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Trump Admin Reportedly OKs CIA Action in Venezuela Amid Growing Alarm Over Bombed Boats
The reporting came as rights groups sought the legal memo on the president's deadly strikes on alleged drug-running boats in the Caribbean.
Oct 15, 2025
As outrage over US President Donald Trump's deadly boat bombings mounts, The New York Times reported Wednesday that his administration secretly authorized the Central Intelligence Agency "to carry out lethal operations in Venezuela and conduct a range of operations in the Caribbean," with the ultimate aim of ousting the country's leader, Nicolás Maduro.
"The agency would be able to take covert action against Mr. Maduro or his government either unilaterally or in conjunction with a larger military operation," according to the Times, which cited unnamed US officials. "It is not known whether the CIA is planning any operations in Venezuela or if the authorities are meant as a contingency."
"But the development comes as the US military is planning its own possible escalation, drawing up options for President Trump to consider, including strikes inside Venezuela," the newspaper noted. The administration's Venezuela strategy was "developed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, with help from John Ratcliffe, the CIA director."
The White House and CIA declined to comment on record, though some observers speculated it was "an authorized leak." The reporting comes as Democrats in Congress, human rights groups, and legal scholars sound the alarm of Trump's five known strikes on boats he claims were smuggling drugs, which have killed at least 27 people.
Critics highlighted the United States' long history of covert action in Latin America, as well as how the reported CIA authorization contrasts with Trump's so-called "America First" claims.
"This is absolutely insane," said Tommy Vietor, a former Obama administration official who went on to co-found Crooked Media. "America First was not sold as CIA regime change operations in Venezuela."
Critics also noted Trump's mission to secure the Nobel Peace Prize; this year, it went to María Corina Machado, a right-wing Venezuelan who dedicated the award to not only the people in her country, but also the US president.
"Now that Trump has delegated his preposterous politicking for a Nobel Peace Prize to sycophants, he can finally get around to declaring unilateral war on Venezuela, a war crime, as he murders Colombian civilians at sea, another war crime, and endorses collective punishment in Gaza, another war crime," journalist Seth Abramson said Wednesday.
As Senate Democrats last week unsuccessfully fought to stop Trump's boat strikes of the Venezuelan coast, Colombian President Gustavo Petro said on social media that one of the bombed vessels appeared to be carrying citizens of his country.
"A new war zone has opened: the Caribbean," he said at the time. "Evidence shows that the last boat bombed was Colombian, with Colombian citizens inside. I hope their families come forward and file complaints. There isn't a war against smuggling; it's a war for oil, and the world must stop it. The aggression is against all of Latin America and the Caribbean."
The Trump administration recently claimed in a confidential notice to Congress intended to justify the deadly bombings that the president decided drug cartels "are nonstate armed groups, designated them as terrorist organizations, and determined that their actions constitute an armed attack against the United States."
While that notice leaked to the press, the ACLU and Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) on Wednesday filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking the Office of Legal Counsel's guidance and other related documents regarding the strikes.
"All available evidence suggests that President Trump's lethal strikes in the Caribbean constitute murder, pure and simple," said Jeffrey Stein, staff attorney with the ACLU's National Security Project. "The public deserves to know how our government is justifying these attacks as lawful, and, given the stakes, immediate public scrutiny of its apparently radical theories is imperative."
CCR legal director Baher Azmy stressed that "in a constitutional system, no president can arbitrarily choose to assassinate individuals from the sky based on his whim or say-so."
"The Trump administration is taking its indiscriminate pattern of lawlessness to a lethal level," Azmy added. "The public understanding of any rationale supporting such unprecedented and shocking conduct is essential for transparency and accountability."
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'Boots on the Ground': Trump to Send 200 US Troops to Israel to Monitor Ceasefire
"Hamas was willing to gamble on Trump’s promise to prevent the Israelis from resuming the genocide once Israel had its prisoners back," wrote independent journalist Nicolas J.S. Davies.
Oct 10, 2025
The US is sending 200 troops to Israel to monitor the Gaza ceasefire agreement signed earlier this week, the Associated Press reported on Friday.
Several officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told the AP that the "US Central Command (CENTCOM) is going to establish a 'civil-military coordination center' in Israel that will help facilitate the flow of humanitarian aid as well as logistical and security assistance into the territory wracked by two years of war."
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed on social media that "up to 200 US personnel, who are already stationed at CENTCOM, will be tasked with monitoring the peace agreement in Israel, and they will work with other international forces on the ground."
Though the United States has provided $16.3 billion in direct military aid to Israel since its two-year campaign of genocide in Gaza began following Hamas' attacks on October 7, 2023, this will be the first time the US will directly have "boots on the ground" in the conflict, though the troops are not expected to be deployed within Gaza itself.
The military team will be overseen by Adm. Brad Cooper, the head of CENTCOM. One senior official said, "his role will be to oversee, observe, make sure there are no violations." The force is expected to also contain members of the armed forces of Egypt, Qatar, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates, with the AP reporting that it will also "coordinate with Israeli defense forces."
According to Axios, Hamas negotiators were reluctant to agree to the first phase of the ceasefire deal unless it received assurances from US President Donald Trump that Israel would not resume attacks once all of its captives were released. Israel had already unilaterally broken the previous ceasefire in March.
"Hamas was willing to gamble on Trump’s promise to prevent the Israelis from resuming the genocide once Israel had its prisoners back," wrote independent journalist Nicolas J.S. Davies in Common Dreams on Thursday. "Under Trump’s plan, Israel would agree to end its genocidal assault on Gaza and partially withdraw its forces, but only his word would prevent it from relaunching the genocide once it had the Israeli prisoners in Gaza safely back."
