Federal prosecutors signaled that they might seek the removal of the lead defense attorney in James Comey’s criminal case on Sunday, citing his possible role in the disclosures Comey made in 2017, shortly after President Donald Trump fired him as FBI director in his first term.

Prosecutors cited the yearslong relationship between Comey and the defense attorney overseeing his case, Patrick Fitzgerald, as a possible conflict of interest — noting in particular whether Fitzgerald might have had any role in the disclosures Comey made during Trump’s first term. 

‘This fact raises a question of conflict and disqualification for current lead defense counsel,’ prosecutors said of Fitzgerald, Comey’s longtime friend and former colleague. The two overlapped during their time as federal prosecutors for the Southern District of New York.

Prosecutors on Sunday urged U.S. District Judge Michael Nachmanoff to expedite their request for a so-called ‘filter team’ of lawyers, which would be tasked with reviewing information in Comey’s case, including privileged materials.

Prosecutors told the court the ‘filter team’ could be crucial to help clarify the role Fitzgerald may have played in disseminating information Comey shared after leaving the FBI, including any materials that are protected by attorney-client privilege.

‘Based on publicly disclosed information, the defendant used current lead defense counsel to improperly disclose classified information,’ assistant U.S. attorneys Tyler Lemons and Gabriel Diaz said in the filing, first reported by Politico.

Lawyers for Comey swiftly opposed the push for the expedited filter team and filter protocol sought by the Justice Department, noting in a separate court filing Monday that the memos Comey sent to his lawyers were not classified at the time (a designation made after the fact).

‘In short, there is no good faith basis for attributing criminal conduct to either Mr. Comey or his lead defense counsel,’ they said of Fitzgerald, describing the claim as ‘provably false’ and an effort to defame the attorney. 

‘Similarly, there is no good faith basis to claim a ‘conflict between’ Mr. Comey and his counsel, much less a basis to move to disqualify lead defense counsel,’ they added.

Fitzgerald is one of several high-profile lawyers representing Comey in his criminal case in the Eastern District of Virginia, where the former FBI director was charged last month with one felony count of making a false statement and another felony count of obstruction. 

Prosecutors cited a 2019 report from the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General. The report excoriated Comey for sharing some information about his interactions with Trump while serving as FBI director with his lawyers, including information that was later deemed to be classified.

But it also concluded that there was no indication ‘that Comey or his attorneys released any of the classified information contained in any of the memos to members of the media.’

The office also declined to charge Comey with illegally disclosing the information.

Fitzgerald declined to respond to Fox News’s request for comment. 

Still, the motion comes as prosecutors vie for some early hits in their case against Comey, which is expected to come under new scrutiny this week. 

Comey’s team in recent days has challenged Trump’s decisions in the case, including his appointment of former White House aide Lindsey Halligan as acting U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. 

Halligan was installed last month to the role after interim attorney Erik Siebert resigned under pressure to indict Comey and another Trump foe, New York Attorney General Letitia James.

Comey’s lawyers previously suggested that Halligan’s appointment, made three days before a grand jury handed down his indictment, could strengthen their motion to dismiss.

It also comes hours before Comey’s lawyers will file a formal motion to dismiss the criminal case on grounds of ‘vindictive’ prosecution.

The U.S. wants to fast-track outfitting Australia with nuclear submarines under the trilateral agreement between the U.S., Australia and the U.K. to beef up Australia’s submarine force aimed at countering Chinese influence in the Indo-Pacific. 

In the agreement, known as AUKUS, the U.S. will sell up to five Virginia-class nuclear-powered submarines to Australia — slated for delivery as soon as 2032. Additionally, Australia and the U.K. will then coordinate to build additional attack submarines for Australia’s fleet. 

But President Donald Trump told reporters that he is eyeing a faster timeline, when asked if he was interested in speeding up the process. 

‘Well we are doing that, yeah … we have them moving very, very quickly,’ Trump told reporters Monday while meeting with Australia’s prime minister, Anthony Albanese, at the White House. 

