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Once again, the United States is using lethal force off its shores. In recent weeks, American drones and warships have sunk or disabled a string of speedboats in international waters off Venezuela. Washington says the vessels belonged to narcoterrorist networks tied to the Maduro regime and Tren de Aragua and that they were carrying cocaine and fentanyl precursors bound for the United States. At least 83 alleged traffickers and others are dead. Caracas calls this extrajudicial murder. Human-rights groups call it assassination. Cable-news panels and UN press releases are already rehearsing the same ritual question: Is this legal under international...

1989. Joe Biden delivers a televised message from the Democrat party, calling on then President Bush to do more to stop the flow of drugs into the country. In addition to calling for more prisons and more cops, Biden said that Democrats want the creation of a strike force to attack drug dealers before they reach our borders. "Let's go after the drug lords where they live with an international strike force. There must be no safe haven for these narco-terrorists and they must know it." Times have changed a little.

Reporting Live from Central America. Me. The 30 November 2025 General Election has yet to be called. As of right now, there is a glitch in the ability of the Honduran election officials (CNE), to disseminate updates to the tallies. However, what we do know: the link between President Maduro of Venezuela and the Honduran presidency has been effectively removed. The socialist/communist candidate Rixi Moncada has been trounced gaining less than 20% of the vote. Specifically, 19.16% of the popular vote as of 4:09 PM CST, yesterday 1 December. That was the last official update before the CNE website failed...

The family of a Colombian fisherman who died in a U.S. military boat strike in September has filed a formal complaint with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights alleging the U.S. government illegally killed him. Alejandro Carranza was killed in a strike in the Caribbean on Sept. 15, according to the petition, filed on Tuesday. "From numerous news reports, we know that U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth was responsible for ordering the bombing of boats like those of Alejandro Carranza and the murder of all those on such boats," according to the petition. In the petition, Carranza's lawyer Dan...

Russia has begun evacuating its citizens from Venezuela, a sudden move that analysts say signals a major shift in Moscow's stance toward dictator Nicolás Maduro's embattled regime — and comes as U.S. military pressure on Caracas steadily intensifies, La Derecha Diario reported. The Association of Tour Operators of Russia confirmed that flights are being organized to remove Russians from Venezuela. The announcement, circulated widely by Russian media, sparked immediate speculation that Russian President Vladimir Putin is preparing for instability or distancing itself from Maduro after years of backing the socialist strongman. The evacuation order comes at an unusual moment. Russian...

US President Donald Trump has warned Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro to step down or risk potential American military action, a report says. Tensions between Washington and Caracas have surged after US President Donald Trump warned Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro that refusal to step down voluntarily could trigger the use of American military force. According to a Wall Street Journal report, Trump delivered a stark ultimatum during a hotline call on 22 November, telling Maduro he could take the “easy way or hard way," offering safe passage to a friendly capital or face direct US action. Trump’s warning coincided with a...

The world’s biggest aircraft carrier and largest warship ever built entered the Caribbean Sea on Nov. 16. U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth deployed the USS Gerald R. Ford to the region as an effort to carry out the Trump administration’s plan to disrupt illicit drug trafficking and dismantle criminal networks that “exploit our shared borders and maritime domains,” according to a Navy statement. The carrier’s arrival is considered to be an escalating pressure tactic against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who the United States does not recognize as the legitimate Venezuelan leader based on evidence that he stole last year’s...

On Friday, I started a regular series that I'll post at the end of each week called "The New Monroe Doctrine." (And thank you all for the wonderful feedback I've received. It's encouraging.) My goal with that is to tell you what's going on in the Western Hemisphere each week as it relates to the United States. Donald Trump and Marco Rubio are making this a priority, thank goodness, and I'm going to cover it every step of the way. In that article, I mentioned that I was also planning to launch a second, complementary column specifically about China's influence...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that the U.S. military carried out three strikes Monday in the waters of the Eastern Pacific against boats suspected of carrying drugs, killing 14 and leaving one survivor. The announcement made on social media Tuesday, marks a continued escalation in the pace of the strikes, which began in early September spaced weeks apart. This was the first time multiple strikes were announced in a single day.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that the U.S. military carried out three strikes Monday in the waters of the Eastern Pacific against boats suspected of carrying drugs, killing 14 and leaving one survivor. The announcement made on social media Tuesday, marks a continued escalation in the pace of the strikes, which began in early September spaced weeks apart. This was the first time multiple strikes were announced in a single day

@SenRandPaul Bomb first, ask questions “never” makes zero constitutional sense and even less practical sense. I still have questions about the survivors from Ecuador and Colombia. Either they’re drug traffickers, in which case they should be tried and locked up, or they’re not. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that people who value the Constitution and due process are skeptical.

