{"id":87169,"date":"2025-12-17T21:23:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-17T21:23:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/87169\/"},"modified":"2025-12-17T21:23:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-17T21:23:08","slug":"florida-republicans-stand-by-donald-trump-administrations-authority-to-strike-venezuelan-boats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/87169\/","title":{"rendered":"Florida Republicans stand by Donald Trump administration’s authority to strike Venezuelan boats"},"content":{"rendered":"

Florida Republicans spoke forcefully in defense of President Donald Trump\u2019s legal authority to strike drug boats traveling from Venezuela toward the Sunshine State.<\/p>\n

After House Democrats brought a privileged resolution<\/a> on employing war powers to stop the U.S. action, U.S. Rep. Brian Mast, a Stuart Republican who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee, led opposition to the measure.<\/p>\n

He classified the resolution as \u201cpoorly written\u201d and counterproductive. He showed photos of cartel activity allegedly occurring on similar boats, including the beheading of individuals and heavily armed security in line with international gang activity.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are kidnapping Americans, extorting families, trafficking women and children, and flooding our towns with fentanyl to maximize death and addiction on American soil,\u201d Mast said.<\/p>\n

But U.S. Rep. Gregory Meek, a New York Democrat and ranking member of Mast\u2019s Committee, said the administration has not properly kept Congress abreast of action.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s clear to me that these lethal strikes are not about stopping drugs from entering the country. That stated objective simply does not square with Trump\u2019s recent decisions to pardon the former President of Honduras, who a jury found guilty for helping to smuggle 400 tons of cocaine into the country, or Ross Ulbricht, who ran an online drug marketplace,\u201d he said in a statement after a congressional briefing<\/a> with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo be clear, no fentanyl enters the United States over sea routes. The administration has made clear its real interest is in starting a regime change war with Venezuela and going after its oil.\u201d<\/p>\n

Several lawmakers spoke on the issue, but those from Florida, home to 49% of Venezuelans in the U.S. according to the Migration Policy Institute<\/a>, said taking the actions was critical to U.S. interest. They also said the impacts of fentanyl in the U.S. have been devastating.<\/p>\n

U.S. Rep. Mario D\u00edaz-Balart, a Hialeah Republican, said the measure \u2014 which would treat actions against drug smugglers as military action needing authorization of Congress \u2014 would cripple legitimate efforts to combat organized crime. Moreover, he suggested criminal actions sanctioned by Venezuelan President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro, who clung to power<\/a> despite international observers saying he lost the last election in the country, was wrong-headed.<\/p>\n

\u201cI strongly oppose this resolution which limits the United States ability to fight narco-terrorist traffickers in our own hemisphere, where we are most directly impacted,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cMaduro is not a President. He\u2019s the head of a narco-cartel that has taken over, by force and by terror, a great country, the country of Venezuela.\u201d<\/p>\n

U.S. Rep. Mar\u00eda Elvira Salazar, a Hialeah Republican, chairs the House Western Hemisphere Subcommittee. She said there was a long history of presidential administrations taking unilateral action to stop international threats to U.S. security without congressional approval.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Founding Fathers vested in Congress the power to declare a war, but they were equally clear that the power to defend the homeland from foreign and domestic threats belongs to the President as Commander-in-Chief,\u201d she said. \u201cPresident Trump does not need congressional permission to kill terrorists at sea who are bringing cocaine and fentanyl to the streets of Miami, New York or Chicago.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Florida Republicans spoke forcefully in defense of President Donald Trump\u2019s legal authority to strike drug boats traveling from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":87170,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[8863,28,30,29,8878,8879,4389,4390],"class_list":["post-87169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-brian-mast","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news","tag-maria-elvira-salazar","tag-mario-diaz-balart","tag-nicolas-maduro","tag-venezuela"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87169\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}