Boat Strike
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MMA CHYRON SLAMS AS POL SPECTACLE
November 10, 2026, edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends
Neither Hegseth nor the Fox & Friends crowd gave any indication of where they were getting their claim that the drug boat strikes have saved the lives of thousands of Americans. Fact-checkers have debunked similar claims from Trump, reporting that experts say the evidence for such assertions “is similar to that of the moon being made of blue cheese,” that the alleged number of American lives saved from overdose would account for more than typically die of drug overdose each year, and that in reality, the strikes “have little or no impact on overdose deaths in the United States.”
The Washington Post further reported in July that the DEA and Pentagon concluded that the strikes had not curbed cocaine trafficking into the United States. According to the DEA analysis the Post cited, they “had failed to affect the supply or price of cocaine in the United States and had led traffickers to diversify beyond go-fast boats and to avoid international waters, opting instead for larger boats and hemming close to coastlines, where U.S. forces are less likely to open fire.”
What did the U.S. give up for a policy that accomplished little? According to Massie’s article of impeachment:
[Hegseth] chilled independent legal review within the Department of Defense, constructed a purported legal basis for the use of military force without constitutional or statutory authorization, and displaced longstanding precedent and codified maritime law-enforcement practices that are jurisdictionally assigned to Coast Guard and law enforcement agencies, by substituting in such place the use of summary lethal force by Army, Navy, Air Force, or Marine Corps elements. While doing so, Secretary Hegseth also oversaw orders denying quarter and failing to provide rescue, including secondary strikes against shipwrecked survivors, who were hors de combat, and the abandonment of shipwrecked survivors at sea, thereby endangering members of ... our Armed Forces in future military engagements by encouraging adversaries to subject American service members to the same treatment.
By subjecting persons merely suspected of criminal conduct to lethal military force without judicial process, without Congressional authorization, and without establishing a lawful basis for treating such persons or vessels as military targets, Secretary Hegseth arrogated to himself and the Executive Branch the roles of judge, jury, and executioner and asserted a unilateral power to determine who may live and who may die. Such a power is foreign to the rule of law, repugnant to the legal traditions and fundamental values of the United States and the Western world, and contrary to United States law and customary international law. This conduct undermined the integrity and credibility of the United States and its Armed Forces, damaged the diplomatic standing of the United States, and injured the interests of the Nation.
Hegseth, as a Fox host, endorsed the extrajudicial killing of helpless, captured enemy combatants. “If he committed premeditated murder,” Hegseth said of an American service member who admitted to executing an alleged Taliban bombmaker, “then I did as well. What do you think you do in war?”
While Fox appeared to sour on Hegseth after he implemented stringent restrictions on the Pentagon press corps, the network appears to be going all-in to defend him from impeachment.
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Another key pillar of the MAGA defense for Signalgate is crumbling
04/08/25 12:21 PM EDT
Fox praised and validated Trump's legally questionable boat strikes in the Caribbean
10/29/25 3:31 PM EDT
09/05/2
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Deadly US strike on Iran school may have been a war crime, UN report finds | CNN
United Press International on Yahoo
U.N. investigator: U.S. strikes on alleged drug boats may be crimes against humanity
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yt 9 26 rolling state emergency
Operation Southern Spear: Uncovering the CIA’s Killing Spree in Latin America
Sep 2, 2026
A drone hovering over a burning Ecuadorian fishing boat hours after it was bombed belonged to a San Diego-based defense contractor with an $800 million contract with the US Navy. Investigative journalist Camila Lourdes Galarza tells Zoe Alexandra and Rania Khalek that boat was one of three unarmed fishing vessels bombed in what the Washington Post later confirmed was part of a covert CIA program to kill “suspected drug traffickers” in the Pacific – without any oversight or public acknowledgment.
As Operation Southern Spear marks its first year, Galarza breaks down how Ecuadorian President and Miami-born billionaire Daniel Noboa has turned his country into a testing ground for US military expansion under Trump’s Donroe Doctrine: from former Blackwater mercenaries at polling stations, to martial law decrees shielding US troops from Ecuadorian law, to the SOUTHCOM general she says admitted the real target of all of this is Ecuador's lithium stores and rare earth minerals.
