\n<\/p>\n
\n President Donald Trump said he believes he has the legal authority to launch strikes in international waters to target illegal drug cartels, but indicated he may seek Congressional approval for any operations on land.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cWe do \u2013 we have legal authority,\u201d Trump said when questioned about the strikes Wednesday in the Oval Office.\n <\/p>\n
\n Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth had announced earlier Wednesday that the US military conducted a strike the day before against a boat in the Eastern Pacific, marking the 8th known strike on an alleged drug-smuggling vessel.\n <\/p>\n
\n South American leaders have questioned the legality of Trump\u2019s strikes, and Colombian President Gustavo Petro recently accused<\/a> the US of murdering an innocent Colombian national.\n <\/p>\n \n Trump defended the strikes, saying, \u201cEvery one of those boats that gets knocked out is saving 25,000 American lives.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Last week, Trump acknowledged that he\u2019d authorized the CIA<\/strong><\/a> to conduct covert action in Venezuela and said the United States was considering strikes on Venezuelan territory. But on Wednesday, he suggested some openness to informing Congress about future operations on land.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cWe\u2019re allowed to do that, and if we do by land, we may go back to Congress, but we have, this is a national security problem. They killed 300,000 people last year. Drugs, these drugs coming in, they killed 300,000 Americans last year, and that gives you legal authority,\u201d he said.\n <\/p>\n \n Trump added, \u201cWe\u2019ll probably go back to Congress and explain exactly what we\u2019re doing when we come to the land. We don\u2019t have to do that, but I think Marco, I\u2019d like to do that,\u201d referring to Secretary of State Marco Rubio.\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n President Donald Trump said he believes he has the legal authority to launch strikes in international waters to target illegal drug cartels, but indicated he may seek Congressional approval for any operations on land. \u201cWe do \u2013 we have legal authority,\u201d Trump said when questioned about the strikes Wednesday in the Oval Office. Secretary of … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7189,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/October-22-2025-Government-shutdown-and-Trump-administration-news.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7188"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7188\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7190,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7188\/revisions\/7190"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7189"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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