The Trump administration has expanded its war on alleged drug dealers into a new part of the globe, this time killing two people on a boat in the Pacific.
But the strikes are facing a growing backlash—including among the GOP—with Republican Senator Rand Paul branding them “summary executions” and a “recipe for chaos.”
The latest attack was announced by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on social media, accompanied by a dramatic video of the boat being blown up in the high seas.
Yesterday, at the direction of President Trump, the Department of War conducted a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel being operated by a Designated Terrorist Organization and conducting narco-trafficking in the Eastern Pacific. The vessel was known by our intelligence to be… pic.twitter.com/BayDhUZ4Ac
— Secretary of War Pete Hegseth (@SecWar) October 22, 2025
“Yesterday, at the direction of President Trump, the Department of War conducted a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel being operated by a Designated Terrorist Organization and conducting narco-trafficking in the Eastern Pacific,” he wrote on X.
“The vessel was known by our intelligence to be involved in illicit narcotics smuggling, was transiting along a known narco-trafficking transit route, and carrying narcotics. There were two narco-terrorists aboard the vessel during the strike, which was conducted in international waters. Both terrorists were killed and no U.S. forces were harmed in this strike.”
The strike is the seventh announced so far, taking the number of known deaths to 29. But all the others have taken place in the Caribbean Sea, signifying a global expansion of what experts have described as a “forever war.”
“Trump trying to apply this new military doctrine against an enemy who is quite literally incapable of surrender is, by its very definition, a forever war,” Sanho Tree, a global drug policy expert at the Institute for Policy Studies, told The Daily Beast.
The legality of the strikes under international and U.S. law has also been questioned, including by some within GOP ranks. In every case, the administration has announced the strike on social media, but provided no evidence for who or what was on board.
A submarine that was targeted last week raised further concerns, with two alleged drug smugglers released and repatriated to Colombia and Ecuador, sparking suggestions that the crew was released to avoid extended legal scrutiny.
“We don’t blow up boats off Miami because 25% of the time suspicion is wrong. We shouldn’t do it off Venezuela either—these are small outboards with no fentanyl and no path to Florida,” Kentucky Senator Rand Paul wrote on X.
“We can’t just kill indiscriminately because we are not at war. It’s summary execution!”
Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro was one of the first world leaders to call Trump out over the strikes, using his speech to the United Nations last month to demand a criminal investigation.
But things worsened last week, when Petro claimed that one man who was killed in a boat strike that took place in mid-September was “lifelong fisherman” Alejandro Carranza, whose boat had experienced damage and was adrift.
“U.S. government officials have committed a murder and violated our sovereignty in territorial waters,” he wrote on social media.
Trump responded online by declaring Petro, who rose to prominence as a Colombian Senator by exposing links between right-wing paramilitary groups involved in drug trafficking and corrupt politicians, was an “illegal drug leader.”
He also threatened to enact tariffs on Colombia’s exports, claiming that the country “does nothing to stop” drug production.
Back in Washington, Paul—one of the few Republicans who occasionally speaks out against his party—has thrown his support behind a mostly Democratic push to force Trump to provide more information to Congress about the strikes.
“Everyone gets a trial because sometimes, the system gets it wrong. Even the worst of the worst in our country get due process,” said the Kentucky senator.
“The bottom line is that execution without process is not justice, and blowing up foreign ships is a recipe for chaos.”
The lethal boat strikes are not the only time Paul has found himself at odds with the president.
He voted against a government spending bill in recent weeks amid the shutdown, and he voted against Trump’s “big, beautiful” spending bill earlier this year.
In a sign of their ongoing tensions, Trump described Paul as “a nasty liddle guy” in a Truth Social post over the weekend, and then, according to Paul, did not invite him to a lunch he hosted for GOP Senators at the White House on Tuesday.
“Whatever happened to ‘Senator’ Rand Paul? He was never great, but he went really BAD! I got him elected, TWICE (in the Great Commonwealth of Kentucky!), but he just never votes positively for the Republican Party,” the president wrote. “He’s a nasty liddle’ guy, much like ‘Congressman’ Thomas Massie,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
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