What recent military actions did the U.S. take in the Caribbean?
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Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Ryland Barton. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth says he closely followed the first U.S. military strike against a suspected drug smuggling boat in the Caribbean three months ago, But he says he did not order a follow-up attack that killed survivors. NPR's Greg Myrie has more.
Defense Secretary Hegseth described his actions during the first U.S. attack in the Caribbean on September 2nd.
I watched that first strike line. As you can imagine, at the Department of War, we've got a lot of things to do. So I didn't stick around, so I moved on to my next meeting.
Nine people were killed initially, but two people survived. A second U.S. strike killed them, but Hegseth said he only learned hours later that this follow-up strike took place. He said the commander of the operation made the correct decision to, quote, sink the boat and eliminate the threat. But critics have raised the possibility the attack could be a violation of U.S. law or the laws of war.
Greg Myhre, NPR News, Washington.
Congress is a step closer to attempting to alter a key set of numbers from the 2030 census. NPR's Hansi Lo Wong reports those numbers influence how presidents and members of Congress are elected.
How many U.S. House seats and Electoral College votes each state gets for a decade is determined using a census count. The 14th Amendment requires that count to include the, quote, whole number of persons in each state. But the Republican-controlled House Oversight Committee has advanced a bill that calls for excluding people living in the states without U.S.
citizenship, such as green card holders. During the last Congress, a similar bill passed the Republican-controlled House but never got a Senate vote. The current bill is making its way to a possible House floor vote months after President Trump put out a social media call for a, quote, new census that excludes people living in the states without legal status.
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