Within hours after the ceasefire deal was signed on Thursday, Israel had already launched attacks that killed at least nine Palestinians and injured dozens more at displaced people's shelters, homes, and gatherings.
But even if the ceasefire holds, many of the most contentious questions have yet to be resolved, and have instead been kicked down the road to the next round of talks.
Although it dropped its ask for Israel to totally withdraw from Gaza, Hamas has dubbed many of Trump's points in the so-called "peace plan," as nonstarters, including the demand that the militant group fully disarm and that it hand over control of the strip's governance to a "Board of Peace" headed by Trump and Tony Blair, a former UK prime minister and an architect of the Iraq War.
“The proposed plan fails to ensure that Palestinians fully and meaningfully participate in all decisions about the future of the [occupied Palestinian territories], its governance, and the exercise of their rights," said Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s secretary general. "A plan that repeats the mistakes and failures of past initiatives that ignored human rights and the root causes of injustice will fail to secure a just and sustainable future for all those living in Israel and the OPT."
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While Ripping Trump Authoritarianism, Over Half of Senate Dems Help GOP Pass $925 Billion Pentagon Bill
"Congress continues to expand military spending while denying investments in the programs that will truly build a safer, healthier future for working- and middle-class families," said Sen. Ed Markey, who voted no.
Oct 10, 2025
Senate Democrats are blasting President Donald Trump's increasingly authoritarian behavior and congressional Republicans for shutting down the US government to preserve devastating healthcare cuts, but over half of them voted with the GOP late Thursday to give nearly $1 trillion to the Pentagon, which has never passed an audit.
The final vote on the Senate's $925 billion version of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2026 was 77-20, with Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), Ted Cruz (R-Texas), and Thom Tillis (R-NC) not voting. The passage tees up talks with leaders in the House of Representatives, where nearly all Republicans and 17 Democrats approved an NDAA last month.
Democratic Sens. Tammy Baldwin (Wis.), Cory Booker (NJ), Maria Cantwell (Wash.) Tammy Duckworth (Ill.), Dick Durbin (Ill.), Andy Kim (NJ), Ed Markey (Mass.), Jeff Merkley (Ore.), Chris Murphy (Conn.), Patty Murray (Wash.), Alex Padilla (Calif.), Brian Schatz (Hawaii), Adam Schiff (Calif.), Tina Smith (Minn.) Chris Van Hollen (Md.), Elizabeth Warren (Mass.), Peter Welch (Vt.), and Ron Wyden (Ore.) opposed the bill alongside Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who caucuses with Democrats, and Rand Paul (R-Ky).
"Yesterday, the Senate voted to give the Pentagon a trillion-dollar spending package while the Trump administration and MAGA Republicans play politics with troop pay and nuclear security and refuse to reopen the federal government," Markey said in a Friday statement. "All the while, they are stealing healthcare from American families to fund tax breaks for CEO billionaires. This isn't a budget that funds America's real security needs."
"The Senate voted to give the Pentagon a trillion-dollar spending package while the Trump administration and MAGA Republicans play politics with troop pay and nuclear security and refuse to reopen the federal government."
"Republicans rail that we need to cut government spending—for food assistance, for healthcare, for environmental protection—yet they are showering their defense contractor cronies with hundreds of billions for wasteful and destabilizing programs like Trump's Golden Dome space-based missile system," Markey continued. "Yet they decry that funding will soon dry up for paying military salaries and for essential nuclear security operations at the National Nuclear Security Administration."
"In their desperation to score cheap political points, Republicans are undermining vital national security missions," he added. "Year after year, Congress continues to expand military spending while denying investments in the programs that will truly build a safer, healthier future for working- and middle-class families. The cost of passing this bill in the form of denied rights and wasteful spending is simply too great."
In posts on Bluesky, journalist Erin Reed called out the Senate Democrats who helped pass the bill, given its attacks on LGBTQ+ Americans and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI)—common targets of congressional Republicans and the Trump administration.
"In 2024, the NDAA became the vehicle for one of the most consequential betrayals of transgender Americans by national Democrats in recent memory, after Democrats allowed provisions targeting trans military family members and dependents to stand when they had control of the Senate and White House," Reed noted.
"This year, history is repeating itself," she said. "Senate Democrats dropped key objections and allowed a vote to proceed on the bill—ultimately passing the Senate version of the bill, complete with anti-trans culture-war riders, an anti-DEI clause, and no limits on the domestic deployment of US troops."
Early Thursday afternoon, Duckworth, a veteran herself, said that she was blocking the NDAA until she secured a hearing to investigate the president's "gross abuse of our military" by sending soldiers into American cities. A few hours later—shortly before a federal judge temporarily blocked Trump's National Guard deployment in her state, Illinois—Duckworth announced that a hearing is planned.
Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), one of the Democrats who voted for the NDAA, secured sufficient bipartisan support for his amendment to end the authorizations for use of military force related to the 1991 Gulf War and 2003 invasion of Iraq. The Washington Post reported that "the House bill also includes a similar measure, bringing Congress to the precipice of repealing the laws."
Some other Democrat-proposed amendments weren't successful. According to The Hill:
Amendments that failed to pass included one from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) who had hoped to block money for President Trump to retrofit a luxury Qatari jet he accepted as an intended replacement for Air Force One.
"Retrofitting this foreign-owned luxury jet to make it fully operational will cost hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars. That's money that shouldn't be wasted," Schumer said.
Still, Schumer ultimately voted for the NDAA—unlike Van Hollen, who proposed blocking Trump and governors from sending National Guard troops to another state if its governor or local leaders don't agree.
"Presidents and governors shouldn't be able to deploy National Guard troops from one state to another if that state's governor objects," the senator said on social media. "That is common sense, and yet Republicans just blocked my amendment to stop this blatant abuse of power. Another shameful abdication of duty."
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