Rep. Rich McCormick’s warning on Newsmax was a welcome break from the media’s usual hand-wringing: our hemisphere is under assault from narco-terrorists and patriotic Americans deserve to hear the truth. For too long officials treated drug cartels like garden-variety criminals while our towns were flooded with fentanyl and funerals; McCormick and others are finally calling out the reality of hostile, organized drug networks using Venezuelan routes to profit off American deaths. The Biden-era soft approach failed; now brave lawmakers and commanders are taking the fight to the enemies of our communities.
This administration has not been shy about action: since early September U.S. forces have struck multiple maritime targets tied to alleged drug-trafficking networks, and the White House has publicly framed the campaign as targeting narcoterrorists who threaten American lives. President Trump has even acknowledged covert CIA operations inside Venezuela to support intelligence and interdiction efforts, arguing conventional law-enforcement tools could not stop the speed and scale of the trafficking. Americans tired of hollow rhetoric want results, and military pressure on transnational cartels is producing real consequences for the drug trade.
The operations are not without complexity: one recent strike on a semi-submersible produced survivors who were repatriated to Ecuador and Colombia, and at least one country reported it lacked evidence to detain the returned survivor. That reality underlines the difficulty of prosecuting international traffickers while denying them safe havens, and it also shows why the Biden administration’s old playbook of endless handoffs and excuses failed to stop the death toll at home. We should demand transparency about the evidence and cooperation from regional partners, but we should not let the perfect be the enemy of the good when American lives are at stake.
Predictably, the elite commentariat and international bureaucrats have cried foul about legality and sovereignty, throwing up legalistic smokescreens instead of confronting the moral calamity of open borders and unchecked fentanyl flows. Journalistic investigations have raised legitimate questions about routes and cargo, and critics will always exploit any ambiguity; still, cowardly calls to do nothing while our children die are unacceptable. This is a policy fight: secure the border, cut cartel finances, and back the men and women who stop poison shipments before they reach our shores.
If anything, President Trump’s suggestion that land options could follow maritime pressure shows seriousness — not recklessness — in ending the decades-long hemorrhage of American lives to cartel poison. Our national security must be treated like national security, and when criminal enterprises operate like quasi-military forces we must respond with the full toolkit required to disrupt and dismantle them. Lawmakers who wring their hands while grandmothers overdose owe the public an explanation for inaction.
International outrage is predictable and often performative, with U.N. experts and hostile regimes rushing to defend those who profit from suffering; yet the primary duty of our government is to protect American citizens. Washington will get lectures from sanctimonious critics while cartels fund dictators and corruption across the hemisphere, but protecting our families must come first. The administration should welcome scrutiny, produce the evidence, and keep pressing until the trafficking networks are starved of revenue and reach.
Congress and Republican patriots should rally behind responsible, evidence-based action: fund interdiction, force accountability from partner nations, and close our southern flank so drugs and death do not keep finding their way into our towns. Rep. McCormick and others who speak plainly about the enemy deserve applause for refusing to mince words — while the political class dithers, real conservatives will stand with our military, with victims’ families, and with common-sense measures to end the narcoterrorist threat once and for all.
