US strikes 3 alleged drug vessels and leaves survivors — now a search-and-rescue operation
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(WASHINGTON) — U.S. Southern Command said it targeted three vessels traveling in a convoy in undisclosed international waters — leaving “narco-terrorists” as survivors after they jumped overboard, according to a social media statement.
The strikes occurred on Dec. 30, according to the post on X.
“Three narco-terrorists aboard the first vessel were killed in the first engagement,” the statement said. “The remaining narco-terrorists abandoned the other two vessels, jumping overboard and distancing themselves before follow-on engagements sank their respective vessels.”
At least six people survived the Dec. 30 strikes, which took place in the Eastern Pacific, according to a U.S. official.
The U.S. Coast Guard was notified to begin searching for the survivors in a search and rescue operation, the statement said.
The U.S. Coast Guard confirmed that a search-and-rescue operation was underway, and that Coast Guard C-130 aircraft had been deployed for the operation. The Coast Guard has put out a signal to other mariners for the survivors in distress.
In a statement shared with ABC News, the Coast Guard said, “on December 30th, the U.S. Coast Guard was notified by the Department of War of mariners in distress in the Pacific Ocean.”
“The U.S. Coast Guard is coordinating search and rescue operations with vessels in the area, and a Coast Guard C-130 aircraft is en route to provide further search coverage,” it said.
Several hours after announcing the Dec. 30 strikes, Southern Command posted on social media that another series of strikes — carried out on New Year’s Eve — had targeted two more vessels alleged to be engaged in drug trafficking. The post did not specify where the strike took place.
A total of five people were killed — three in the first vessel and two in the second, according to the post.
There have now been at least 34 strikes — and at least 115 people killed — in the U.S. military campaign in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific targeting alleged drug traffickers since September.
In the posts about the strikes, the military said the vessels targeted were operated by designated terrorist organizations and that intelligence confirmed the vessel were “were transiting along known narco-trafficking routes and engaged in narco-trafficking.”
The U.S. campaign targeting alleged drug boats came under scrutiny last month after the Trump administration acknowledged survivors of an initial series of strikes on an alleged drug vessel on Sept. 2 were killed in a follow-up series of strikes.
In another attack in the Caribbean in October, two survivors of a strike on a submarine suspected of carrying drugs were later returned to the countries of origin — Ecuador and Colombia — to be detained and prosecuted, President Donald Trump said.
On Oct. 27, a mariner, now presumed dead, also survived U.S. strikes.
U.S. President Donald Trump takes questions during a statement to the media at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate on December 22, 2025 in Palm Beach, Florida. Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump said that the United States “knocked out” a “big facility” in Venezuela last week, in what appears to be a reference to a strike on a drug trafficking site in the country.
Trump, in a radio interview with on WABC’s “Cats and Cosby” on Friday, was discussing his administration’s effort to stop drug trafficking from the region, including strikes against alleged drug boats, when he made the comment.
“And we just knocked out, I don’t know if you read or you saw, they have a big plant or a big facility where they send the, you know, where the ships come from. Two nights ago we knocked that out, so we hit them very hard,” Trump said in the interview.
The New York Times reported that American officials said that Trump was referring to a drug facility in Venezuela and that it was eliminated, but gave no further details.
If Trump’s comments are accurate, then it would mark the first known attack on land in Venezuela since the Trump administration began its campaign against the country.
ABC News has reached out to the Pentagon and the White House for comment; the Pentagon referred ABC News to the White House for comment. The CIA declined to comment on the matter.
Trump has teased land action in Venezuela for weeks, confirming in October that he authorized the CIA to operate inside the South American nation.
The U.S. has also built up its military presence in the region, with 15,000 U.S. troops and several warships standing ready in the Caribbean. Earlier this month, Trump ordered what he called a “complete blockade” of all sanctioned oil tankers going into and out of Venezuela, targeting the government’s main source of revenue.