Galarza connects the boat strikes, on which she reported extensively for Drop Site News, to a much larger pattern, linking Fernando Cerimedo's CIA and Israel ties to a US embassy plot to interfere in Colombia's elections, to the assassination in June of Ecuadorian prosecutor Alexandra Bravo as US troops patrolled the streets. Watch full episodes of BT Live, join breakthroughnews.org as a member today
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an 8 26 resume 2 mos brk
mile t
Former chief of staff to the Department of Homeland Security Miles Taylor thinks Democrats should be preparing for the subpoenas to roll out on day one of the new Congress.
While Taylor specifically referred to a recent “lethal kinetic strike[s]" being carried out by U.S. Southern Command that killed two people in the eastern Pacific, he argued it could apply across the board.
Writing for his Substack "Defense.org" Taylor noted that President Donald Trump's administration continues to carry out bombings on boats it claims are running drugs into the U.S. One such bombing was announced on Monday.
"They were obliterated from the air on the say-so of a classified Trump 'kill order' no U.S. court has ever reviewed," Taylor explained.
According to Taylor, Trump was never joking when he said he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue.
"This is the same man who said earlier this year the only limitation on his power is his 'own morality,'" said Taylor. "And I can tell you from firsthand experience in meetings with the man, he thinks a good bit about killing and torturing people."
An extensive report from *The Atlantic* in July revealed that the bombings have failed to slow or stop the flow of drugs into the U.S. But that may never have been the actual purpose, the report said.
Taylor and legal analysts have said that the bombings are illegal. But the former Trump administration official also noticed that for the past few months, the bombings had paused. This could have something to do with the administration being overwhelmed by a failed war in Iran. Or, as Taylor assessed, "the pause reflects cold feet somewhere inside our government." He made it clear that drug traffickers likely didn't take the summer off. It could be that military lawyers finally said something that made the administration worried about the legality of the actions.
Taylor suspected that the person was likely removed or reassigned so the bombings could continue.
"If that’s what happened, Trump officials were right to be nervous. Killing civilians without trial is a pretty dirty business, and merely slapping a label on them — like 'unlawful enemy combatants' — doesn’t make them allowable military targets," Taylor warned.
Anyone who ordered, approved or was connected to it can go to prison, Taylor said. It doesn't matter what a Department of Justice memo says.
He also noted that while he was in his post during the first Trump administration, cases like this happened often. There were a lot of boats. In those cases the boats were stopped and boarded by the U.S. Coast Guard. The suspects were then arrested. None were executed on the spot as Trump now does.
"If you actually want to stop the drugs, you must stop the boat. You don’t sink it. When U.S. forces capture smugglers, they interrogate them and flip them. Then they map the network (from the financiers and the port officials to the cartel lieutenants) and roll up the entire operation," Taylor said.
Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) revealed that he's read the details of the cases and there were likely people killed who weren't narcotrafficking.
To Taylor's ear, it sounds like the start of an investigation and as Democrats prepare to take over if they win in 2026, they should be prepared to issue subpoenas to learn what lawyers told the Pentagon and the president.
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RWW
08/17/2026
Will Bunch @ The Philadelphia Inquirer: We need to care about Trump’s CIA murdering fishermen on the high seas
Reports that CIA drones attacked fishing boats off the Galapagos Islands may be Trump’s worst war crime yet.
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INTERCEPT 8 26?
“Total Whitewash”: New Pentagon Report Claims U.S. Killed No Civilians in Boat Strikes
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mike d rogers ala
Upon Trump's 2024 re-election to a non-consecutive term as president, Rogers was reportedly contacted by Trump's transition team as a potential nominee for Secretary of Defense.[49]
In December 2025, while chair of the House Armed Services Committee, Rogers said there was no need to further investigate the second strike by the Donald Trump administration on the survivors of an initial strike on an alleged drug running vessel.[50]
Committee assignments
For the 119th Congress:[51]^
Committee on Armed Services (chair)
As chair, he is ex officio a member of all its Subcommittees.
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