Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is citing the "fog of war" in defending a follow-up strike on an alleged drug-carrying boat in the Caribbean Sea in early September. During Tuesday's Cabinet meeting at the White House, Hegseth said he did not see any survivors in the water, saying the boat "exploded in fire." Hegseth also said he "didn't stick around" for the remainder of the mission following the initial strike, and said the admiral in charge "made the right call" in ordering it, which he "had complete authority to do." Lawmakers have opened investigations following a Washington Post report that Hegseth issued a verbal order to "kill everybody" on the boat.

President Donald Trump's administration has increased pressure on Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro by designating the Cartel de los Soles as a foreign terrorist organization. The move Monday is part of the Trump administration's escalating campaign to combat drug trafficking into the United States. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has accused it of being responsible for terrorist violence in the Western Hemisphere. The term Cartel de los Soles originally referred to Venezuelan military officers involved in drug-running, but it is not a cartel per se. The designation comes as Trump evaluates whether to take military action against Venezuela. The U.S. Justice Department has indicted Maduro on narcoterrorism charges.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has announced that the U.S. military carried out strikes in the eastern Pacific Ocean against four boats accused of carrying drugs, killing 14 and leaving one survivor. The strikes were launched Monday and announced on social media Tuesday. It's the first time multiple strikes have been announced in a single day as the pace of the attacks has escalated. A Pentagon official says the strikes were conducted off the coast of Colombia. However, the Mexican navy says it's searching about 400 miles southwest of the Pacific city of Acapulco, far away from Colombia. It wasn't immediately clear exactly where the strike took place, and the Pentagon didn't give more details.

The U.S. military is sending an aircraft carrier to the waters off South America in the latest escalation of military firepower to a region. A Pentagon spokesman said Friday that the USS Gerald R. Ford and its strike group would deploy to the U.S. Southern Command region to "bolster U.S. capacity to detect, monitor, and disrupt illicit actors and activities that compromise the safety and prosperity of the United States." The USS Ford is port in Croatia and it was not clear how long it would take for the strike group to arrive. Earlier Friday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the military had conducted the 10th strike on a suspected drug-running boat, killing six people.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth says the U.S. military has launched its eighth strike against an alleged drug-carrying vessel. The Tuesday night strike occurred in the eastern Pacific Ocean. That's a departure after the seven previous strikes all targeted vessels in the Caribbean. Hegseth said Wednesday in a social media post the strike killed two people, bringing the death toll from all the attacks that began last month to at least 34 people. The strike marks an expansion of the military's targeting area as well as a shift to the waters off South American waters where much of the cocaine from the world's largest producers is smuggled.

Legal experts say U.S. strikes against alleged members of Latin American drug cartels are pushing the bounds of international law. Under President Donald Trump, the U.S. military has struck several boats, killing 28 people, after authorities received information suggesting they were carrying drugs. Trump's administration is justifying this use of force by relying on a legal framework created after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. That framework allowed authorities to use lethal force against al-Qaida combatants responsible for the attacks on the U.S. The gangs now being targeted in Latin America, however, are a different foe, fueled not by anti-U.S. ideology but by the drug trade.

President Donald Trump has confirmed that he authorized the CIA to conduct covert operations inside Venezuela. The president on Wednesday also said he's considering land operations following recent U.S. military strikes on alleged drug-smuggling boats from Venezuela. Trump told reporters at an Oval Office event that he had authorized the move because Venezuela is allowing criminals and drugs to flow into the U.S. On Wednesday, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro lashed out at the record of the U.S. spy agency in various conflicts around the world without directly addressing Trump's comments about authorizing the CIA to carry out covert operations in Venezuela.

Venezuela has released 10 jailed Americans in exchange for getting home scores of migrants deported by the United States to El Salvador months ago under the Trump administration's immigration crackdown. The resolution represents a diplomatic achievement for Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and helps President Donald Trump in his goal of bringing home Americans jailed abroad. El Salvador will send back some 300 Venezuelan migrants whom the Trump administration agreed to pay $6 million to house in a notorious Salvadoran prison. The arrangement drew immediate blowback when Trump invoked an 18th century wartime law to quickly remove men his administration had accused of belonging to the violent Tren de Aragua street gang.

Officials in some of the 12 countries whose citizens will be soon banned from visiting the United States denounced President Donald Trump's mo…