Even so, Trump also said that he didn’t believe that AUKUS was necessary to deter China as he touted his relationship with Chinese President Xi Jinping, who he is expected to meet with in South Korea later in October. 

‘I don’t think we’re going to need it,’ Trump said about the trilateral agreement. ‘I think we’ll be just fine with China. China doesn’t want to do that. First of all, the United States is the strongest military power in the world by far. It’s not even close, not even close. We have the best equipment. We have the best of everything, and nobody’s going to mess with that. And I don’t see that at all with President Xi.’

Meanwhile, the AUKUS deal hasn’t been on the most steady footing as the U.S. runs up against its own challenges with its shipbuilding capabilities. 

A slim workforce and insufficient supply chain in the U.S. shipbuilding industry could stymie the agreements, according to a Congressional Research Service report issued in March. The report also cautioned that the U.S. Navy would suffer a shortage of attack submarines for 20 years.  

Although the Navy has ordered two boats annually for the past 10 years, U.S. shipyards have only been able to produce 1.2 Virginia-class submarines annually since 2022, according to the report.  

Trump and Albanese also signed a critical minerals deal Monday during their meeting. The deal will require both countries to invest more than $3 billion throughout the next six months in critical mineral projects, according to a White House fact sheet. 

The deal also requires the Department of War to invest in a 100 metric ton-per-year advanced gallium refinery in Western Australia to support ‘self-reliance in critical minerals processing,’ according to the fact sheet. 

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

A new House GOP bill would block the United Nations (U.N.) from forcing the U.S. to take up any new tax that was not explicitly levied by American taxpayers’ own government.

It’s expected to be introduced this week, as the world awaits a U.N. vote on a global tax on carbon emissions made via international maritime shipping. 

Member states of the UN’s relevant body, the International Maritime Organization, voted late last week to postpone consideration of the global tax by a year after fierce pushback by President Donald Trump.

Pfluger’s bill would ensure that the U.S. would not be subject to that tax nor any other fiscal penalties ordered by the international organization, unless ratified by the Senate.

It would also prohibit the U.S. government from funding any global carbon tax, as well as block voluntary contributions to the U.N. by the U.S. if such a tax was levied.

The proposal for a global maritime shipping tax on carbon emissions was championed by Brazil and the European Union, among other countries that had also been advocating for more environmentally friendly international trade.

Its chief opponents were the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, the largest and second-largest oil producers in the world, respectively.

Republican Study Committee (RSC) Chair August Pfluger, R-Texas, is leading the legislation, alongside RSC Energy Task Force Chair Troy Balderson, R-Ohio, and Task Force Vice Chair Randy Weber, R-Texas.

Pfluger told Fox News Digital, ‘This fight isn’t over,’ despite the U.N. punting the vote.

‘This legislation would kill their global carbon tax scheme permanently by depriving all U.S. funding to any U.N. agency that attempts to impose a tax on the American people and ensuring Congress has a say in all taxes, fees and penalties on American citizens or companies,’ he said.

Balderson said he was ‘grateful to President Trump and Secretaries Rubio, Wright and Duffy for standing up to the United Nations and forcing the International Maritime Organization to back down.’

‘Unelected global bureaucrats at the U.N. are trying to build another slush fund, and they expect Americans to pay for it,’ Weber said. ‘A global carbon tax wasn’t on the ballot in November 2024, and the American people sure didn’t vote for a 10% hike in costs.’

A coffin of a deceased hostage has been transferred from Hamas to Israel via the Red Cross, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said on Monday.

The body will be taken from the Gaza Strip and received in a military ceremony with a military rabbi, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said in a statement.

Hamas said the body was recovered Sunday. If confirmed as the body of a hostage, the remains of 15 hostages would still be in Gaza. A body handed over by Hamas last week was not that of a hostage, Israel said.

Israel’s Ministry of Health’s National Center of Forensic Medicine will identify the body, and then the family will be notified, Netanyahu’s office said.

