WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump has determined the United States is engaged in “a non-international armed conflict” with drug cartels, according to a document notifying Congress of its legal justification for deadly US strikes on boats off Venezuela.

The text of the document, which was reviewed by Reuters on Thursday, was briefed to lawmakers by the Pentagon’s top attorney this week as experts question the legality of killing suspected drug traffickers at sea instead of apprehending them and their cargo.

The US military has blown up at least three suspected drug boats in the past month and killed at least 17 people, in what critics say is the latest effort by Trump to test the scope of his powers as US president. The document describes those killed as “unlawful combatants.”

The document did not appear to provide any new legal rationale other than what Trump and his allies have said publicly, arguments that some former military lawyers say fail to satisfy requirements under the law of war.

It was not clear if the determination was intended to provide a justification for future military strikes on cartels, or if it was mainly to explain past actions.

Trump said on Tuesday his administration is considering attacking drug cartels “coming by land” in Venezuela, actions that could raise further legal questions.

The document said Trump had determined that drug cartels were effectively non-state armed groups whose actions “constitute an armed attack against the United States.”

“The President determined that the United States is in a non-international armed conflict with these designated terrorist organizations,” according to the text of the document.

“The President directed the Department of War to conduct operations against them pursuant to the law of armed conflict,” it said, using the Republican president’s preferred name for the Defense Department.

The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

LEGAL AUTHORITY FOR STRIKES IN QUESTION
Legal experts have questioned why the US military is carrying out the strikes instead of the Coast Guard, which is the main US maritime law enforcement agency, and why other efforts to halt the shipments aren’t made before resorting to deadly strikes.

“Applying a new label to an old problem does not transform the problem itself – nor does it grant the US president or the US military expanded legal authority to kill civilians,” wrote Mark Nevitt, a former Navy lawyer who is now an associate professor at Emory University School of Law.

The Trump administration has argued so far that the strikes send a clear message to the drug cartels and noted that it designated them terrorist organizations earlier this year.

Addressing a gathering of senior generals and admirals this week in Quantico, Virginia, Trump defended the strikes by saying each boat has enough narcotics to kill 25,000 people. He also said the strategy was stemming the flow of seaborn drugs through the Caribbean.

“Now we have a problem. General Caine says, sir, there are no boats out there, not even fishing boats. They don’t want to go fishing,” Trump said, referring to General Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

“I don’t blame them. There’ll be no fishing today, you know. But it’s amazing what strength will do,” Trump said.

US Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, said the Trump administration has failed to provide Congress with any credible justification or intelligence to justify its actions.

“Every American should be alarmed that their president has decided he can wage secret wars against anyone he calls an enemy,” Reed said in a statement. — Reuters

TOKYO – Japan stands a good chance of having its first woman prime minister or its youngest leader in the modern era after a vote on Saturday to pick the head of the nation’s ruling party.

The front-runners in the potentially historic Liberal Democratic Party election are conservative nationalist Sanae Takaichi, 64, and her more moderate rival Shinjiro Koizumi, 44. Opinion polls suggest Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi, 64, may also be a contender.

They are among five candidates vying to replace Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, who is stepping down after a series of electoral defeats.

The next leader is likely to become premier as the LDP is the biggest group in parliament, but that is not assured as the party – which has run Japan for almost all the postwar period – lost its majorities in both houses under Ishiba.

RULING PARTY IN CRISIS
Takaichi pledges to jolt the economy with aggressive government spending that could spook investors in an economy with one of the world’s biggest debt loads. She has raised the possibility of redoing an investment deal with U.S. President Donald Trump that lowered his punishing tariffs.

Farm minister Koizumi, son of former premier Junichiro Koizumi, as well as the other candidates, say they would trim taxes to help households cope with rising living costs but otherwise hew more closely to Ishiba’s economic restraint.

Whoever wins Saturday’s vote will inherit a party in crisis and a sluggish economy.

Dissatisfaction with the LDP is pushing many voters, especially disillusioned younger people, to opposition parties such as an upstart anti-immigrant far-right party.

“Koizumi and Takaichi offer two quite different approaches to that renewal,” said Tina Burrett, a political science professor at Tokyo’s Sophia University. Koizumi is seen as someone who could forge consensus with other parties while Takaichi would shake up “a world of rather grey politicians”, she said.

If chosen, Koizumi would be a few months older than Hirobumi Ito when he became Japan’s first prime minister in 1885, under the nation’s prewar constitution.

LAWMAKERS VS RANK AND FILE
Koizumi leads among the 295 LDP lawmakers who will vote for party leader, followed by Hayashi and Takaichi, according to an Asahi newspaper report on Wednesday. But Takaichi is ahead of both of them among rank-and-file party members who will get an equal number of votes in the first round on Saturday, a Nippon Television survey found.

If, as seems likely, the election goes to a second round, the advantage could shift as the vote of grassroots LDP members would fall to 47.

Takaichi, an ally of assassinated former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, has the most expansionist economic platform of the LDP candidates. She has promised to double the size of the economy in a decade with heavy state investment in new technologies, infrastructure, food production and other areas of economic security.

She has said she would carry over Ishiba’s trade agreement with Trump, in which Japan agreed to invest $550 billion in the U.S. in return for lower tariffs on automobiles and other Japanese products, but mentioned the possibility of renegotiation if the deal proves to be unfair.

Cabinet ministers Hayashi and Koizumi have defended the deal.

For whoever wins, one of their first acts as premier is expected to be hosting Trump in Tokyo at the end of October, Reuters has reported.

Domestically they face the tall task of rejuvenating a party increasingly seen as out of touch with voters, said James Brown, a politics professor at Temple University in Tokyo.

