The U.S. military destroyed another boat in the waters around Latin America, killing six people on board the vessel, President Trump announced Tuesday on social media. The episode marks the sixth known watercraft destroyed by U.S. forces in the region since Trump greenlit the first attack early last month.
As before, Trump alleges those on the boat were affiliated with “a Designated Terrorist Organization (DTO) conducting narcotrafficking…off the Coast of Venezuela,” he wrote online Tuesday. “Intelligence confirmed the vessel was trafficking narcotics, was associated with illicit narcoterrorist networks, and was transiting along a known DTO route,” Trump said.
Reminder: It still appears Trump does not have the authority, under Article II of the Constitution, to order these killings, former State Department counsel Brian Finucane explained as part of a recent longer discussion with colleagues at Just Security. To date, more than two dozen people have been killed in these U.S. attacks.
National Guard soldiers are patrolling Beale Street as immigration enforcers have been conducting “mass pullovers” in Memphis while other Guard forces have been spotted “walking along the Mississippi River, and visiting the Bass Pro Shops at the Pyramid,” the local Commercial Appeal reported Tuesday.
The Guard presence began on Friday, and the city’s mayor says it’s unclear how long the soldiers will patrol Memphis. The Guard’s domestic deployment is ostensibly part of the Trump administration’s alleged effort to crack down on crime, though some critics view it more as a means of accelerating immigration enforcement.
Five other states have timelines for their domestic Guard deployments to Washington, D.C. Eight states have sent a total of 2,300 soldiers to the nation’s capital at Trump’s request—which was based on false and exaggerated crime statistics. Those states include Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, Ohio, West Virginia, Alabama, Louisiana and South Dakota. South Carolina expects to end their DC deployment by the end of the month, while Ohio, Georgia, Mississippi, and West Virginia are targeting the end of November for a withdrawal of their forces from Washington, according to the Associated Press. (Alabama, Louisiana and South Dakota have not yet provided an end date.)
Mounting costs: The Guard “deployments could wind up costing Americans roughly two-thirds of a billion dollars,” Marc Novicoff Friday for the Atlantic. In addition to Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles, “Tens of millions of dollars—perhaps hundreds of millions in total—will be spent on deployments to Chicago, Portland, and Memphis, if Trump’s plans for those cities proceed,” Novicoff writes, and puts it all together to note, “it is hard to think of a less efficient way of doing so than shifting funds away from violence prevention and local law enforcement and toward troops who stand in low-crime areas and don’t make arrests.”
Why bring it up: “These expenses would seem to undermine an administration that has claimed to go after ‘waste, fraud, and abuse’ wherever possible…if that’s the goal, the method the administration has settled on is highly inefficient,” Novicoff writes. And ICYMI, “While some types of crime—especially gun offenses—have become less frequent since Trump ordered troops into the city, overall violent crime hasn’t changed that much” since the troops arrived in Washington two months ago, Reuters reported 10 days ago.
We have a few new snapshots of Guard forces on the job in Washington thanks to some police-report sleuthing this week by Brad Heath of Reuters. For example, on October 5, “a 7-11 manager flagged down soldiers to report that a man who tried to pay $2 for $4.50 worth of pizza. He also threw pizza at the manager, then his friend stole two slices of pizza. Soldiers pursued and detained both accused pizza thieves.”
The next day, “police approached a man suspected of kicking the glass door of a McDonald’s until it broke. He tried to walk away from the officers, but stopped when National Guardsmen cut him off,” Heath writes. And the week before that, “soldiers from West Virginia patrolling D.C.’s Navy Yard area observed a man masturbating in public. The soldiers ‘advised [him] to stop.’ Police officers arrested him a little while later after they said they saw him peeing in front of a restaurant.” Read over two more episodes, here.
Related reading:
Welcome to this Wednesday edition of The D Brief, a newsletter dedicated to developments affecting the future of U.S. national security, brought to you by Ben Watson and Bradley Peniston. It’s more important than ever to stay informed, so thank you for reading. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 1990, Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
AUSA developments
China is ‘pacing threat,’ Army Secretary says—while backing Trump’s homeland defense push. “I think my understanding of the administration’s priorities and the Secretary of War is [that] China is the pacing threat,” Army Secretary Dan Driscoll said on the sidelines of the annual Association of the U.S. Army’s conference in Washington, D.C.
But Driscoll stopped short of calling China the top priority, adding that “we are also, at the same time, in parallel, executing on providing security and maintaining what the president has done at the border.” Strategic documents have detailed the shift in military focus from China to border enforcement, countering drug trafficking, and backing the Department of Homeland Security. Defense One’s Thomas Novelly has more from that sidelines conversation, here.
More Defense One reporting from AUSA:
Pentagon media policy
Today’s the deadline for most Pentagon reporters to sign an agreement accepting unprecedented restrictions on covering the military or turn in their badges. Washington Post: “Fox News, along with ABC, CBS and NBC, did not sign the Defense Department’s press policy by Tuesday’s deadline, having earlier in the day denounced the new regulations in a joint statement that included CNN, which previously said it would not sign.
Fox: “Today, we join virtually every other news organization in declining to agree to the Pentagon’s new requirements, which would restrict journalists’ ability to keep the nation and the world informed of important national security issues,” the news networks wrote. “The policy is without precedent and threatens core journalistic protections. We will continue to cover the U.S. military as each of our organizations has done for many decades, upholding the principles of a free and independent press.” The Post’s article includes a list of dozens of media outlets and their stances; only One America News has declared it will sign.
Defense One and seven other defense trade publications are declining to sign; they issued this joint statement on Wednesday morning. Trump, who last week seemed lukewarm on Hegseth’s new policy, seemed more supportive on Tuesday, and even suggested he could move the White House press corps “across the street.”
And Hegseth repeated a misleading statement about the current rules for reporters. “Maybe the policy should look like the White House, or other military installations where you have to wear a badge that identifies that you’re press, or you can’t just roam anywhere you want,” he said; in fact, reporters are required to wear badges in the Pentagon like anyone else, and may not enter restricted areas. Mediate has more, here.
Backgrounder: Read a bit more about Defense Secretary Pete “Hegseth’s legal fixer at the center of [the] Pentagon’s new media restrictions,” via Dan Lamothe’s Wednesday reporting at the Washington Post.
In solidarity with the Pentagon Press Corps, Clayton Weimers, the U.S.-based executive director of Reporters Without Borders, released a statement Tuesday writing, “On a daily basis, the US military is responsible for the lives of millions of Americans, combat operations around the world, and nearly a trillion dollars of US taxpayer money. The Pentagon cannot evade accountability or criticism by crushing the independence of the media in clear violation of the First Amendment.”
Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., and ranking member of the Armed Services Committee: “A free and fair press is essential to our nation, but Secretary Hegseth is attempting to shut down independent reporting with these coercive restrictions…Hegseth and his team have missed the mark legally and morally, and they should immediately abandon this policy and restore the Pentagon’s longstanding commitment to independent press access. The Secretary of Defense should lead by example with seriousness and integrity, not secrecy and suspicion.”
Big-picture analysis: “What Trump and Hegseth are doing…represents a threat to democracy—and a profound test for service members, who do not swear a personal loyalty oath to the president but to ‘support and defend the Constitution of the United States,’” says Max Boot of the Council on Foreign Relations, writing Wednesday in Foreign Affairs “By trying to politicize the military, the Trump administration is breaking trust with the men and women in uniform and driving talented leaders out of the force. The dearth of military pushback, then, begs the question of how effectively Trump and Hegseth have cleaned house, rooting out those who might disagree with them.”
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