The Daily Populous Tuesday December 16th, 2025 day edition
Authored by scmp.com and submitted by Gopu_17

The US military said Monday that it attacked three boats accused of smuggling drugs in the eastern Pacific Ocean, killing a total of eight people as scrutiny over the boat strikes is intensifying in the US Congress.

The US military said in a statement on social media that the strikes targeted “designated terrorist organisations”, killing three people in the first vessel, two in the second boat and three in the third boat. It did not provide evidence of their alleged drug trafficking but posted a video of a boat moving through water before exploding.

US President Donald Trump has justified the attacks as a necessary escalation to stem the flow of drugs into the United States and asserted the US is engaged in an “armed conflict” with drug cartels.

But the Trump administration is facing increasing scrutiny from lawmakers over the boat strike campaign, which has killed at least 95 people in 25 known strikes since early September, including a follow-up strike that killed two survivors clinging to the wreckage of a boat after the first hit.

The latest boat strikes follow Trump’s executive order earlier on Monday that designated fentanyl as a “weapon of mass destruction” , a move that dramatically expands the US government’s authority to fight the synthetic opioid blamed for tens of thousands of American overdose deaths each year.

Heavy-Classic9184 on December 16th, 2025 at 05:26 UTC »

friendly reminder to those not so versed in geography, Venezuela doesn't have coastline in the pacific. They're fully on the atlantic side of south america

W0NdERSTrUM on December 16th, 2025 at 04:59 UTC »

So our government is just gonna keep on blowing up boats and murdering folks with zero evidence, leaving behind no survivors. Wtf…

tmdblya on December 16th, 2025 at 04:41 UTC »

Everyone involved now knows without a doubt this is illegal as well as immoral.