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drug cartels
‘A Significant Rupture’: Trump's Boat Bombing Spree Leads UK to Curb Intel-Sharing With US
"We're told that the UK is deeply uncomfortable with [the boat strikes], and they believe that it is pretty blatantly illegal," revealed a CNN reporter.
Nov 11, 2025
President Donald Trump's policy of bombing purported drug-trafficking boats in the Caribbean, which multiple legal experts have decried as an illegal act extrajudicial murder, is now meeting resistance from a top US ally.
CNN reported on Tuesday that the UK has now stopped sharing intelligence related to suspected drug-trafficking vessels with the US because the country does not want to be complicit in strikes that it believes violate international law.
CNN's sources say that the UK stopped giving the US information about boats in the region roughly a month ago, shortly after Trump began authorizing drone strikes against them in a campaign that so far has killed at least 76 people.
"Before the US military began blowing up boats in September, countering illicit drug trafficking was handled by law enforcement and the US Coast Guard, [and] cartel members and drug smugglers were treated as criminals with due process rights," explained CNN.
Last month, after his administration had already launched several strikes, Trump declared drug cartels enemy combatants and claimed he has the right to launch military strikes against suspected drug-trafficking boats.
Appearing on CNN on Tuesday to discuss the story, reporter Natasha Bertrand described the decision to stop sharing intelligence as "a really significant rupture" between the US and its closest ally.
"We're told that the UK is deeply uncomfortable with [the boat strikes], and they believe that it is pretty blatantly illegal," Bertrand explained. "It really underscores the continued questions surrounding the legality of this US military campaign."
🚨HOLY SHIT: The UK - our closest ally since WWI - just cut off ALL intelligence sharing with the U.S. about Caribbean drug trafficking boats, calling the strikes illegal.
Britain doesn’t trust us anymore. Trump has torched a century of friendship while he sucks up to dictators. pic.twitter.com/E0Was3WrrY
— CALL TO ACTIVISM (@CalltoActivism) November 11, 2025
The US military began its boat attacks in the Caribbean in September, and has since expanded them to purported drug boats operating in the Pacific Ocean.
Reporting last month from the Wall Street Journal indicated that the administration was also preparing to attack a variety of targets inside Venezuela, whose government Trump has baselessly accused of running drug cartels. Potential targets include “ports and airports controlled by the military that are allegedly used to traffic drugs, including naval facilities and airstrips.”
The Washington Post reported on Tuesday that the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier has now arrived off the coast of Latin America, in a move that the paper notes "has fueled speculation the Trump administration intends to dramatically escalate its deadly counternarcotics campaign there, possibly through direct attacks on Venezuela."
Reports from the US government and the United Nations have not identified Venezuela as a significant source of drugs that enter the United States, and the country plays virtually no role in the trafficking of fentanyl, the primary cause of drug overdoses in the US.
The administration's military aggression in Latin America has also sparked a fierce backlash in the region, where dozens of political leaders last month condemned the boat attacks, while also warning that they could just be the start of a regime change war reminiscent of Cold War-era US-backed coups like ones that occurred in Chile, Brazil, and other nations.
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Bondi: Trump Admin Will Take 'Same Approach' to Antifa as Drug Cartels, Which It Repeatedly Bombed
"So he is going to drone strike American citizens?" said one journalist.
Oct 08, 2025
US Attorney General Pam Bondi generated alarm on Wednesday when she said the Trump administration is going to take the "same approach" to antifa as it has to drug cartels—as the military bombs boats in the Caribbean it claims are smuggling drugs.
Antifa encompasses autonomous anti-fascist individuals and loosely affiliated groups who lack a national organizational structure or leadership. Still, as the increasingly authoritarian administration works to quash dissent on all fronts, President Donald Trump last month signed an executive order designating the antifa movement as a domestic terrorist organization.
During a related roundtable on Wednesday—held as the administration worked to deploy the National Guard in Democrat-led cities—Bondi said that "we're not gonna stop at just arresting the violent criminals we can see in the streets. Fighting crime is more than just getting the bad guy off the streets; it's breaking down the organization brick by brick, just like we did with cartels."
Glancing toward Trump, she continued: "We're going to take the same approach, President Trump, with antifa: Destroy the entire organization from top to bottom. We're going to take them apart. Thanks to your bold leadership, and the designation of antifa as a terrorist organization—which is exactly what they are—Americans will no longer tolerate their unhinged violence."