‘All families of the deceased hostages have been updated about the matter, and at this difficult time, our hearts are with them,’ Netanyahu’s office said. ‘The effort to return our hostages continues continuously and will not cease until the last hostage is returned.’

‘Hamas is required to uphold the agreement and take the necessary steps to return all the hostages,’ the IDF said on X. 

The terror group last week said it needed specialized equipment and more time to recover more bodies.

Earlier on Monday, it was announced that the remains of Nepali student Bipin Joshi, who was held hostage in Gaza, were being flown from Israel to his hometown of Bhimdattanagar.

The transfer happened after the week-old ceasefire resumed after clashes between Hamas and Israel over the weekend. 

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, tore into the Democratic Party during House GOP leaders’ press conference on Day 20 of the government shutdown after anti-Trump protests swept the country over the weekend.

He blasted the left’s embrace of the ‘No Kings’ rallies, where millions of people across the U.S. took to city streets to protest President Donald Trump.

‘This is the dying breaths of a bankrupt party, in my humble opinion, all too happy to shut down the government,’ Roy said during the press conference Monday.

He and House Freedom Caucus Chair Andy Harris, R-Md., joined House GOP leaders’ daily shutdown press conference in a show of unity across the Republican conference.

‘No one disputes one obvious fact: It is Democrats who have chosen not to fund government. We can at least establish that truth, right? It is, in fact, the truth. And the question is, why?’ Roy said.

‘And you saw it on Saturday — it was basically for a political rally, a rally for cover for [Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.], who’s in his own political battle in New York,’ he added in reference to Republican accusations that left-wing leaders are kowtowing to Democrats’ progressive base.

He continued, ‘That’s the truth. And the irony of this is, this ‘No Kings’ rally. What are we actually talking about? I mean, it wasn’t President Trump, but Democrats who tried to make us take a shot or lose our job. It wasn’t President Trump, but Democrats who were burning our cities to the ground in 2020 and attacking police officers.’

Republican leaders spent last week hammering Democrats who planned to participate in Saturday’s ‘No Kings’ rallies, including Schumer.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., during his portion of the press conference, made a plea to Schumer to accept the GOP’s federal funding bill now that the protests were over.

‘Now that Democrats have had their protest and publicity stunts, I just pray that they come to their senses and end this shutdown and reopen the government this week. Republicans are waiting. The American people are waiting,’ Johnson said.

The House passed a bill to keep the federal government funded at current levels through Nov. 21 — called a continuing resolution (CR) — mostly along party lines last month.

It’s since failed 10 times in the Senate, with a majority of Democrats rejecting any spending deal that does not also include an extension of COVID-19 pandemic-era Obamacare subsidies that will expire at the end of this year without congressional action.

The ongoing government shutdown is now the third-longest in history.

House Republicans’ campaign arm is announcing it brought in nearly $24 million in the months of July through September this year.

More than half of that — roughly $13.95 million — came in September, as Republicans were readying for a political messaging war over federal funding.

That fight is still ongoing now, more than halfway through October. The government has been shut down for 20 days as Republicans and Democrats are still in disagreement over federal spending.

The National Republican Congressional Committee’s (NRCC) $13.95 million haul represents its best September in a non-election year and a 50% increase from the previous comparable September in 2023.

The NRCC is ending the third quarter with nearly $46 million cash on hand and nearly $93 million raised in 2025 alone.

In a statement sent to Fox News Digital, NRCC Chair Rep. Richard Hudson, R-N.C., pointed out that House Republicans already voted to keep the federal government funded last month and touted the GOP base propelling his group ahead of the 2026 elections.

‘House Republicans are firing on all cylinders. Our majority funded the federal government, and we’re delivering for working families and building unstoppable momentum heading into 2026,’ Hudson said.

‘With President Trump leading the charge and voters rallying behind our conservative agenda, we’re raising record-breaking resources to hold the House and grow our majority,’ he said.

