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President Donald Trump announced Tuesday that the U.S. military carried out another strike on a suspected drug vessel off the coast of Venezuela, killing six suspected smugglers.
“Under my Standing Authorities as Commander-in-Chief, this morning, the Secretary of War, ordered a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel affiliated with a Designated Terrorist Organization (DTO) conducting narcotrafficking in the USSOUTHCOM area of responsibility — just off the Coast of Venezuela. Intelligence confirmed the vessel was trafficking narcotics, was associated with illicit narcoterrorist networks, and was transiting along a known DTO route,” Trump wrote Tuesday on Truth Social.
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“The strike was conducted in International Waters, and six male narcoterrorists aboard the vessel were killed in the strike,” Trump said. “No U.S. Forces were harmed.”
The strikes come after the White House sent lawmakers a memo Sept. 30 informing them that the U.S. is now participating in a “non-international armed conflict” with drug smugglers.
Additionally, it comes on the heels of four other fatal strikes against alleged drug boats in the Caribbean since September.
On Friday, the Department of War unveiled a new counter-narcotics Joint Task Force in the Southern Command area of responsibility, according to Secretary of War Pete Hegseth.
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The task force seeks to “crush the cartels, stop the poison, and keep America safe,” Hegseth wrote on X Friday. “The message is clear: if you traffic drugs toward our shores, we will stop you cold.”
Even so, members of Congress have called into question whether the strikes have been legal. For example, Sens. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and Tim Kaine, D-Va., filed a war powers resolution in September to bar U.S. forces from engaging in “hostilities” against certain non-state organizations.
“There has been no authorization to use force by Congress in this way,” Schiff told reporters Wednesday. “I feel it is plainly unconstitutional. The fact that the administration claims to have a list and has put organizations on a list does not somehow empower the administration to usurp Congress’s power of declaring war or refusing to declare war or refusing to authorize the use of force.”
But the measure didn’t pick up steam, and failed in the Senate by a 51–48 margin Wednesday. However, Republicans Rand Paul of Kentucky and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska voted alongside their Democratic counterparts for the resolution.
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Trump has suggested that the strikes will continue and told military leaders in September the “military is now the knife’s edge in combating this sinister enemy.”
“We have to put the traffickers and cartels on notice. … If you try to poison our people, we will blow you out of existence, because that’s the only language they really understand,” Trump told military leaders in Quantico, Virginia, Sept. 30. “That’s why you don’t see any more boats in the ocean. You don’t see any boats around Venezuela. There’s nothing.”
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