Lawyer and radio host Dean Obeidallah warned: "Please understand that this is Trump regime explaining how they will use the government to prosecute Democrats. Page 1 of the fascist playbook is imprison political opponents so that the fascist has one-party rule."
Others noted the violence the administration has already taken. Zeteo reporter Prem Thakker said: "My gosh. After the US bombed multiple boats in the middle of the ocean, murdering people on grounds that they were allegedly 'carrying drugs,' the US attorney general says, 'Just like we did with cartels, we're going to take the same approach…with antifa.'"
Zeteo founder Mehdi Hasan said, "So he is going to drone strike American citizens?"
HuffPost's SV Dáte similarly asked, "So the US military will be summarily killing them from above now?"
Trump has recently announced four bombings of boats he claimed were running drugs, without releasing any evidence. Those US military attacks have killed at least 21 people. Critics in Congress and beyond argue the strikes are illegal under federal and international law.
On Tuesday, top Democrats from key committees in the US House of Representatives demanded further information about the bombings and reminded Trump: "Congress has the sole constitutional responsibility to declare war and to authorize the use of force. You have failed to secure such authorization for these strikes."
Also on Tuesday, Bondi appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee, where lawmakers grilled her on a range of topics. Asked about legal justification for the boat bombings by Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), she declined to comment.
Ahead of Bondi's Senate testimony, watchdog groups and hundreds of former employees of the US Department of Justice expressed alarm about her leadership of the DOJ.
“We’re seeing the erosion of the Justice Department’s fabric and integrity at an alarming pace," says a letter signed by 282 former DOJ officials. "Our democratic system cannot survive without the primary institution that enforces the law.”
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Omar, Ramirez Among First in Congress to Decry 'Unconstitutional' Trump Strike on Boat
"They're now using the failed War on Drugs to justify their egregious violation of international law," the Minnesota progressive said of the Trump administration.
Sep 04, 2025
Congresswomen Ilhan Omar and Delia Ramirez on Thursday strongly condemned the Trump administration's deadly attack on a boat allegedly trafficking cocaine off the coast of Venezuela as "lawless and reckless," while urging the White House to respect lawmakers' "clear constitutional authority on matters of war and peace."
" Congress has not declared war on Venezuela, or Tren de Aragua, and the mere designation of a group as a terrorist organization does not give any president carte blanche," said Omar (D-Minn.), referring to President Donald Trump's day one executive order designating drug cartels including the Venezuela-based group as foreign terrorist organizations.
Trump—who reportedly signed a secret order directing the Pentagon to use military force to combat cartels abroad—said that Tuesday's US strike in international waters killed 11 people. The attack sparked fears of renewed US aggression in a region that has endured well over 100 US interventions over the past 200 years, and against a country that has suffered US meddling since the late 19th century.
"It appears that US forces that were recently sent to the region in an escalatory and provocative manner were under no threat from the boat they attacked," Omar cotended. "There is no conceivable legal justification for this use of force. Unless compelling evidence emerges that they were acting in self-defense, that makes the strike a clear violation of international law."
Omar continued:
They're now using the failed War on Drugs to justify their egregious violation of international law. The US posture towards the eradication of drugs has caused immeasurable damage across our hemisphere. It has led to massive forced displacement, environmental devastation, violence, and human rights violations. What it has not done is any damage whatsoever to narcotrafficking or to the cartels. It has been a dramatic, profound failure at every level. In Latin America, even right-wing presidents acknowledge this is true.
The congresswoman's remarks came on the same day that US Secretary of State Marco Rubio designated a pair of Ecuadorean drug gangs as terrorist organizations while visiting the South American nation. This, after Rubio said that US attacks on suspected drug traffickers "will happen again."
"Trump and Rubio's apparent solution" to the failed drug war, said Omar, is "to make it even more militarized," an effort that "is doomed to fail."
"Worse, it risks spiraling into the exact type of endless, pointless conflict that Trump supposedly opposes," she added.
Echoing critics including former Human Rights Watch director Kenneth Roth, who called Tuesday's strike a "summary execution," Ramirez (D-Ill.) said Thursday on social media that "Trump and the Pentagon executed 11 people in the Caribbean, 1,500 miles away from the United States, without a legal rationale."
"From Iran to Venezuela, to DC, LA, and Chicago, Trump continues to abuse our military power, undermine the rule of law, and erode our constitutional boundaries in political spectacles," Ramirez added, referring to the president's ordering of strikes on Iran and National Guard deployments to Los Angeles, the nation's capital, and likely beyond.
"Presidents don't bomb first and ask questions later," Ramirez added. "Wannabe dictators do that."
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