“It’s OK With Me”: Trump Considers Bombing Mexico

Donald Trump is open to the possibility of launching attacks on Mexico to stop the flow of drugs, he told reporters in the White House Monday.

“It’s OK with me,” Trump said. “Whatever we have to do to stop drugs. Mexico is, look, I looked at Mexico City over the weekend, some big problems over there.”

Trump bragged about his bombing campaign across the Caribbean Sea and in the Pacific Ocean next to Central America, claiming that it had reduced the drug flow into the U.S. by 85 percent.

“We have almost no drugs coming into our country by the sea, by, you know, the waterways, and you know why, OK? I mean, it’s pretty obvious. Would I do that on the land corridor?” Trump said, making a positive gesture. When a reporter asked if he would need Mexico’s permission, the president was dismissive.

“I wouldn’t answer that question. I’ve been speaking to Mexico. They know how I stand. We’re losing hundreds of thousands of people to drugs. So now we’ve stopped the waterways. We know every route,” Trump said, claiming that the government knows where “every druglord” lives. He said that he’d be proud to go to Congress and claimed that he would have the support of Republicans and Democrats “unless they’re crazy.”

“I am not happy with Mexico,” Trump said, concluding the press session.

The Trump administration has bombed dozens of boats south of the United States without providing evidence that they are trafficking drugs, or providing the names of people killed in the strikes. In some cases, the dead and injured were fishermen whom the U.S. declined to prosecute.

The strikes have been condemned by multiple countries, with some even opting to stop sharing drug-trafficking intelligence with the U.S. out of fear that it would be used for more bombings without transparency. Even Republicans have spoken out against the strikes. But if Trump decides to strike Mexico, that could change, as some Republicans have been egging on the president to bomb the country for years.

Trump himself told advisers in his first presidential term that he wanted to “bomb the drugs” in Mexico, and even devised plans to invade the country before beginning his second term. Will he follow through, or is this just the ravings of a man experiencing cognitive decline?

Border Patrol chief Greg Bovino was seen on video asking a random brown-skinned man standing at a bus stop in Chicago if he spoke English. 

“You speak English?” Bovino asks, pointing at the man, who looks obviously uncomfortable. He gives no response, and Bovino switches to Spanish. 

“No demands made.  It was a very casual conversation that ended with the arrest of this illegal alien,” Bovino posted on X in the comment section of the video. “Chicago will continue to see Title 8 immigration enforcement. All illegal aliens should self deport immediately via the CBP Home app.” 

Bovino has been often criticized for his brutal and wanton tactics, which include using tear gas and pepper balls against peaceful protesters. 

“This is the lie they want you to believe; that you can refuse to answer and walk away but we know that’s not true,” Cato Institute Immigration Studies director David Bier wrote in response to Bovino. “We’ve seen them arresting people for doing exactly that.” 

Bovino’s approach in the clip also aligns with the Department of Homeland Security’s policy of racial profiling, which it has fought in court to preserve. 

“Apparent ethnicity can be a factor supporting reasonable suspicion in appropriate circumstances—for instance, if agents know that the members of a criminal organization under investigation are disproportionately members of one ethnic group—even if it would not be relevant in other circumstances,” the Trump administration wrote in a Supreme Court request that was later granted, clearing the way for racial profiling. “And, in context, officers might reasonably rely on the fact that someone exclusively speaks Spanish to support reasonable suspicion that the person is here illegally.” 

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has a new primary challenger: New York City Council member Chi Ossé, an ally of Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani.

Ossé filed paperwork Monday to run in New York 8th congressional district, which covers part of east and south Brooklyn. In a statement, Ossé said, “The Democratic Party’s leadership is not only failing to effectively fight back against Donald Trump, they have also failed to deliver a vision that we can all believe in.”

The council member is 27 years old and supported Mamdani in the Democratic mayoral primary, leading a rally and canvassing for him. Like Mamdani, Ossé has a large social media following and is seeking to capitalize on public frustration with Democratic leadership, joining other young candidates launching primary challenges across the country.

Ossé enters the race with some name recognition in New York City, having been featured in The New Yorker, GQ, and New York magazine. But according to Axios, Mamdani won’t be offering any public support to Ossé to ensure that Jeffries and other leading New York Democrats don’t oppose his policies as mayor.

Still, the upstart candidate could build upon not only Mamdani’s example but also that of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who in 2018 defeated a member of the Democratic leadership at only 27 to enter Congress, representing the nearby New York 14th district. Ossé will have to rally the support of Jeffries’s many critics who see the congressman as ineffectual in leading Democrats against Donald Trump and the Republican Party. The question is whether Brooklynites agree.

The arrival of masked federal agents at a church in Charlotte, North Carolina, on Saturday sent some worshippers fleeing into the woods while children sobbed inside, witnesses told The Charlotte Observer. 

The ICE agents, who mobbed a group of church members doing yard work, did not ask any questions or make any attempt to identify themselves before arresting one man. The Observer did not report the name of the church.

The church’s pastor, who told The Observer he did not want to identify himself, said that agents threatened to arrest other church members, and were physically aggressive. “Right now, everybody is scared. Everybody,” he said. “One of these guys with immigration, he say he was going to arrest one of the other guys in the church. He pushed him.”

Fifteen-year-old Miguel Vazquez was one of the people who took off running when federal agents arrived. “I thought, ‘Wait, why am I running? I’m a citizen,’” Vazquez said. 

As some of the men outside fled, the women and children inside the church reportedly cried out of fear that their loved ones had been arrested.

The Department of Homeland Security claimed that the U.S. Border Patrol, which has been favored over Immigration and Customs Enforcement by the Trump administration for its more aggressive law enforcement tactics, made 130 arrests in Charlotte on Saturday and Sunday. The DHS claimed that detainees had criminal records, including a variety of infractions, but they have not released the names or paperwork relating to the arrests.  

As part of its tactlessly named Operation “Charlotte’s Web,” masked agents in paramilitary gear have kidnapped people from a number of public locations in Charlotte, including restaurants, grocery stores, Home Depot parking lots, and now churches. In January, Trump directed ICE to target immigrants in previously protected areas considered “sensitive locations,” including churches, and in April, a federal judge gave him the greenlight.

On Saturday, Charlotte residents took to the streets to protest the presence of federal law enforcement. 

Acting Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator David Richardson abruptly resigned from his post on Monday, according to sources familiar with the situation. His resignation comes after months of being AWOL, particularly during deadly flooding in Texas over Fourth of July weekend.

FEMA employees told The Washington Post that Richardson spent as little time as possible in daily operations meetings and shied away from leadership, even telling his own employees that he expected to be gone by Thanksgiving.

Richardson became acting head of FEMA after Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem ousted his predecessor, Cameron Hamilton. During his first meeting as the new head of FEMA, Richardson told his employees, “Don’t get in my way … because I will run right over you.”

When flooding hit Texas in July, Richardson was unable to be reached “for hours and hours,” one senior official said. Richardson claimed to be in “constant contact” with FEMA officials but was actually missing from disaster response while on vacation with his two sons. At least 130 people died in the floods.

“Staff say Richardson is basically useless—absent from the office, unreachable in a disaster, and powerless because Secretary Noem has sidelined him,” New Jersey Democratic Representative Frank Pallone Jr. said in September, calling on Richardson to resign. “This level of bureaucratic incompetence from the Trump administration is putting lives at risk when the next natural disaster hits.”

In November, Richardson was muzzled by the Department of Homeland Security, banned from giving interviews or responding to media requests.

President Trump has yet to comment on Richardson’s resignation.