US Reportedly About to Hit Venezuela With Airstrikes

President Trump may be about to escalate his fight against Venezuela's Nicolas Maduro in a big way: The Miami Herald, citing unnamed sources, reports that the Trump administration has decided to launch airstrikes against military installations in the country. The White House accuses Maduro of running a drug-trafficking enterprise and says the military facilities identified are used in the smuggling. The Wall Street Journal has a similar report, but it doesn't go quite as far, asserting that the administration has indeed identified targets but that Trump has not yet decided to hit them.

Any such strikes would be the clearest signal yet from the US that Maduro must step down, per the Journal. "Maduro is about to find himself trapped and might soon discover that he cannot flee the country even if he decided to," says one of the Herald sources. "What's worse for him, there is now more than one general willing to capture and hand him over, fully aware that one thing is to talk about death, and another to see it coming."

The US military presence in the region has grown steadily, with warships, fighter jets, and drones positioned for rapid action. The US has already conducted maritime attacks on suspected drug traffickers, resulting in dozens of deaths, but officials say traffickers are increasingly avoiding sea routes, prompting the shift to potential land strikes.