Republicans are battling to keep the House in next year’s midterm elections, which have historically been unfavorable to the party in power. The GOP has held the House majority since 2023.

But GOP leaders have expressed confidence in their agenda and in the White House, while arguing the Democratic Party is facing a lack of cohesion and disapproval of its policies by American voters.

The NRCC outpaced its counterpart, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) in the previous quarter of 2025, raising $32.3 million compared to the DCCC’s $29.1 million.

The DCCC ended the year with more cash on hand, however, with $39.7 million compared to the NRCC’s $37.6 million.

Both groups and their allies have spent much of October battling over the government shutdown in the court of public opinion.

Republicans are accusing Democrats of holding the federal government hostage by refusing to vote for their funding bill unless partisan healthcare demands are met.

Democrats, meanwhile, have argued that Republicans are risking the healthcare costs of millions of Americans by not including an extension of COVID-19 pandemic-era Obamacare subsidies that are set to expire this year without congressional action.

The House passed a seven-week federal funding bill largely along party lines on Sept. 19. It has been stalled in the Senate, however, where at least several Democrats are needed to hit the chamber’s 60-vote threshold to break the filibuster.

Government shutdowns can be pretty boring.

Until a shutdown impacts you.

There’s a missed paycheck. Flight delays. You can’t visit the Smithsonian. Questions about food and drug safety.

You get the idea.

But until you reach that tipping point, most Americans are ho-hum about government shutdowns and interpret the infighting between Democrats and Republicans as de rigueur on Capitol Hill.

So they don’t pay much mind to them.

However, Democrats engineered a scheme in advance of this fall’s government shutdown. They would transmogrify the shutdown into something Americans care about: healthcare.

Democrats know that healthcare consistently polls well with voters. Democrats have known for months that many people who receive their healthcare coverage via ‘Obamacare exchanges’ would absorb a marked price spike with their premiums early next year. Moreover, notices informing people about the impending price increase would start to hit mailboxes in mid-October.

So Democrats have pleaded with Republicans to subsidize Obamacare to defray looming price increases. Obamacare subsidies and the government shutdown aren’t directly connected. But Democrats believed they could link the two. And then, after people snored off to sleep about the government shutdown on Oct. 1, they were rudely awakened by a notice in the mail that their healthcare premiums were about to jump.

Say what you will about the tactics, but it was a shrewd strategy by Democrats to seize on an issue important to their base. Moreover, it gave the party the opportunity to show voters that it’s ‘fighting’ against President Donald Trump. That’s something which didn’t happen in the March funding round. In fact, the Democrats’ lack of fighting is what set a match to an internecine fight among Democrats about how to combat the president. The public and the government are absorbing the flames of that internal conflagration now, but Democrats may have found a way to salve those wounds.

‘Fighting for healthcare is our defining issue,’ said House Minority Whip Katherine Clark, D-Mass., in an exclusive sit-down interview with Fox News. ‘Shutdowns are terrible and there will be families that are going to suffer. We take that responsibility very seriously. But it is one of the few leverage times we have.’

That’s why healthcare is the linchpin to the shutdown.

But enter Republicans. They believe Democrats own the healthcare crisis. They passed Obamacare in the first place. It was a Democratic Congress under President Joe Biden that boosted the subsidy to defray the cost of Obamacare in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), the touchstone of the Democrats’ legislative agenda.

‘It is the Democrats who created that subsidy who put the expiration date on it. They did it all on their own,’ said House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La.

Some Republicans have even reverted to their 2010 mantra to ‘repeal and replace’ Obamacare.

That said, Johnson tried to beat back those calls from conservatives.

‘There’s no way to repeal and replace it because it’s too deeply ingrained right now. We have to improve it,’ said Johnson.

Such a declaration would have been unthinkable a few years ago. Here we have a Republican Speaker of the House arguing that Congress must sustain — even assist — Obamacare.

