U.S. Military Action in Venezuela
By Claire Bollen
The United States has led lethal strikes on drug cartel ships in the Caribbean, which have resulted in at least 83 deaths since Sept. 2 of this year. The situation appears to be escalating, as President Trump claims to send land forces too.
It began with a call between the president of the United States and the Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro. President Trump repeatedly pushed for Maduro to step down. When this was met with resistance, the Trump Administration called for “armed conflict,” claiming they didn’t require a declaration of war for such a small disagreement. However, quite a few legal officials disagree. Rachel VanLandingham, a former Air Force judge advocate and national security law expert, refers to an instance where Adm. Bradley ordered a strike on two shipwrecked people to be an “unlawful order he should never have given.”
The reason President Trump is pushing for Maduro’s resignation lies in his belief that the drug cartels from Venezuela are to blame for the trafficking of dangerous drugs into the United States. Yet, the estimates conducted by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), specifically the 2025 National Drug Threat Assessment (NDTA), have concluded Venezuela plays no role in the fentanyl trade, and only a small one in cocaine. The closer and more worrisome culprit appears to be Mexican drug cartels instead, an entirely separate source and location altogether.
There is no clear end goal for the military deployment, but it seems that, as of now, there won’t be a clear end to it. With threats of land forces and covert CIA action being taken, it looks to be that the action on Venezuela won’t be ending any time soon.
Trump controversy in Epstein files
By Bri Sprague
After news that President Donald Trump signed a bill that would require the Justice Department to release the Epstein files within 30 days, many emails were released. These emails were from Jefferey Epstein about Donald Trump. One email in particular went viral, with the email entailing a question from Mark Epstein, in which he asked the former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon if Russian president Vladimir Putin had “the photos of Trump blowing Bubba”. Jeffery Epstein had replied to this sarcastically, saying, “and I thought- I had tsuris,” which is the Yiddish word for “troubles.”
The public’s response to the speculating email was–who exactly was “Bubba?” Could it be Bill Clinton, as that’s a nickname that he is known by, or could it be Ghislaine Maxwell’s horse?
Mark defended himself, saying he hadn’t been referring to Clinton, that it had just been a humorous private exchange between two brothers that was never meant for the public eye to see. It was later said by a spokesperson for Mark Epstein that “Bubba” was a private individual who is not a public figure. So which is true?
This controversy has suggested that Trump knows more about Epstein’s conduct than he has let on and acknowledged. However, it’s also come to light that Epstein labeled Trump as “dirty” and a “maniac” after their falling out in the mid-2000s. Trump has responded to this by ordering Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate Epstein’s links to Clinton and other perceived enemies while keeping his own name off the target list. But, with all of this being said, the White House’s response was a classic and assertive deny, deny, deny response.
