Free Republic

United States Southern Command on Monday announced that Joint Task Force Southern Spear took out three narcotrafficking vessels in the Eastern Pacific. A total of eight “narco-terrorists” were killed in the strikes. “Intelligence confirmed that the vessels were transiting along known narco-trafficking routes in the Eastern Pacific and were engaged in narco-trafficking,” US SOUTHCOM said. Video from the strikes shows massive explosions on each boat, turning them into burning piles of rubble. WATCH: VIDEOS AT LINK.................... US Strikes More Venezuelan Drug Boats US Southern Command said in a statement on X, On Dec. 15, at the direction of @SecWar Pete...

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed on Monday that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth authorized the second, follow-up strike on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean in September following a bombshell Washington Post report that claimed he ordered the military to “kill everybody.” Leavitt told reporters at the White House press briefing that Hegseth authorized Adm. Frank Bradley to carry out the second strike, which reportedly killed two people who were hanging onto the burning vessel after an initial strike. “President Trump and Secretary Hegseth have made it clear that presidentially designated narco-terrorist groups are subject to lethal targeting...

U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth declared that the United States has “only just begun to kill narco-terrorists,” a blunt call to escalate direct action against cartel operatives. Hegseth reinforced the message in a separate post, vowing that the campaign against transnational drug cartels has entered a new phase. Together, the remarks underscore a growing push inside the national security establishment to treat cartels as foreign terrorist organizations and confront them with military force.In a Friday night post on social media, Secretary Hegseth bluntly and boldly stated, “We have only just begun to kill narco-terrorists.”The secretary doubled down two minutes...

Some members of Congress are up in arms over a briefing by a senior administration lawyer who told them the Trump administration had no intention of adhering to the War Powers Resolution regarding the ongoing interdiction campaign against Venezuelan drug cartels. According to the Washington Post, T. Elliot Gaiser, head of the Trump administration’s Office of Legal Counsel, said the administration did not believe the strikes met the definition of hostilities under the law and did not intend to seek an extension of the deadline nor Congress’s approval of ongoing action.Heads popped. “The administration appears to be blowing through the...

The US military has carried out another lethal strike on alleged drug smugglers in the Caribbean Sea, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced Saturday. Hegseth in a social media posting said the vessel was operated by a US-designated terrorist organization but did not name which group was targeted. He said three people were killed in the strike. It’s at least the 15th such strike carried out by the US military in the Caribbean or eastern Pacific since early September. “This vessel—like EVERY OTHER—was known by our intelligence to be involved in illicit narcotics smuggling, was transiting along a known narco-trafficking route,...

Political polling ahead of next Tuesday's off-year elections... President Trump raising the notion of Christianity facing an "existential threat" in the African nation... China launching three astronauts into space for the 16th... The messaging of President Trump tonight is that he wants to provide "SNAP" benefits... Tonight the nation of Belarus issuing a ban on Lithuanian vehicles using its border crossings with... A federal district judge in Rhode Island ruling that the federal government must continue to provide food assistance... FBI Director Kash Patel says the FBI thwarted a "potential terrorist attack"... Republican leadership will not use the 'nuclear option'...

"When we declare war is supposed to be done by Congress. It's not supposed to be done willy nilly," Paul addedRepublican Sen. Rand Paul again slammed President Donald Trump over the administration's continued strikes against alleged drug boats off Venezuela, reiterating that any armed conflict should be approved by Congress. Speaking with British journalist Piers Morgan, Paul rejected the administration's claim that the strikes were targeting smugglers carrying different drugs, including fentanyl. "There is no fentanyl made in Venezuela. Not just a little bit, there's none being made. These are outboard boats that, in order for them to get to...

The United States announced Sunday another strike against what it called a drug-running boat, this time attacking an alleged Colombian leftist rebel vessel in an apparent expansion of a US military operation off the coasts of South America. Word of the attack from Secretary of War Pete Hegseth came as President Donald Trump said the United States is halting financial aid to Colombia, accusing its president of condoning the production of drugs. This took embattled relations between two longstanding allies to a new low. The United States has had warships deployed in the Caribbean off Venezuela since August and attacked...

Just hours after President Donald Trump cancelled all subsidies with Colombia and warned leftist President Gustavo Petro that he would be taking action against drug-trafficking organizations within the country if the Colombian president failed to deal with them, War secretary Pete Hegseth announced that the U.S. Military had carried out a successful strike on a drug-trafficking boat linked to a leftist terrorist group. “On October 17th, at the direction of President Trump, the Department of War conducted a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel affiliated with Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN), a Designated Terrorist Organization, that was operating in the...

Russian forces occupied Bucha, on the outskirts of Kyiv, for just under a month. Across those 29 days in early 2022, they committed acts of such barbarity that this Ukrainian town will forever be synonymous with war crimes; this conflict’s Srebrenica. Residents were killed and tortured in their hundreds; more than 100 were buried in a mass grave outside the Orthodox Christian church. Others were murdered as they fled. The basement of a children’s summer camp was converted into a torture chamber where women and children were systematically raped. Soldiers slashed throats, mutilated victims and killed parents in front of...