‘Obamacare has been a failure,’ said Rep. Marlin Stutzman, R-Ind., on Fox News. ‘We’ve been enduring this now for almost 15 years.’

Stutzman benefited from the GOP’s plan to ditch Obamacare in 2010. It was an historic, 63-seat midterm election pickup for Republicans. Voters sent Stutzman to Washington for the first time in that midterm.

The Indiana Republican added that he’s ‘not sure that subsidies are the answer in the long run.’

‘Every couple of years they need more and more subsidies to be able to prop [Obamacare] up because it’s not affordable,’ said Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., on Fox Business Network.

Democrats are demanding Obamacare subsidies before they agree to a Republican plan to fund the government.

‘It is an inflection point in this budget process where we have tried to get the Republicans to meet with us and prioritize the American people,’ said Clark.

But Democrats believe the need to boost Obamacare reveals flaws in the law.

‘Isn’t that an indictment that there’s a problem with [Obamacare]?’ I asked House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y. ‘The fact that it needs to be propped up in some form?’

‘No,’ replied Jeffries. ‘The overwhelming majority of the American people, including in the Republican-run states, support an extension of the [Obamacare] tax credits.’

Some Republicans reject extending the subsidies.

‘I’m not going to vote to extend these subsidies.They’re through the roof expensive,’ said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.

But other conservatives insist that Obamacare needs rescuing.

‘If you’re on [Obamacare] your premium is going to literally double. If you have your own private health insurance policy, your premium is going to go up and people already can’t afford their premiums,’ said Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga. ‘People back at home are going, ‘Wait a minute, my premium is going to skyrocket.’’

Greene is one of the most outspoken members of her party when it comes to concerns about the premium increases. In fact, she believes that Republicans allowed ‘Democrats to hold the moral high ground on it, because they’re talking about it.’

Greene and Johnson spoke about her concerns several days ago.

But Obamacare vexed the GOP for years.

Former House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and others led an effort to repeal and replace Obamacare. House Republicans voted dozens of times to wipe out Obamacare in 2011 and 2012. They couldn’t push such a package through the Senate, but it made for a powerful GOP talking point. Former House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., got a little closer. Republicans had the Senate in 2016. So the House and Senate both voted for the first time to repeal and replace Obamacare, but President Barack Obama vetoed it.

Republicans finally had the trifecta of the House, Senate and White House in 2017 after Trump won the election. The House initially stumbled, having to yank the repeal and replace package off the floor in the spring of 2017. But the House regrouped and finally engineered a strategy that passed. But the late Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., single-handedly tanked the bill when he famously voted against the package in a dramatic roll call vote in the summer of 2017.

‘I still have PTSD from the experience,’ said Johnson of the GOP efforts.

Trump even offered a familiar, if well-traveled promise, during last year’s campaign.

‘I have concepts of a plan,’ the president said at the ABC presidential debate last fall. ‘You’ll be hearing about it in the not too distant future.’

So while a resolution to the government shutdown remains elusive, so do the positions about one of the most controversial pieces of legislation in the past 50 years.

Republicans have tried to flip the script on the Democrats — now highlighting the problems with Obamacare. The GOP hopes that rekindles a familiar antipathy the right has for Obamacare and helps them during the shutdown.

‘Obamacare is a failed product in the first place. And they used that as an excuse in order to add additional federal dollars,’ said Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D.

The sides just don’t see eye-to-eye.

‘When [Obamacare] was passed, healthcare was a lot less costly than it is now, and insurance rates were a lot lower. So these healthcare tax credits are necessary for healthcare inflation to make it affordable for people,’ said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn.

Obamacare and the shutdown are now inextricably linked. And if dealing with that wasn’t complicated enough, the infusion of Obamacare into the debate makes the legislative morass seemingly intractable.

Senate Republicans are worried about the precedent that Senate Democrats have set for future funding fights as the shutdown continues into its 20th day.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and the Democratic caucus have dug in deep on their demand for an extension to expiring Obamacare subsidies and have worked to spin the narrative from a battle to fund the government to a fistfight for healthcare.

