The Trump administration is framing its boat strikes against drug cartels in the Caribbean in part as a collective self-defense effort on behalf of US allies in the region, according to three people directly familiar with the administration’s internal legal argument.
The legal analysis rests on a premise – for which there is no immediate public evidence – that the cartels are waging armed violence against the security forces of allies like Mexico, and that the violence is financed by cocaine shipments.
As a result, according to the legal analysis, the strikes are targeting the cocaine, and the deaths of anyone on board should be treated as an enemy casualty or collateral damage if any civilians are killed, rather than murder.
That line of reasoning, which forms the backbone of a classified justice department office of legal counsel (OLC) opinion, provides the clearest explanation to date how the US satisfied the conditions to use lethal force.
But it marks a sharp departure from Donald Trump’s narrative to the public every time he has discussed the 21 strikes that have killed more than 80 people, which he has portrayed as an effort to stop overdose deaths.
A White House official responded that Trump has not been making a legal argument. Still, Trump’s remarks remain the only public reason for why the US is firing missiles – when the legal justification is in fact very different.
And it would also be the first time the US has claimed – dubiously, and contrary to the widely held understanding – that the cartels are using cocaine proceeds to wage wars, rather than to make money.
In a statement, a justice department spokesperson said: “These operations were ordered consistent with the law of armed conflict.” The Pentagon did not respond to a request for comment.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other officials reiterated their intention to block future Palestinian statehood ahead of the United Nations Security Council vote to authorize the U.S. plan for post-war Gaza on Monday.
The world's biggest economy will be conspicuously absent from a meeting of the globe's 20 richest nations this weekend, as the U.S. boycotts the G20 Leaders' Summit hosted by South Africa.
Donald Trump said on Friday night that he’s “immediately” terminating temporary legal protections for Somali migrants living in Minnesota, further targeting a program seeking to limit deportations that his administration has already repeatedly sought to weaken.
Less than a year after the Palisades fire destroyed nearly 7,000 structures in Los Angeles, the first completed rebuilt home is being celebrated in Pacific Palisades.
Convicted Israeli spy Jonathan J. Pollard downplayed the controversy around his private meeting with 
Mahmoud Khalil, the Palestinian activist who participated in protests at Columbia University and was detained by Ice earlier this year, has filed a lawsuit demanding the Trump administration release its communications with anti-Palestinian groups he says contributed to his March arrest and efforts to detain him.
The Israeli military carried out one of the deadliest attacks on Gaza since the “ceasefire” took effect last month, killing over 30 Palestinians, the majority of them women and children, and wounding dozens more in a series of airstrikes late Wednesday and early Thursday. The dead and wounded arrived at hospitals in an endless stream, children were covered in dust and blood, men carried small bodies wrapped in shrouds, and wails of grief rose in the air