“He can do whatever he wants, it’s alright, whatever he wants to do. If he wants to do something, if he plays tough, it’ll be the last time he’s ever able to play tough,” Trump said.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
The Open AI logo, which represents the American-based artificial intelligence (AI) research organization known for releasing the generative chatbot language model AI ChatGPT and initiating the AI spring, is being displayed at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, on February 28, 2024. (Photo by Joan Cros/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — Millions of dollars tied to artificial intelligence are pouring into the 2026 midterms.
Interest groups funded in part by AI industry leaders are split on how the government should oversee AI — and that’s already having an impact on political ads, some experts told ABC News.
“It’s sort of an open question as to what regulation is going to look like,” University of Rochester professor David Primo told ABC News. “The stakes are really high because once a regulatory system gets entrenched, it’s really hard to change it.”
An AI-related political group, Innovation Council Action, tied to two of President Donald Trump’s advisors, announced on Sunday that it would spend at least $100 million, The New York Times reported.
The donations associated with the AI sector go beyond party lines. Federal Election Commission filings show that key industry players are pouring money into committees supporting both Democrats and Republicans, with certain groups criticizing candidates who have expressed support for new AI-related laws and others doing the opposite.
“Companies have always tried to shape regulations, and they’ve always tried to shape them in their favor. What we’re seeing now, though, is that the big companies are not united,” Primo said.
With AI’s presence being increasingly felt, some politicians are calling on their colleagues not to accept money from the burgeoning industry.
“Their money will end up being toxic anyway,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., posted on social media. “People are catching on.”
1 industry, different political priorities
In February, Anthropic, the developer of Claude AI, announced it would give $20 million to an organization called Public First Action, explaining that it agreed with most Americans that not enough was being done to regulate AI and that the technology comes with “considerable risks.”
Public First Action spokesperson Anthony Rivera-Rodriguez said that they have already run advertisements thanking Rep. Nikki Budzinski, D-Ill., Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., and Rep. Josh Gottheimer D-N.J., for their AI records.
Gottheimer introduced a bill in February that would provide tax credits for companies training workers on AI development.
It is not yet clear who else has contributed to Public First Action, which describes itself as a “pro-regulation” group.
“Public First Action doesn’t disclose its donors,” Rivera-Rodriguez told ABC News. “To date, the project has raised around $50 million. The aligned super PACs will publicly disclose their contributors in their upcoming FEC reports.”
One of Anthropic’s main competitors, ChatGPT owner OpenAI, has voiced support for nationwide “common-sense rules of the road,” but has cautioned that the U.S. should not fall behind other countries.
In an economic blueprint released last year, OpenAI compared AI’s ascent to the rise of the car, pointing out that while the motor vehicle “industry’s growth was stunted by regulation” in the United Kingdom, the U.S. “took a very different approach,” causing the American automobile sector to grow.
FEC disclosures show that OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman and his wife each contributed $12.5 million to a group called Leading the Future, which describes itself as supporting candidates who “champion policies that harness the economic benefits of AI and reject attempts to hinder American innovation.”
Committees with links to Leading the Future have already made millions worth of contributions, filings indicate.
One group spent more than $500,000 each in support of North Carolina Republican House candidate Laurie Buckhout and Texas Republican House candidate Jessica Steinmann. The same committee spent more than $700,000 supporting Texas Republican House candidate Chris Gober.
Buckhout, Steinmann and Gober each won their March primaries. All three candidates include similar statements on their websites, mentioning that China cannot overcome the U.S. in the AI race.
Millions spent in Manhattan alone
Nowhere is the role of AI more front and center than in New York’s 12th Congressional District.
Numerous Democrats are running in this Manhattan race, but Assemblyman and former Palantir employee Alex Bores, who co-sponsored New York’s Responsible AI Safety and Education Act, is the candidate who has largely had AI’s focus.
Bores’ website says that he hopes to hold large AI companies accountable and would work to create national safety and privacy requirements.
A PAC associated with Anthropic-supported Public First Action is supporting Bores, Rivera-Rodriguez confirmed. Leading the Future is not.
“Alex Bores is a hypocrite pushing policies that would undermine America’s ability to lead the world in AI innovation and job creation,” Leading the Future spokesperson Jessie Hunt told ABC News.
As of March 16, a super PAC tied to Leading the Future had already spent more than $2.2 million opposing Bores, FEC filings show.
