The News
President Donald Trump is moving to engage the US military and federal law enforcement on multiple new fronts as a legal challenge to his deployment of the National Guard to Los Angeles keeps moving ahead.
Trump is preparing a press conference Monday morning focused on crime in DC, where he told Semafor he’s weighing another National Guard deployment and where federal law enforcement agencies are stepping up their presence. That follows reports on Friday that he’s ordered the Pentagon to draw up plans for using military force against drug cartels in Latin America — making good on a long list of public promises and early moves that pointed in that direction.
Politically speaking, Trump’s actions against the cartels and in DC share a common theme: his desire to replicate his stringent policies at the southern border, where about 8,500 members of the military were assisting with security operations as of last month.
“Just like I took care of the Border … I will take care of our cherished Capital, and we will make it, truly, GREAT AGAIN!” Trump posted on Truth Social on Sunday, previewing his press conference about DC crime.
Separately, Trump’s National Guard deployment in California to respond to protests against escalating immigration raids largely wound down in late July but has prompted a lawsuit from Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom that’s scheduled to come before a federal judge on Monday.
In a statement, White House deputy press secretary Anna Kelly told Semafor that Trump’s “top priority is protecting the homeland,” adding that designating various cartels and gangs as foreign terrorist organizations plays into that priority.
The White House declined to comment further on the multi-front escalation of military and law enforcement.
Know More
Trump’s movement of a non-military federal law enforcement presence into DC, citing a need to crack down on crime after an assault on a former Department of Government Efficiency staffer, is just the latest criticism he’s aimed at Democratic-run cities for what he views as a failure to appropriately police their own streets.
He openly mused at a campaign rally last year about a possible attempt to assert federal control over the capital, and he raised the topic again at a Cabinet meeting last month.
US military action against cartels is another topic Trump openly discussed on the campaign trail. He also entertained it during his first term, when he wondered privately about the idea of launching missiles into Mexico to “destroy” drug labs, as then-Defense Secretary Mark Esper revealed in a memoir.
“The drug cartels are waging war on America, and it’s now time for America to wage war on the cartels,” Trump said in a 2023 Truth Social video decrying the Biden administration’s border policy.
He added that his policy as president would be to dismantle cartels “just as we took down ISIS” in the Middle East.
On his first day in office, Trump signed an order that groups involved in transnational drug trade be formally designated as terrorists. The Venezuela-based Tren de Aragua and Mexico-based Sinaloa cartel were designated in February, and the Venezuela-based Cartel de los Soles was sanctioned as a terrorist group late last month.
Cartel de los Soles, according to the Treasury Department, is “headed by” Nicolas Maduro, the Venezuelan leader, whom the Trump administration this week boosted the bounty on to a record $50 million.
For Trump’s allies, his potential use of military resources to combat the cartels are part of what one person close to the White House called a drive to “protect our sovereignty.”
“There’s obviously going to be a narrative … that Trump is unleashing his stormtroopers onto the world and yada yada yada, abuse of power, this is him trying to be a dictator,” this person added. “From our perspective, couldn’t be further from the truth — in the sense that the president is not going to allow the disarray and the ongoing chaos to continue across our country.”
A second person close to the White House said the doubling of the bounty on the Venezuelan leader “makes clear that the Maduro regime is not a government but a criminal syndicate and terror group,” describing the Venezuelan regime as “a cartel” itself.
Maduro has denied any role in drug cartel operations, and his foreign minister wrote on Facebook last week that the boosted bounty for his arrest was “the most ridiculous smokescreen we’ve ever seen.”
A senior State Department official did not directly answer whether the higher bounty on Maduro, coupled with the administration’s Pentagon cartels announcement, equates to more robust support for regime change in Venezuela.
“The Trump admin approach has been consistent,” the senior State Department official said. “The latest announcement follows Treasury’s measure from last month moving to designate Cartel de los Soles as a specially designated global terrorist.”
The Trump administration did not notify Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about the anti-cartel directive, an aide said, nor were Democrats on the House Foreign Affairs Committee notified.
Republicans did not have an immediate comment about the matter.
Room for Disagreement
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum responded to Trump’s reported anti-cartel directive by, as she did earlier this year, vowing that any US military presence in her country was “ruled out.”
“The United States is not going to come to Mexico with the military,” she said. “We cooperate, we coordinate; but there won’t be an invasion.”
Shelby’s view
For those who closely followed Trump’s rallies and announcements on the campaign trail, none of what he’s done in DC or on Latin America policy is a surprise: He ran (successfully) on a “law-and-order” message, even promising to “surge federal prosecutors and the National Guard into high-crime communities.”
Perhaps the most notable aspect of his reported directive on military force against the cartels, in fact, was the relative lack of Democratic criticism in response to it — the opposition party appears to see more vulnerability in his tax bill and his approach to the Jeffrey Epstein case.
It’s yet another example of how emboldened Trump is when it comes to crime and border policy this term. He’s acting on proposals he only mused about when he first got into office.
Notable
Trump advisers are cool to the idea of a physical troop presence to operate against the cartels, focusing their evaluations on naval and drone strikes, the Washington Post reported.
Trump also wants to reopen Alcatraz, the infamous prison — now a tourist site — in the San Francisco Bay.
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