Mike Baker

forces to support and operate alongside foreign partners.

These missions are typically overseen by the assistant secretary of war or for special operations and low intensity conflict with the secretary of war required to approve them and notify Congress.

But what's changed, and this is the key piece, is how aggressively those authorities are now being used.

CBS News first reported that President Trump rolled back constraints on U.S.

commanders, giving them broader authority to authorize airstrikes and special operations raids outside traditional battlefields.

In other words, expanding both where these missions can happen and who can be targeted.

Longtime listeners of the podcast know that American forces have been carrying out unilateral strikes against drug smuggling boats in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific.

Since September of last year, those maritime strikes have hit at least 47 vessels, killing approximately 163 people.

That's a sustained, aggressive campaign aimed at cutting these networks off before drugs ever reach American shores.

At the same time, U.S.

Southern Command has been careful about what it says publicly regarding operations in Ecuador, citing force protection concerns.

But in written remarks to Congress, it made clear where this is heading, saying it's, quote, aggressively accelerating initiatives to provide advanced unit level training to partner forces, developing specialized skills for sustained counter foreign terrorist organization operations.

And yes, that's a mouthful.

What's happening in Ecuador isn't just a one off operation, but rather a sustained shift in how Washington is confronting these narco terrorist networks.

Okay, keeping the focus in Latin America, we turn to Venezuela.

The Trump administration takes another step toward resetting relations, lifting sanctions on acting President Delcy Rodriguez after years of economic pressure on Caracas.

The Treasury Department removed Rodriguez from what's known as the specially designated nationals list, and in plain terms, that's the list that effectively cuts people off from the American financial system.

If you're on it, American companies can't do business with you, your assets can be frozen, and your access to global markets is severely restricted.

As we've discussed here on the PDB, Rodriguez is not some outsider stepping in to clean things up in Venezuela.

She served as the 24th vice president under Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro's socialist regime, the very system that the U.S.