But it’s been over three weeks since Schumer and Democrats blocked Republicans’ first attempt to pass the House GOP’s continuing resolution (CR). And since then, there are no signs that Democrats are willing to back down from their demands.

‘I think Schumer has basically sort of destroyed the institution of the Senate,’ Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., told Fox News Digital. ‘He has, you know, whether it’s what he’s done on the nominees or with this shutdown. I think he’s made government unmanageable. So, hopefully, this is not the way we continue to operate.’

Informal talks between the parties have ebbed and flowed over the course of the shutdown, but neither side is any closer to an off-ramp than they were when the first vote failed late last month.

Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., has been involved in those talks but noted that this week they have been fading. When asked if he was worried that Democrats’ shutdown posture might be replicated in the future, he told Fox News Digital, ‘I can’t worry about their position.’

‘It doesn’t make sense,’ he said. ‘If there was a strategy behind it, OK, we get out, we can figure out how to move them. But there is no strategy. It’s just like, burn it all down.’

Senate Republicans now view Democrats’ shutdown position as a hostage-taking exercise, with no real ground for negotiations until after the government reopens.

‘We can’t negotiate with them until we come out of shutdown,’ Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., told Fox News Digital. ‘You can’t hold the government hostage. And that’s why it’s very important — we’ve said we’ll work on all these different issues they want to bring up. But you can’t shut down the government, hold the government hostage as part of negotiation.’

The informal talks, which Republicans quickly note aren’t full-blown negotiations, have produced an olive branch of sorts from Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., who signaled to Senate Democrats that he would offer them a vote on the Affordable Care Act (ACA) premium tax credits if they voted to reopen the government.

But for a 10th time on Thursday, they blocked his effort to turn the lights back on and then hours later blocked a procedural move to allow lawmakers to consider the annual defense spending bill.

In both instances, Democrats wanted guarantees that Thune and Republicans could not provide.

‘The Dems, someday, they’re going to rue the day they did this, because we have offered up an open appropriations process, regular order, doing things that way,’ Thune told Fox News Digital.

‘I think it’s unfortunate, but it’s a reality that we’re dealing with,’ he continued. ‘And I hope they change their mind and realize that it’s in everybody’s best interest to try and at least get the government open and then start going to work and funding the government the old-fashioned way.’

Many Republicans hope that after the ‘No Kings’ rally in Washington, D.C., over the weekend that Senate Democrats may have a change of heart.

But others see it as a performative opportunity for congressional Democrats to show they are fighting back against President Donald Trump and the GOP.

‘Typically, if you reward bad behavior, you get more bad behavior,’ Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, told Fox News Digital. ‘That’s what the Democrats are basically doing. They’re pretending that President Trump didn’t get elected last November. That’s basically the whole fight, because they have the goofballs that are going to be here Saturday, so they have to show the goofballs they’re fighting.’

President Donald Trump said he believes Venezuela is ‘feeling heat’ amid his administration’s war against alleged drug boats in the Caribbean, which has taken out at least two vessels in just the past week. 

Although Trump has said the strikes are intended to curb the influx of drugs into the United States, experts and some lawmakers contend that they serve another purpose: to exert pressure on Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro so he’s ousted from power. 

‘The Trump administration is likely attempting to force Maduro to voluntarily leave office through a series of diplomatic moves, and now military action and the threat thereof,’ Brandan Buck, a foreign policy analyst at the Cato Institute, said in an email to Fox News Digital Thursday. ‘Whether this constitutes a ‘regime change’ or something else is a question of semantics.’ 

The Trump administration repeatedly has said it does not recognize Maduro as a legitimate head of state, but instead, a leader of a drug cartel. In August, the Trump administration upped the reward for information leading to Maduro’s arrest to $50 million, labeling him ‘one of the largest narco-traffickers in the world.’

So far, the Trump administration has been tight-lipped when asked about Maduro, and Trump declined to answer Wednesday when asked if the CIA had the authority to ‘take out’ Maduro. 

