The first U.S. military strike against a Venezuelan vessel in international waters was on September 2nd.

All 11 on board were killed.

The justification given by President Donald Trump, it was drug traffickers bringing illegal

narcotics to the U.S.

Hello and welcome to USA Today's The Excert. I'm Aisha Bogchi, U.S.A. Today Justice Department correspondent.

Today is Wednesday, December 3, 2025.

Since that first military strike, there have been 20 more, killing an additional

72 people, all without congressional approval or oversight. Meanwhile, President Trump has recently

cautioned airlines to avoid Venezuelan airspace, encouraged Maduro to flee, and said land

strikes could, quote, start very soon.

Is all of this really about combating the drug trade, or could the primary motivation even be more simply to get rid of Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro?

Here to help us digest this fast-evolving and complex story is USA Today Domestic Security correspondent Josh Meyer. Josh, thanks so much for

joining me on the excerpt. My pleasure, Aisha. Josh, let's start with the elephant in the room.

How close to starting an all-out war with Venezuela are we? What do we know so far? You know, that's the

million-dollar question. Trump and the administration have been

moving military assets into the region. Really an unprecedented shift of assets there. We've got

aircraft carrier groups. We've got other assets, air, land, and sea assets in the region. And Trump is

suggesting that something could happen imminently, but we don't know.

I mean, he's always said that he likes to keep the element of surprise to keep people off guard.

And I think that even people in the military probably aren't sure what's going to happen now.

So I think one of the important things, Asia, to look at here is I don't think we're waiting for a full-scale invasion of Venezuela. I think the first thing

we would see is military strikes on land assets. I mean, Trump could use the pretense that this is a

...