Hegseth Ramps Up Navy Fleet in Latin America After “Drug Boat” Strike

The Department of Defense is sending even more troops to the Caribbean and Latin America to combat “illicit actors.”

Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell announced on X Friday that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth ordered the USS Gerald R. Ford, an aircraft carrier, and its strike group to deploy to the U.S. Southern Command from the Mediterranean Sea “to bolster U.S. capacity to detect, monitor, and disrupt illicit actors and activities that compromise the safety and prosperity of the United States homeland and our security in the Western Hemisphere.”

The move adds to the many U.S. ships and fighter jets already deployed to the area, and comes just hours after the Trump administration announced a tenth strike on a ship it claims was being used for drug trafficking. Even Fox News’s chief national security correspondent Jennifer Griffin noted Friday afternoon that the move looks like a “major military buildup for what many fear is an undeclared war.”

Griffin said that the aircraft carrier’s new deployment would mark the first time the U.S. wouldn’t have an aircraft carrier in the Middle East, and that 14 percent of the U.S. Navy’s fleet would now be in the Caribbean Sea.

President Trump’s strikes have attracted criticism and controversy, with one military leader even likely resigning because of the bombings. The strikes have expanded to the Pacific Ocean and are taking place extrajudicially, with no proof that the people killed in the strikes are even connected to drug trafficking. Some of them have been identified as fishermen.

The administration is responding to criticism of its bombings, which is even coming from other Republicans, by increasing its military buildup and making crass jokes. They are ignoring the fact that the strikes are likely illegal, and seem to be ratcheting up the possibility of war, breaking the president’s campaign promise to end endless wars.

President Trump’s Department of Justice is sending election monitors to “protect the votes of eligible American citizens” in six different blue districts this November.

The poll monitors will focus on California, which is set to vote on a ballot measure known as Proposition 50 that would redraw the state’s congressional districts to help Democrats, and New Jersey, where Republicans have a real shot at winning the governorship.

“Transparency at the polls translates into faith in the electoral process, and this Department of Justice is committed to upholding the highest standards of election integrity,” said Attorney General Pamela Bondi Friday. “We will commit the resources necessary to ensure the American people get the fair, free, and transparent elections they deserve.”

The effort will be coordinated by the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department. The districts that will be surveilled are Passaic County, New Jersey, Kern County, California, Riverside County, California, Fresno County, California, Orange County, California, and Los Angeles County, California.

The DOJ is also taking open requests and complaints at a tip line: VEM@usdoj.gov.

“The Department of Justice will do everything necessary to protect the votes of eligible American citizens, ensuring our elections are safe and secure,” said Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Civil Rights Division. “Transparent election processes and election monitoring are critical tools for safeguarding our elections and ensuring public trust in the integrity of our elections.”

Further details are sparse at the moment, and poll monitors are nothing new, but in this current climate one can imagine that this decision may lead to intimidation, draconian surveillance, and arrests of anyone suspected to be an immigrant at polling places in deep blue areas in November.

This faux concern about “election integrity” is rich coming from a president who can’t even admit that he lost an election fairly, and who has openly mused about breaking the law to run for a third term.

The Department of Justice has come up with yet another African nation with a dismal human rights record to send Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the man wrongfully deported to El Salvador.

In a brief filing Friday, prosecutors described Liberia as a “a thriving democracy and one of the United States’s closest partners on the African continent,” arguing that the country’s constitution “provides robust protections for human rights.”

The government claimed that because Abrego Garcia had not included Liberia on a list of 20 countries to which he feared deportation, he was free to be removed there.

But the U.S. State Department had a vastly different description of the African nation just last year, reporting “significant” human rights issues, including “arbitrary or unlawful killings” and “cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment.”

This is the latest effort by the Trump administration to ship off Abrego Garcia to an African nation.

In August, immigration officials initially offered Abrego Garcia a plea deal: if he admitted he was guilty of charges related to human smuggling, he could be removed to Costa Rica. When he rejected the offer, the Trump administration threatened to deport him to Uganda, Eswatini, or Ghana. But U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis of Maryland forbade his immediate removal and said that federal law may require him to be removed to a country of his choice. In any case, all three countries refused to take him.

Earlier this month, independent journalist Adam Klasfield reported that Xinis ordered the government to provide testimony on efforts to remove Garcia to Costa Rica, which he had ultimately selected as the country of his choice—but the government’s witness didn’t know anything.

“You come today with a witness that knows nothing about Costa Rica,” Xinis said, referring to Justice Department attorney Drew Ensign.

Ensign claimed that Abrego Garcia had told an immigration judge he was afraid to be deported to Costa Rica, but Xinis found that the exact opposite was true.

“That’s very troubling to me,” Xinis told Ensign.

Costa Rican officials had put in writing that they had no intention to remove Abrego Garcia back to El Salvador once he was in their custody. Klasfield noted on X Friday that the government’s latest filing included no assurances that Abrego Garcia would not be removed from Liberia back to CECOT, the notorious megaprison in El Salvador where he was initially sent.

Even the president’s biggest supporters can’t get behind his most recent pardon.

Earlier this week, Donald Trump wiped the criminal record of crypto billionaire and Binance exchange founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, who was sentenced to four months in prison last year on charges related to money laundering. Trump claimed that the Chinese-born Canadian founder was a victim of political prosecution by the Biden administration.

But the news was not well received in MAGA world. One of Trump’s wealthiest supporters, Texas-based venture capitalist and Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, wrote on X that the pardons suggested “massive fraud.”

“I love President Trump; this is possibly the greatest admin of my lifetime—except for these pardons,” Lonsdale posted Thursday. “If I’m calling balls and strikes, these are hit-by-pitches!! POTUS has been terribly advised on this; it makes it look like massive fraud is happening around him in this area.”

In separate posts, Lonsdale explained that his comment was an attempt to “influence future policy in a positive direction,” and that he also disagreed with Trump’s decision to pardon another white-collar criminal, Nikola CEO Trevor Milton.

Zhao and Trump’s family are financially tied. The presidential family’s main crypto company, World Liberty Financial, has generated some $4.5 billion since the 2024 election, thanks in large part to a partnership with PancakeSwap, an online exchange platform administered by Zhao’s Binance, The Wall Street Journal reported in August.

But either Trump must think Americans are terrifically stupid to not see the connection, or he’s suffering from serious mental lapses. During a press conference on Thursday, the president played dumb about Zhao, claiming he couldn’t recall the name of the person he had pardoned the day before.

“I don’t know, he was recommended by a lot of people, a lot of people say—are you talking about the crypto person?” Trump told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins. “A lot of people say he wasn’t guilty of anything.… You don’t know much about crypto. You know nothing about nothing. You’re fake news.

“I don’t know him, I don’t believe I ever met him, but I’ve been told—a lot of support, he had a lot of support,” Trump said.