Free Republic

Friday on MSNBC’s “Deadline,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) claimed lawmakers had seen “no evidence” the Trump administration’s military strikes were on drug boats. Host Nicolle Wallace asked, “What briefings have you received on the success of striking drug traffickers? Have you seen evidence or images of drugs being found on the boats that have been struck?” Blumenthal said, “What briefings? Zero. And as you may know, I think it’s public by now, there was a briefing for Republican senators only, which is unprecedented. So we’ve seen no evidence, none whatsoever, as to who is in these boats, more than ten...

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

A notice calls the people the U.S. military recently killed on suspicion of drug smuggling in the Caribbean Sea “unlawful combatants.”President Trump has decided that the United States is engaged in a formal “armed conflict” with drug cartels his team has labeled terrorist organizations and that suspected smugglers for such groups are “unlawful combatants,” the administration said in a confidential notice to Congress this week. The notice was sent to several congressional committees and obtained by The New York Times. It adds new detail to the administration’s thinly articulated legal rationale for why three U.S. military strikes the president ordered...