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Another 'Extrajudicial Execution' as US Bombs Second Alleged Venezuelan Drug Boat
"There is no legal justification for this military strike," said one Amnesty International campaigner. "The US must be held accountable."
Sep 15, 2025
President Donald Trump said Monday that the US carried out a fresh strike on what he said was a boat used by Venezuelan drug gangs, killing three people in what one human rights campaigner called another "extrajudicial execution."
"This morning, on my Orders, US Military Forces conducted a SECOND Kinetic Strike against positively identified, extraordinarily violent drug trafficking cartels and narcoterrorists in the [US Southern Command] area of responsibility," Trump said on his Truth Social network. "The Strike occurred while these confirmed narcoterrorists from Venezuela were in International Waters transporting illegal narcotics (A DEADLY WEAPON POISONING AMERICANS!) headed to the US."
"These extremely violent drug trafficking cartels POSE A THREAT to US National Security, Foreign Policy, and vital US Interests," the Republican president continued. "The Strike resulted in three male terrorists killed in action. No US Forces were harmed in this Strike."
"BE WARNED—IF YOU ARE TRANSPORTING DRUGS THAT CAN KILL AMERICANS, WE ARE HUNTING YOU!" Trump added. "The illicit activities by these cartels have wrought DEVASTATING CONSEQUENCES ON AMERICAN COMMUNITIES FOR DECADES, killing millions of American Citizens. NO LONGER. Thank you for your attention to this matter!!!"
US President Trump just announced that a second drug smuggling boat from Venezuela was hit by a US airstrike in the Caribbean, killing 3 people on board the boat.#Venezuela pic.twitter.com/dO34gYr9GZ
— CNW (@ConflictsW) September 15, 2025
Responding to arguments by legal experts and Venezuelan officials that the September 2 strike was illegal, Trump said Sunday that "what's illegal are the drugs that were on the boat... and the fact that 300 million people died last year from drugs."
Only 62 million people died in the entire world of all causes last year, making Trump's claim impossibly false.
Monday's attack followed the September 2 bombing of a vessel allegedly transporting cocaine off the Venezuelan coast, a strike that killed 11 people. Venezuelan officials say none of the 11 men were members of the Tren de Aragua gang, as claimed by Trump.
On his first day back in the White House, Trump signed an executive order designating drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations. Last month, the president reportedly signed a secret order directing the Pentagon to use military force to combat drug cartels abroad, sparking fears of renewed US aggression in a region that has endured well over 100 US attacks, invasions, occupations, and other interventions since the issuance of the dubious Monroe Doctrine in 1823.
The Intercept's Nick Turse reported Monday that the Trump administration's recently rebranded Department of War "is thwarting congressional oversight" of the September 2 attack.
“I’m incredibly disturbed by this new reporting that the Trump administration launched multiple strikes on the boat off Venezuela,” Congresswoman Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.) said in response to Turse's reporting. “They didn’t even bother to seek congressional authorization, bragged about these killings—and teased more to come.”
Common Dreams reported last week that Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) introduced a war powers resolution seeking to restrain Trump from conducting attacks in the Caribbean.
Also last week, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) led a letter signed by two dozen Democratic colleagues and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) asserting that the Trump administration offered "no legitimate justification" for the first boat strike.
It's not just congressional Democrats who have decried Trump's September 2 attack. Last week, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said that "the recent drone attack on a small speedboat over 2,000 miles from our shore without identification of the occupants or the content of the boat is in no way part of a declared war, and defies our longstanding Coast Guard rules of engagement."
“What a despicable and thoughtless sentiment it is to glorify killing someone without a trial," Paul later added.
Paul also mirrored Democratic lawmakers' questioning of Trump's narrative that the boat bombed on September 2 was heading to the United States.
Echoing congressional critics, Daphne Eviatar, director of Amnesty International's Security With Human Rights program, said of Monday's attack, "Today, President Trump claimed his administration carried out another lethal strike against a boat in the Caribbean."
"This is an extrajudicial execution, which is murder," Eviatar added. "There is no legal justification for this military strike. The US must be held accountable."
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Trump Admin Considering a Strike on Venezuela, Military Sources Say
The US is considering "shooting down Venezuelan military aircraft" or "bombing Venezuelan military airfield," according to a report from independent journalist Ken Klippenstein.
Sep 10, 2025
US President Donald Trump's administration is considering launching military strikes on Venezuela, according to new reporting from independent journalist Ken Klippenstein.
Military sources on Tuesday told Klippenstein that the Trump administration is mulling an attack against Venezuela unless it cracks down on drug cartels that it claims are shipping fentanyl into the United States.
Contrary to the administration's claims, according to the US Drug Enforcement Administration and other agencies, Venezuela plays virtually no role in fentanyl manufacturing and trafficking.