However, Trump confirmed that he authorized the CIA to conduct covert operations in Venezuela, after the New York Times reported Wednesday he signed off on the move. Trump told reporters he did so because Venezuela has released prisoners into the U.S., and that drugs were coming into the U.S. from Venezuela through sea routes. 

Additionally, Trump confirmed Friday that Maduro offered to grant the U.S. access to Venezuelan oil and other natural resources, claiming the Venezuelan leader didn’t want to ‘f*** around’ with the U.S. 

Still, these recent strikes are unlikely to majorly undermine drug flow into the U.S., according to Buck. 

‘It is more likely that those strikes are part of this incremental effort to dislodge Maduro than merely an effort to wage war on the cartels,’ Buck said. ‘Pacific and overland routes through Mexico are considerably more prolific, and Venezuela itself is a relatively minor player, especially when it comes to fentanyl.’ 

The Trump administration has employed maritime forces to address drug threats, and has bolstered naval assets in the Caribbean in recent months. For example, Trump has sent several U.S. Navy guided missile destroyers to enhance the administration’s counter-narcotics efforts in the region starting in August.

Geoff Ramsey, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council international affairs think tank, said that the Trump administration wants these additional forces to encourage the Venezuelan military to take matters into their own hands. 

‘What President Trump is hoping is that this deployment will signal to the Venezuelan military that they should rise up against Maduro themselves,’ Ramsey said in a Thursday email to Fox News Digital. ‘The problem is that we haven’t seen this approach bear fruit in twenty years of trying. Maduro is terrible at governing, but good at keeping his upper ranks fat and happy while the people starve.’

‘What is needed here is some kind of a road map, or a blueprint for a transition, that can be more attractive to the ruling party and those around Maduro who might secretly want change but need to see a future for themselves in a democratic Venezuela,’ Ramsey said. 

Meanwhile, the second Trump administration has adopted a hard-line approach to address the flow of drugs into the U.S., and designated drug cartel groups like Tren de Aragua, Sinaloa and others as foreign terrorist organizations in February.

Additionally, the White House sent lawmakers a memo Sept. 30 informing them that the U.S. is now participating in a ‘non-international armed conflict’ with drug smugglers, and has conducted at least six strikes against vessels off the coast of Venezuela. The U.S. seized survivors from the most recent strike Thursday — the first one involving survivors. At least 28 other individuals have died from previous strikes. 

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have voiced concerns over the legality of the strikes, and Sens. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and Tim Kaine, D-Va., filed a war powers resolution in September to bar U.S. forces from engaging in ‘hostilities’ against certain non-state organizations.

The resolution failed in the Senate by a 51–48 margin on Oct. 8, but Republicans Rand Paul of Kentucky and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska voted alongside their Democratic counterparts for the resolution.

On Friday, Schiff, Kaine and Paul introduced another narrower war powers resolution that would block U.S. armed forces from participating in ‘hostilities’ against Venezuela specifically. The lawmakers said the resolution came in response to Trump’s comments considering land operations in Venezuela. 

‘The Trump administration has made it clear they may launch military action inside Venezuela’s borders, and won’t stop at boat strikes in the Caribbean,’ Schiff said in a statement Friday. ‘In recent weeks we have seen increasingly concerning movements and reporting that undermine claims that this is merely about stopping drug smugglers. Congress has not authorized military force against Venezuela. And we must assert our authority to stop the United States from being dragged—intentionally or accidentally—into full-fledged war in South America.’

When asked about lawmakers’ concerns about the legality of the strikes, Trump dismissed them and said that lawmakers were informed the vessels carried drugs. 

‘But they are given information that they were loaded up with drugs,’ Trump said on Tuesday. ‘And that’s the thing that matters. When they’re loaded up with drugs, they’re fair game. And every one of those ships were and they’re not ships, they’re they’re boats.’ 

The Associated Press contributed to this report.