By AAMER MADHANI

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump confirmed on Wednesday that he has authorized the CIA to conduct covert operations inside Venezuela and said he was weighing carrying out land operations on the country.

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The acknowledgement of covert action in Venezuela by the U.S. spy agency comes after the U.S. military in recent weeks has carried out a series of deadly strikes against alleged drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean. U.S. forces have destroyed at least five boats since early September, killing 27 people, and four of those vessels originated from Venezuela.

Asked during an event in the Oval Office on Wednesday why he had authorized the CIA to take action in Venezuela, Trump affirmed he had made the move.

“I authorized for two reasons, really,” Trump replied. “No. 1, they have emptied their prisons into the United States of America,” he said. “And the other thing, the drugs, we have a lot of drugs coming in from Venezuela, and a lot of the Venezuelan drugs come in through the sea.”

Trump added the administration “is looking at land” as it considers further strikes in the region. He declined to say whether the CIA has authority to take action against President Nicolás Maduro.

Trump made the unusual acknowledgement of a CIA operation shortly after The New York Times published that the CIA had been authorized to carry out covert action in Venezuela.

Early this month, the Trump administration declared drug cartels to be unlawful combatants and pronounced the United States is now in an “armed conflict” with them, justifying the military action as a necessary escalation to stem the flow of drugs into the United States.

The move has spurred anger in Congress from members of both major political parties that Trump was effectively committing an act of war without seeking congressional authorization.

On Wednesday, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said while she supports cracking down on trafficking, the administration has gone too far.

“The Trump administration’s authorization of covert C.I.A. action, conducting lethal strikes on boats and hinting at land operations in Venezuela slides the United States closer to outright conflict with no transparency, oversight or apparent guardrails,” Shaheen said. “The American people deserve to know if the administration is leading the U.S. into another conflict, putting servicemembers at risk or pursuing a regime-change operation.”

The Trump administration has yet to provide underlying evidence to lawmakers proving that the boats targeted by the U.S. military were in fact carrying narcotics, according to two U.S. officials familiar with the matter.

The officials, who were not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the administration has only pointed to unclassified video clips of the strikes posted on social media by Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and has yet to produce “hard evidence” that the vessels were carrying drugs.

Lawmakers have expressed frustration that the administration is offering little detail about how it came to decide the U.S. is in armed conflict with cartels or which criminal organizations it claims are “unlawful combatants.”

Even as the U.S. military has carried out strikes on some vessels, the U.S. Coast Guard has continued with its typical practice of stopping boats and seizing drugs.

Trump on Wednesday explained away the action, saying the traditional approach hasn’t worked.

“Because we’ve been doing that for 30 years, and it has been totally ineffective. They have faster boats,” he said. ”They’re world-class speedboats, but they’re not faster than missiles.”

Human rights groups have raised concerns that the strikes flout international law and are extrajudicial killings.

By JOSH FUNK

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Wednesday he will withhold $40 million from California because it is the only state that is failing to enforce English language requirements for truckers.

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An investigation launched after a deadly Florida crash involving a foreign truck driver who made an illegal U-turn on Aug. 12 found what Duffy called significant failures in the way California is enforcing rules that took effect in June after one of President Donald Trump’s executive orders. California had issued the driver a commercial license, but these English rules predate the crash.

Truckers are supposed to be disqualified if they can’t demonstrate English proficiency, and Duffy said the driver involved in the crash should not have been given a commercial license because of his immigration status. The crash has become increasingly political, with the governors of California and Florida criticizing each other and Duffy highlighting the administration’s immigration concerns in interviews.

“California is the only state in the nation that refuses to ensure big rig drivers can read our road signs and communicate with law enforcement. This is a fundamental safety issue that impacts you and your family on America’s road,” Duffy said.

California defended its practices in a formal response to the Transportation Department last month, but federal officials weren’t satisfied.

The office of California Gov. Gavin Newsom quickly pushed back after the announcement Wednesday. Diana Crofts-Pelayo, a spokesperson for the governor, said statistics show that California commercial truck drivers have a lower crash rate than the national average.