Klippenstein's sources said the attack was likely to involve "shooting down Venezuelan military aircraft or by bombing Venezuelan military airfield," and that the US Air Force has been rehearsing for such a mission in recent weeks.
Such an attack would mark a dramatic escalation in the Trump administration's hostilities toward Venezuela, which escalated last week when the administration bombed a boat off the Venezuelan coast that it alleged was carrying drug traffickers.
Many legal experts were quick to condemn the strike as a violation of maritime law. Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky was among those who condemned the military attack on suspected drug smugglers without due process.
A leaked Department of Homeland Security memo obtained by Klippenstein gives clues as to why the administration is taking an aggressive military posture toward Venezuela.
Specifically, writes Klippenstein, the memo gives insight into the administration's view that Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro is actually in charge of the Tren de Aragua cartel and is giving it orders to poison American citizens by getting them addicted to drugs.
However, Klippenstein cautions that this view of Maduro as the commander of an international drug cartel is not backed up by US intelligence agencies.
"A declassified assessment prepared by the National Intelligence Council concluded in April that the Maduro regime 'probably does not have a policy of cooperating with TdA and is not directing TdA operations in the United States,'" he noted.
Klippenstein closed his report by likening the situation to the buildup to the 2003 Iraq War, but with fentanyl taking the place of "weapons of mass destruction" as the purported casus belli.
"Similar to the 'debate' about Saddam's WMD, Democrats in Congress are busy discussing whether the strike on a small drug boat was legal and complaining that they weren't briefed on the operation," he wrote. "The fundamental question—is there any evidence that the Venezuela government is directing fentanyl into the U.S.?—is hardly ever asked. And most importantly, would bombing Venezuela do anything to reduce the flow of drugs into the U.S.?"
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Pro-Israel Senators Show Their Hand By Opposing Free Speech Protections in Now-Delayed Antisemitism Bill
The Antisemitism Awareness Act has never been about countering antisemitism or protecting Jewish students from discrimination; it is about silencing pro-Palestine students and protecting the Israeli government from criticism.
May 06, 2025
When Senate Republicans brought the so-called Antisemitism Awareness Act up for a committee vote last week, they were expecting an easy win. After all, the bill had the support of Senate Republican leaders, most Israel advocacy groups, and even some Democrats.
Yet the bill faced an unexpected problem that may ultimately doom its passage. During a markup hearing of the HELP Committee, two Republicans broke ranks, joining all Democrats in approving free speech amendments that undermined the true goal of the bill: requiring colleges and universities to conflate criticism of the Israeli government and Zionism with antisemitism.
The first amendment considered was HELP Chairman Sen. Bill Cassidy's (R-La.) manager amendment, which affirmed that “Nothing in this Act shall be constructed to diminish or infringe upon any right protected under the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States."
While that vague reassurance passed with bipartisan support, most Republicans refused to support substantive amendments that explicitly referenced Gaza as an example of free speech, laid out examples of protected student speech, and prohibited retaliation against dissent.
If the true purpose of the Antisemitism Awareness Act was protecting Jewish students from illegal anti-Semitic discrimination, then none of these amendments should have been a problem.
At start of the hearing, ranking member Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) warned, “Unfortunately and unacceptably, the Antisemitism Awareness Act we are considering today would label speech that criticizes the Israeli government and Netanyahu’s horrific war in Gaza as antisemitic and a violation of civil rights laws, and that is an extremely dangerous precedent.”
Sanders then offered several amendments designed to reduce the risk that government agencies and educational institutions can use the bill as a new tool of censorship.
His first amendment clarified, "no person shall be considered antisemitic for using their rights of free speech or protest under the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States to ... oppose Benjamin Netanyahu's led war effort, which has killed more than 50,000 and wounded more than 113,000, 60 percent of whom are women and children” and "oppose the Israeli government's devastation of Gaza..."
All Democrats voted in favor, which was itself a surprise given how many Democratic politicians have desperately avoided any criticism of the Israeli government. The bigger surprise came from Senator Rand Paul. He broke ranks with other Republicans and supported the amendment, ensuring its passage.
A second Sanders amendment declared that the federal government cannot force any school, college, or university to adopt a policy that a branch of the federal government may compel a school "to violate the rights of a student, faculty, or staff member under the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States."
In a sane world, every Republican senator would have supported such a basic amendment. Yet all opposed it except for two: Sen. Paul and Sen. Susan Collins (D-Maine).
The third Sanders' amendment clarified that speech, such as distributing flyers, inviting guest speakers, or engaging in classroom discussions, is protected unless it involves true threats or incitement of violence. Again, Paul and Collins were the only Republicans to break with their colleagues to support it.
Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) introduced an amendment prohibiting the federal government from detaining or deporting students based on protected political speech. That amendment passed by a single vote, thanks again to Senator Paul. Markey stated, “When a young person writes an op-ed in the student newspaper and get whisked off of the streets of Tuffs University to a prison in Louisiana with no charges that is what we are debating today.”
If the true purpose of the Antisemitism Awareness Act was protecting Jewish students from illegal anti-Semitic discrimination, then none of these amendments should have been a problem. They should have received universal support, and their approval should not have derailed the bill.
Yet the fate of the legislation is now up in the air.
HELP Committee Chair Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) said during the hearing that, “Supporting these amendments is an effort to kill this bill.”
Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Ok.) responded the next day by telling Jewish Insider that “Rand Paul totally killed that bill.” Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) also said, “These amendments are dealbreakers.”
Why? Because the Antisemitism Awareness Act has never been about countering antisemitism or protecting Jewish students from discrimination; it is about silencing pro-Palestine students and protecting the Israeli government from criticism.
The bill would require government agencies and schools to enforce federal civil rights law using the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism—a vague and widely disputed standard that poses a mortal threat to First Amendment freedoms.
Kenneth S. Stern, the original drafter of the IHRA definition, has testified to Congress that, "My fear is, if we similarly enshrine this definition into law, outside groups will try and suppress–rather than answer–political speech they don’t like. The academy, Jewish students, and faculty teaching about Jewish issues, will all suffer." Stern has repeatedly stated that the definition was never meant to be enforceable law and that doing so risks unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination. That is precisely what this legislation seeks to achieve.
The IHRA definition declares that any student describing the founding of Israel as a "racist endeavor" has engaged in antisemitism punishable by their school and the government of the United States—even though racist militias and terrorist groups like the Irgun subjected Palestinians to a horrific campaign of ethnic cleansing and mass murder during the founding of Israel.
IHRA also declares anyone “applying double standards” to Israel is antisemtiic. If someone criticizes the Israeli government's war crimes in Gaza but hasn't made time to criticize the RSF's war crimes in Sudan, they must be antisemitic. Ditto for anyone “drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis,” comparisons that--while controversial—have even been made by far-right supporters of the Israeli government.
As Sen. Paul noted during the hearing, these and other examples establish a dangerous double standard. No other foreign government is granted this level of immunity from criticism under U.S. civil rights law. If enforced through Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, these vague and politically motivated examples would transform legitimate political critique into grounds for federal investigations, and dissent into a punishable offense.
If passed, this bill—even in its watered-down form—would open the door for the Israeli government and its supporters to misconstrue American civil rights laws.
CAIR, like many other civil rights groups, has called on congress to not pass the Antisemitism Awareness Act into law, as it would give the Department of Education—under a Trump administration already targeting, arresting, detaining, and attempting to deport anti-genocide protesters—even more power to investigate, silence, and punish speech on campus critical of Israel. We are already seeing the consequences. More than 1,700 student visas have been revoked since January. Students like Columbia’s Mahmoud Khalil and Tufts’ Rumeysa Ozturk remain in ICE custody for nothing more than participating in peaceful, protected protest and speech. Others face deportation for daring to speak out. This is not theoretical. This is not speculative. It is happening now.
In its original form, the Antisemitism Awareness Act would have given the Trump administration even more power to escalate its attack on free speech for Palestine. Even with the addition of Sanders' amendments, the now-contradictory bill still threatens free speech protections by including the IHRA definition.
That's still not good enough for most Senate Republicans and pro-Israel groups pushing the bill. Now that the bill cannot be so easily weaponized to silence dissent against Israeli government's war crimes in Gaza or its founding ideology, at least some of its key backers are threatening to abandon it.
Congress must reject this bill in full. No amendment can salvage legislation built on an anti-democratic foundation. Americans have the right to speak out against injustice, whether it occurs in our own country or in Gaza.
We must be absolutely clear about what is at stake. If passed, this bill—even in its watered-down form—would open the door for the Israeli government and its supporters to misconstrue American civil rights laws. That is not only a betrayal of free speech. It is a threat to American sovereignty.
Americans must unequivocally oppose antisemitism, Islamophobia, anti-Black racism, anti-immigrant sentiment, and all forms of hate. But conflating antisemitism with opposition to Israel’s military occupation, apartheid policies, or the ongoing genocide in Gaza is not just dishonest. It is dangerous.
Congress must reject this bill in full. No amendment can salvage legislation built on an anti-democratic foundation. Americans have the right to speak out against injustice, whether it occurs in our own country or in Gaza.
Silencing speech does not stop hate. It only deepens injustice. And we should not stand by while our government attempts to criminalize moral clarity.
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