump are out of control; it’s just the Republican Party in action.”

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Singer serves up more examples.

“Almost all the administration does can be seen as examples of Republican corruption, chaos and cruelty. The constant lying is not a point in and of itself, but rather another instance of the moral corruption of the administration. The $400 million jet from Qatar; the $500 million to Trump’s crypto fund; the pardons for wealthy criminals — this is all Republican corruption.”

The “most important” technique is “making all Republicans own everything their leader does, and explicitly and concisely linking each outrage to a single, consistent frame of reference, such as ‘corruption, chaos and cruelty,'” urges Singer. “It’s the difference between calling on Republicans to act, or accusing them of cowardice for not doing so, and making clear that these extremist policies are theirs.”

Singer sums up his lesson:

“Pick some examples and try it yourself. The magic is in the consistent repetition of this basic construct. Remember, less ‘Trump’ and more ‘Republicans.’ More ‘corruption, chaos and cruelty.’ Do it again and again. It really is that simple.”

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A prominent Republican senator blasted the U.S. Department of Justice after it attempted — unsuccessfully — to secure indictments against six sitting Democratic lawmakers who urged members of the military to follow the law and not obey illegal orders.

U.S. Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) had “slammed the Justice Department’s push to criminally charge” the six Democrats, Politico reported. All six Democrats had served in the U.S. Armed Forces or the Intelligence Community.

“Political lawfare waged by either side undermines America’s criminal justice system, which is the gold standard of the world,” Senator Tillis wrote on Wednesday. “Thankfully in this instance, a jury saw the attempted indictments for what they really were. Political lawfare is not normal, not acceptable, and needs to stop.”

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Tillis pointed to an NBC News report that stated: “The indictment, pursued by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, led by Trump appointee Jeanine Pirro, is the latest example of the Justice Department’s targeting the president’s perceived political opponents.”

Politico reported that the unsuccessful effort to indict “marked another instance of U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro failing to clinch a high-profile federal indictment since taking over as the top prosecutor in D.C.”

“President Donald Trump called for the lawmakers to face trial for ‘seditious behavior’ and reshared a post that advocated for hanging the Democrats,” Politico also noted.

But some criticized Tillis’s remark for its “both sides” claim.

“Under one party, an independent Justice Department prosecuted offenders for attempting the violent overthrow of a presidential election and under the other, presidential cronies attempted to indict sitting members of Congress for restating the UCMJ,” wrote Zev Karlin-Neumann, a former speechwriter and senior advisor to former U.S. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken. “But yes, both sides!”

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