But Duffy said when he announced his concerns in August that California had conducted roughly 34,000 inspections that found at least one violation since the new language standards took effect. But only one inspection involved an English language rules violation that resulted in a driver being taken out of service. And 23 drivers with violations in other states were allowed to continue driving after inspections in California.

The Transportation Department said that to get this funding reinstated, California must adopt regulations to enforce the English rules and ensure that state inspectors are testing truck drivers’ English skills during roadside inspections and pulling anyone that fails out of service.

In addition to this English language issue, Duffy has threatened to pull another $160 million from California because of the way the state issues commercial drivers licenses. Duffy significantly restricted who can qualify for those licenses last month.

Three people died when truck driver Harjinder Singh made an illegal U-turn on a highway about 50 miles north of West Palm Beach and a minivan slammed into his trailer, according to Florida’s Highway Patrol. Singh and his passenger were not injured.

He is being held without bond after being charged with three state counts of vehicular homicide and immigration violations. His lawyer has previously declined to comment on the case.

The crash received intense scrutiny because of questions about Singh’s immigration status and because investigators said he failed an English proficiency test afterward. Duffy and Florida officials blamed California as well as Washington state for issuing him a commercial driver’s license.

But California officials said he had a valid work permit at the time. And New Mexico released video of a traffic stop that showed Singh communicating with an officer effectively after he was pulled over there in July.

Duffy, President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis have all be trading barbs with Newsom over the crash and whether Singh should have been driving a truck.

Newsom’s office said California followed all the rules when it issued a license for Singh in July 2024, while the federal government confirmed at that time that he was in the country legally.

Duffy and Florida authorities have said Singh, who is from India, entered the country illegally from Mexico in 2018.

By JESSE BEDAYN

The deportation of a U.S. Marine’s father in California is bringing new attention to President Donald Trump’s apparent changes to a longstanding policy seeking to protect military families from deportation.

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Trump’s new immigration tactics follow years of the military recruiting from immigrant communities to fill out its ranks and touting the immigration benefits for enlistees’ families.

Here’s what to know.

What was the policy?

Along with possible protection from deportation, enlisting in the military often meant deference in your family’s immigration cases and a better shot at a green card.

Those benefits were used by the armed forces to recruit more people, and, as of last year, an estimated 40,000 people were serving in the military without citizenship.

Under President Joe Biden, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement considered your and your immediate family’s military service as a “significant mitigating factor” when making immigration decisions, such as removal from the country.

The idea was to boost recruitment and maintain morale, fearing that it could take a hit if a service member’s family was deported.

What did the Trump administration change?

The administration issued a memo in February doing away with the older approach.

It said that immigration authorities “will no longer exempt” categories of people that had been afforded more grace in the past.

That included families of service members or veterans, said Margaret Stock, a military immigration law expert.

FILE – Margaret Stock, an immigration lawyer, poses with a copy of her book, “Immigration Law and the Military” at her office in Anchorage, Alaska, July 3, 2018. (AP Photo/Mark Thiessen)

Do certain crimes void the protections?

They can, but Stock said there’s no explicit list of convictions that would make someone ineligible for protections and that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services can waive factoring in criminal convictions in making an immigration decision.

Have other military members’ families been detained?

Yes. A Marine Corps veteran’s wife, who was seeking a green card, was detained in May in Louisiana but a judge barred her removal.

And veterans without citizenship are increasingly worried about deportation.

Will this impact recruitment to the U.S. Armed Forces?

Stock says it will.

The military has struggled in the past to meet recruitment numbers.

That’s partly because there aren’t enough U.S. citizens without immigrant family members to meet the need, said Stock, a retired lieutenant colonel in the military police, U.S. Army Reserve, who taught law at West Point during the presidencies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama.

The immigration benefits for a recruit and their family were key to expanding the military’s ranks, said Stock, and recruitment would suffer without them.

The Marine Corps told The Associated Press last month that recruiters have been told that they “are not the proper authority” to “imply that Marine Corps can secure immigration relief for applicants or their families.”