“There’s a few Trump megadonors that made billions of dollars from AI that don’t think there should be any regulation of AI whatsoever,” Bores told ABC News following a recent forum.
With so much AI-related money flowing into races like NY-12 around the country, Primo said these funds are not being spent secretly or for bribery. Instead, the cash is being used to convince voters of who they should elect.
“This might actually be democracy functioning really well,” he said.
Senator Ron Johnson, a Republican from Wisconsin, speaks during a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing in Washington, DC, US, on Thursday, Feb. 12, 2026. (Graeme Sloan/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — Republican Sen. Ron Johnson broke with President Donald Trump on his threats to bomb civilian infrastructure in Iran, saying in a podcast, “I hope and pray” he is “using this as bluster.”
“I do not want to see us start blowing up civilian infrastructure … We are not at war with the Iranian people. We are trying to liberate them,” Johnson, a Trump ally who rarely breaks with the president, said on the “John Solomon Reports” podcast out on Monday.
Johnson’s comments came after Trump has threatened to bomb bridges and power plants, which would be devastating for Iranian civilians. Some experts have warned that such actions could violate international law; many Democrats are saying it amounts to war crimes.
Trump has said that he will target those bridges and power plants in Iran if they don’t open up the critical Strait of Hormuz — giving Iran a deadline of 8 p.m. ET Tuesday to act.
Other lawmakers reacted to Trump’s social media post on Tuesday, hours ahead of his self-imposed deadline, in which he threatened that a “whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again” although he said “I don’t want that to happen.”
This comes on the heels of an Easter Sunday social media post where Trump threatened “Hell” if the Strait of Hormuz weren’t opened up.
Sen. Chuck Schumer, the Senate’s top Democrat, called President Trump an “extremely sick person” for threatening that a “whole civilization will die tonight.”
“Each Republican who refuses to join us in voting against this wanton war of choice owns every consequence of whatever the hell this is,” Schumer said in a post on X.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries also called on Republicans to act.
“Congress must immediately end this reckless war of choice in Iran before Donald Trump plunges us into World War III. It’s time for every single Republican to put patriotic duty over party and stop the madness. Enough,” Jeffries said in a statement posted on X.
ABC News has reached out to Senate Majority Leader John Thune and House Speaker Mike Johnson for comment.
Several House Democrats are calling on Congress to act as the war — now in its sixth week — continues.
Democratic Rep. Pramila Jayapal, of Washington, called Trump’s threat “outrageous, dangerous, and unhinged.”
“Trump’s illegal war in Iran has already led to enormous death and destruction, including a school bombing that killed over 100 children. Congress must immediately act to rein him in before more people die,” Jayapal wrote in a post on X.
Democratic Rep. Mike Quigley, of Illinois, said in a statement on X that Trump’s threat amounts to “mass murder” and that he is “urging every Cabinet Member and Republican leadership to call the President IMMEDIATELY.”
“The Iranian people do not deserve this,” Quigley wrote.
Democratic Rep. Mike Levin, of California, slammed Trump’s rhetoric, saying, “Threatening the annihilation of an entire civilization is dangerous beyond words, and hearing it from the person commanding our military should alarm every American.”
“This language is completely unacceptable from any president, let alone one who started this war without authorization from Congress and has no plan for what comes next,” Levin wrote.
Other conservative voices are breaking with Trump over his Iran threats.
Conservative broadcaster Tucker Carlson offered scathing criticism of the president, blasting his recent threats toward Iran and specifically Trump’s profanity-laden threat to Iran on Easter Sunday.
“It is really the most real thing this president has ever done, and also the most revealing on every level. It is vile on every level,” Carlson said of Trump’s Sunday post during “The Tucker Carlson Show” on Monday.
Carlson scolded the president directly, saying, “how dare you speak that way,” adding that Trump’s post was a “mockery of Christianity.”
Trump fired back at Carlson in a social media post on Tuesday morning, calling him a “low IQ person that has absolutely no idea what’s going on.”
ABC News’ Allison Pecorin, Lauren Peller, Nicholas Kerr and Will Steakin contributed to this report.
