President Donald Trump has long been critical of Venezuela's leader, refusing to rule out military action during his first term.

The United States has deployed eight warships, several surveillance planes and one attack submarine to the region as tensions with Venezuela grow.

The US Coast Guard seized 13,000 pounds of cocaine in a Caribbean interdiction under Operation Pacific Viper. Following Trump’s authorisation of a lethal strike on a Tren de Aragua drug boat, the campaign signals a shift to military escalation,

"We have to start treating them as armed terrorist organizations, not simply drug dealing organizations," Secretary of State Marco Rubio said.

The attack, which drew condemnation from key regional countries such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, risks derailing Gaza ceasefire talks and President Donald Trump's push to achieve a negotiated end to the nearly two-year-old conflict between Israel and Hamas.

Coast Guard law enforcement operations in the Caribbean Sea are continuing as the Pentagon formulates its mission in U.S. Southern Command following a lethal military strike on an alleged drug trafficking boat,

A federal judge blocked Trump's use of military troops to combat crime in California, ruling it violated the Posse Comitatus Act. The decision impacts only California, but may influence future cases as Trump threatens to deploy troops in other cities like Chicago.