The St. Paul Farmers’ Market in Lowertown is opening a year-round indoor market space in the former Black Dog Cafe spot at 308 Prince St., kitty-corner from the existing outdoor market.

The indoor market opens Nov. 1 and will be open from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays for now. Alongside other growers who will set up stalls on the perimeter of the space, Galvan Foods, the local tortilla and taco company that’s a mainstay of the outdoor market, is set to head inside to take over the large central counter-service kitchen.

There are no changes coming to the outdoor market, said Jim Golden, executive director of the St. Paul Growers Association, which runs the Lowertown market and various satellite markets around the East Metro. The indoor market is simply an additional option for growers to sell products, he said, and just like the outdoor market, stalls indoors are reserved for St. Paul Growers Association growers.

“Every little thing we can add just benefits the growers,” said Jake Jordan, owner of Woodbury-based Jordan Seeds and a longtime market board member. “In the old days, you could make your living on the farm. Now, just about everybody’s got to do something more, and this gives them more opportunity to do that. Rather than being out in the cold where your stuff is freezing, you can be in here.”

The eventual plan is for the public-facing retail space to take on a country store-type feel, with fridges and grocery shelves stocked with products and prepared foods made by the market’s vendors. However, this presents some logistical questions that have yet to be worked out, Golden said, because he wants the farmers’ market to remain a farmers’ market and not turn into a grocery store or restaurant.

St. Paul Farmers’ Market executive director Jim Golden, from left, marketing manager Kelly Meier and general contractor Terry Erickson in the new indoor farmers’ market in Lowertown St. Paul on Oct 11, 2025, which is set to open Nov. 1. No changes are planned to the longstanding outdoor market as the organization prepares to expand into the space once occupied by Black Dog Cafe. (Jared Kaufman / Pioneer Press)

“We have to make sure we stay within our lane, which is that we’re the guys who set up spaces for all these entrepreneurs to be in business,” Golden said. “There’s a temptation for us to get in the kitchen, start making food, but we can’t do that. There are growers who also want to do that and they’d be better at it, so let’s provide them a good safe space to do it.”

That’s where the kitchen comes in: About a third of the space’s total 6,000-square-foot footprint is an industrial kitchen and prep area. Growers will be able to rent the kitchen to produce value-added items like jam, bread, pickles and more in a commercially licensed kitchen, rather than at home under a cottage food license, which allows for greater flexibility in where the products can be sold and can help entrepreneurs expand their businesses, Golden said.

“This is kind of the incubator, a great starting point,” Jordan said.

In one form or another, an indoor market in Lowertown has been in the works for several decades. One proposal in the late 2000s would’ve constructed an indoor market on the ground floor of the aptly named Lofts at Farmers Market apartment building. That project proved too expensive, Golden said, and the market was ultimately dropped from the building plans in the early 2010s. (That ground-floor space became home to Big River Pizza from 2015 until it closed this summer.)

Since then, Golden has kept an eye out for options to expand the market indoors in a financially responsible way that continues to support the market’s member growers, he said.

The St. Paul Farmers’ Market signed a lease agreement for the former Black Dog Cafe space in early July, Golden said. Black Dog, after taking over what was Kuppernicus Coffee Gallery in 1997, operated as a jazzy Lowertown hotspot until a relatively surprising closure in early 2022.

Some changes needed to be made after several vacant years — light fixtures were replaced, bathrooms were refurbished, the corner stage was removed to allow for better accessibility — but “we weren’t swinging sledgehammers,” Golden said.

Once the indoor market gets into a rhythm, he said, he also hopes the space will host other community gatherings such as cooking demos and music performances.

“There are ways to utilize this space that we haven’t even thought of, and there are going to be benefits to this that we haven’t even seen yet,” Golden said. “This neighborhood changes depending on what time and day it is, so we’ll need to change it up.”

“But we won’t get too fancy, and we’ll just be who we are,” he continued. “Less on frills, and more on just good food and vegetables.”

St. Paul Farmers’ Market indoor market: 308 Prince St.; 651-261-7104; stpaulfarmersmarket.com

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