Senator Rand Paul is on a campaign to knock President Donald Trump off of his warpath. During Paul’s appearance on Fox News Sunday, host Shannon Bream asked the Kentucky Republican what information he wanted the government to provide about its military strikes in the Caribbean Sea. But Paul said that a briefing wasn’t what he was after. “A briefing’s not enough to overcome the Constitution,” Paul said. “The Constitution says that when you go to war, Congress has to vote on it. And during a war then, [there are] lower rules for engagement and people do sometimes get killed without...

The Trump administration’s military airstrikes against boats off Venezuela’s coast that the White House claims were being used for drug trafficking are “extrajudicial killings”, said Rand Paul, the president’s fellow Republican and US senator from Kentucky. Paul’s strong comments on the topic came on Sunday during an interview on Republican-friendly Fox News, three days after Donald Trump publicly claimed he “can’t imagine” federal lawmakers would have “any problem” with the strikes when asked about seeking congressional approval for them. US forces in recent weeks have carried out at least eight strikes against boats in the Caribbean off Venezuela’s coast, killing...

https://babylonbee.com/news/rand-paul-heroically-dives-in-front-of-hellfire-missile-before-it-can-hit-venezuelan-drug-boat WORLD — Senator Rand Paul died tragically on Monday after heroically diving in front of an AGM-114 Hellfire missile fired by an MQ-1 Predator Drone before it could strike a Venezuelan drug boat. According to sources, the U.S. Air Force was tracking a suspected Venezuelan drug shipment over international waters when it received explicit authorization from the president to take it out. But just before the missile could make contact with the drug boat, a man later identified as the senator from Kentucky somehow leaped hundreds of feet through the air, putting his body between a Hellfire missile and...

Antifa terrorists, gang members and rioters are endangering federal officers in American cities.President Trump awarded my friend Charlie Kirk a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom this month. As a country, we need to honor Charlie’s memory, face some hard facts and take action. Before it’s too late. Charlie’s assassination forced Americans to confront a dark truth: Leftist extremists are waging war on the rule of law, liberty and our way of life. Terrorists, gang members and rioters routinely attack federal law-enforcement officers working to reimpose order after years of chaos under the Biden administration. Our officers have been shot at...

In a speech before the House of Commons on May 13, 1940, referencing the war against Nazi Germany, Winston Churchill stated, “What is our policy? … To wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark lamentable catalogue of human crime.” The Prussian military theorist Karl von Clausewitz once observed that “war is the continuation of politics by other means.” Various political and moral interpretations exist regarding what constitutes a “just war.” That usually depends on one’s point of view. As the saying goes, one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. What if there were a country...

🚨 JUST IN: Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) accuses President Trump of doing what CHINA and IRAN do when he "executes" narco-terrorists "I would call them extrajudicial killings. This is akin to what China does, what Iran does with drug dealers -- they summarily execute people without presenting evidence to the public. So it's WRONG."

Sen. Lindsey Graham on Sunday defended the White House’s decision to strike Venezuelan boats, hinting that President Donald Trump may even “expand” military operations in the region. In an interview with CBS’ Margaret Brennan on “Face the Nation,” the South Carolina Republican said Trump is “doing the right thing.” “President Trump told me yesterday that he plans to brief members of Congress when he gets back from Asia about future potential military operations against Venezuela and Colombia,” Graham said. “So there will be a congressional briefing about a potential expanding from the sea to the land. I support that idea.

There are a few reasons to doubt the American government's stated aim of wiping out these so-called "narco terrorist" gangs threatening the US from Venezuela, even after one takes out of the equation the sort of equipment the military is deploying - which isn't what they would need for effective drug smuggling interdiction. While the president acknowledges that the synthetic opioid fentanyl is a huge killer in the US (which it is) and is supplied by drug gangs (which it is), to blame Venezuela for fentanyl production is simply incorrect.Mexican cartels produce fentanyl with precursors largely supplied from China, and...

The U.S. military is sending an aircraft carrier to the waters off South America, in the latest escalation and buildup of military forces in the region, the Pentagon announced Friday.Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered the USS Gerald R. Ford and its strike group to deploy to U.S. Southern Command to “bolster U.S. capacity to detect, monitor, and disrupt illicit actors and activities that compromise the safety and prosperity of the United States,” Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a social media post.Deploying an aircraft carrier is a major escalation of military power in a region that has already seen an...