Overview

• President Donald Trump notified Congress that cartel networks are being treated as unlawful combatants and their activities as an armed attack on the United States, formalizing recent Caribbean strikes that killed about 17 people.
• Senior lawmakers and legal experts questioned the authority and evidence for using the military in anti-smuggling operations, with Senate Armed Services Democrat Jack Reed saying the White House has provided no credible legal basis or intelligence.
• Venezuela condemned U.S. actions after reporting five U.S. combat jets near its coast and denounced the boat strikes as extrajudicial killings, as the Pentagon positioned additional F-35s in Puerto Rico.
• A separate report said the Pentagon plans to require thousands in the Secretary of Defense’s office to sign stricter secrecy agreements with polygraph checks, reflecting tighter internal controls.
• At Russia’s Valdai forum, Vladimir Putin warned that any U.S. Tomahawk deliveries to Ukraine would mark a qualitatively new escalation, while a spate of drone incidents in Europe spurred calls for a coordinated ‘drone wall’ and temporarily shut Munich’s airport.