“There’s every possibility that we’ll be returning to this issue of yet another election for the leadership of the country before too long,” Brown said. — Reuters

DePaul University has told faculty it will immediately reduce spending following a 30% decline in international enrollment this fall. The move is the latest by US colleges to cope with the disruptive education and immigration policies of President Donald Trump.

The amount of the reduction is to be determined, but measures could include a hiring freeze, executive pay cuts and discretionary spending limits, university president Robert Manuel wrote in a memo to faculty on Tuesday.

Overall international enrollment at the private Catholic university in Chicago decreased by 755 students compared to last year, Manuel said. The number of first-year international graduate students fell at an even steeper pace — by nearly 62%. DePaul enrolled some 21,000 students last year, about 2,500 of them from abroad.

Manuel attributed this year’s decline to students having difficulty getting visas and losing interest in studying in the US following changes in federal policy.

DePaul is among dozens of schools that have announced budget cuts in response to Trump administration policies that are upending higher education. That includes threats to billions of dollars of funding for academic research programs, many of which act as strong lures for students from abroad. Complete enrollment figures are not yet available, but early numbers collected by Reuters suggest many first-year international graduate students are choosing to study elsewhere.

Student visas also have been in Trump’s crosshairs. Some visas have been revoked, and students seeking new visas have faced delays. The US State Department has required prospective students to make their social media accounts public so government officials who vet visa applications can screen out students deemed to have hostile attitudes toward the United States.

In May, the administration blocked Harvard University from enrolling international students after saying the university failed to address antisemitism and ethnic harassment on campus.
A US district court temporarily blocked the action, but the government has filed an appeal.
“We are all worried about the safety of our community members, the safeguarding of academic freedom, and the new financial challenges driven by changes in federal funding and visa processing,” Manuel wrote to DePaul’s faculty. “These concerns are so severe and debilitating that it’s getting hard to recognize higher education anymore.”

Asked for comment, the US departments of state and homeland security sent statements noting the government’s right to police the actions of students studying from abroad.

“This isn’t that hard,” said Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security. “If you are living and studying in the United States on a visa, you are a guest in this country. Act like it. If you are a foreign student pushing Hamas propaganda, glorifying terrorists that relish the killing of Americans, harassing Jews, taking over buildings, or other anti-American actions that we have seen lately on these campuses, you can book yourself a ticket home. You can expect your visa will be revoked.”

At least 35 other schools, in addition to DePaul, have announced budget cuts in response to Trump administration policies. Johns Hopkins University slashed more than 2,000 jobs in March after the administration cut $800 million in grants to its research programs. Northwestern University cut 425 positions, and the University of Southern California laid off more than 630; each cited reduced federal funding, an expected drop in international student enrollment and other financial pressures.

FEDERAL POLICIES INFLUENCE STUDENT DECISIONS
In interviews with Reuters, some students cited federal policies in explaining their enrollment decisions.

A student from India who was accepted to the University of California, Davis, said she decided to defer admission and is considering other options because of uncertainty about getting a student visa. “My parents were also scared that I might get deported or something if I go right now,” she said.

A Chinese student who graduated from Northwestern University in 2024 was accepted to a US program to pursue his PhD in economics, but he said he decided to enroll in the United Kingdom because of uncertainty surrounding visas, combined with precarious research funding.

“Except one of my professors, all of them suggested that if I have a non-US option, I should think about it carefully,” he said. “So I made that choice.”

EARLY NUMBERS SHOW DECLINE
Some 1.2 million international students studied in the US during the 2024-2025 academic year, according to estimates from NAFSA: Association of International Educators, a non-profit organization. In July, NAFSA projected that number would drop by up to 15% this year, costing the US economy nearly $7 billion.

With universities still tallying their fall enrollment, it is too soon to compile nationwide data. The number of international students studying in the US this month is down 2.4% from last September – from 965,437 to 942,131, according to data from the Department of Homeland Security’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program. These numbers do not paint a full picture, however, because the number of incoming and outgoing students is in flux, and some schools have not yet reported their fall numbers.

Reuters spoke to administrators or spokespersons at 10 schools with consistently high foreign enrollment. All report declines in overall international student enrollment – ranging from a 1% dip at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign to a 19% drop at the University at Buffalo. Illinois has enrolled 13,268 international students, and Buffalo has 4,087.

Both schools enrolled more international freshmen this fall. But steep declines in the number of graduate students enrolling from abroad drove their overall foreign enrollment totals down. The decline was most pronounced among first-year graduate students. Illinois Urbana-Champaign has seen a 22% drop and Buffalo, 58%.

Any decrease in enrollment among first-year students has a compounding effect, said Dr. Fanta Aw, executive director and CEO of NAFSA. When admitted first-year master’s program students opt not to enroll, a school loses their tuition for two years.

Exacerbating that pain is the fact that many international students are ineligible for financial aid and thus pay full tuition. They are an important revenue source for many schools seeking to offset decreasing domestic enrollment, increasing operating costs and cuts to government funding.

On Wednesday, the Trump administration asked universities to sign a deal that could squeeze many schools even more. It seeks to cap international undergraduate enrollment at 15%.

“Universities that rely on foreign students to fund their institutions risk, among other things, potentially reducing spots available to deserving American students,” said a memo to universities shared with Reuters by a White House official.

In June, credit ratings agency Moody’s warned that falling enrollment could present a credit risk for some schools. Among the most vulnerable, it reported, are schools with graduate programs that rely heavily on international students. That dependence has grown over the past decade, the report said.

“Graduate students often pay higher tuition fees for certain programs, so the loss of these students could have a particularly severe revenue impact,” the report said. — Reuters