The U.S. Carries Out Another Strike on an Alleged Cartel Boat as Trump Says the Country Is at War

The U.S. military has struck another boat in the Caribbean that the Pentagon alleges was trafficking drugs, killing four people on board, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced Friday. The strike on the vessel off the coast of Venezuela marks the Administration’s fourth such deadly military action in what President Donald Trump has declared is a formal “armed conflict” with cartels. “Earlier this morning, on President Trump’s orders, I directed a lethal, kinetic strike on a narco-trafficking vessel affiliated with Designated Terrorist Organizations in the USSOUTHCOM area of responsibility,” Hegseth wrote on X, adding the boat was “transporting substantial amounts of narcotics – headed to America to poison our people.” “Our intelligence, without a doubt, confirmed that this vessel was trafficking narcotics, the people onboard were narco-terrorists, and they were operating on a known narco-trafficking transit route. These strikes will continue until the attacks on the American people are over!!!!” The President told Congress this week that the U.S. is in an “armed conflict” with drug cartels in a confidential notice obtained by the New York Times. The notice sought to justify the White House’s military strikes on civilian vessels in the Caribbean, which experts claim amount to illegal and extrajudicious murders. Three previous strikes killed 17 people in total. Trump designated several cartels as terrorist organizations in January and has since described the strikes as acts of self-defense to counter threats to national security.  “The President acted in line with the law of armed conflict to protect our country from those trying to bring deadly poison to our shores, and he is delivering on his promise to take on the cartels and eliminate these national security threats from murdering more Americans,” White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said Thursday.