Good morning. Happy Pride Month. Let’s start at sea.
Death from aboveThe videos are eerily similar. There’s a small go-fast boat on a sun-dappled sea. Then there’s a soundless explosion of light. When it fades: The boat’s in splinters, burning, about to sink, gone. American forces have been attacking small boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean for nearly nine months in black-ops missions that surface on social media when they’re done. Secret attack planes and armed MQ-9 Reaper drones have hit more than 60 boats. They’ve killed at least 200 people. The Trump administration says, without providing evidence, that the boats were smuggling drugs. Specialists in the laws of conflict have called the strikes illegal extrajudicial killings — Gustavo Petro, Colombia’s president, called them “murder” — because the military is not allowed to target civilians, even criminals, if they don’t pose an imminent threat of violence. The White House says the killings are lawful. It says that the United States is in a legally recognized armed conflict with drug cartels — and that the crews of the boats are “combatants” in that conflict. We are tracking the boat strikes here. Increasing pressureThe boat strikes are just part of an expanded military campaign that the administration is pursuing in the region, backed by the largest U.S. military deployment in Latin America in decades. The White House has designated more than a dozen Latin American and Caribbean groups as terrorist organizations and has enlisted Guatemala and Ecuador to assist the United States in striking them. Eric Schmitt, who covers national security, said Honduras may be next. He and Maria Abi-Habib reported that the moves were part of a broader strategy: “to normalize an American military presence across Latin America.” Trump also wants boots on the ground in Mexico, which has refused to cooperate. The whole campaign comes in part from Stephen Miller, Trump’s homeland security adviser, Eric said. Miller has a bimonthly meeting, called a “wins” meeting, where government agencies report on recent successes. The Pentagon’s death toll from boat strikes is a regular “win.” The White House, for its part, denied the characterization of the meeting and released a statement to The Times: “The administration continues to work to carry out the president’s agenda.” Supply and demandIs the idea that blowing up boats thousands of miles away from the United States will keep the drugs they’re purportedly carrying out of this country? If so, it’s not working. Cocaine is just as easy to get here as it was before the strikes began, reports my colleague Simon Romero.
“Cocaine remains highly available, highly prevalent and relatively inexpensive,” one professor of public health told him. Epidemiologists and public-health researchers said that if the boat strikes were actually slowing the flow of cocaine into the United States, street prices for the drug would have gone up. That hasn’t happened. They also said there’d be a decline in the drug’s purity, as dealers added fillers to stretch their supply. That hasn’t happened either. “Boat strikes aren’t the answer,” the head of the military’s Southern Command told the Senate Armed Services Committee in March. Cartels are also finding new ways to smuggle drugs. Evidence of that lies in large cocaine shipments recently uncovered by U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Here’s Simon: While large seizures might initially look like a sign that law enforcement is successfully stopping the flow, researchers view seizures as a proxy for tracking the total volume of trafficking. If border agents were to find significantly less cocaine, that could imply less cocaine flowing to the United States. But that isn’t happening. Instead, C.B.P. seized 47,808 pounds of cocaine in the eight months since the strikes began, more than the 43,227 pounds the agency seized in the eight-month period before the campaign, according to official data. “They’re not moving the needle at all,” one researcher said. “Is that worth killing all these people?”
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Roughly one in five lawyers who worked in the government at the end of 2024 were gone by this past March. Some left over policy disagreements. Others lost their jobs in staffing cuts. The lack of lawyers is creating a backlog of cases across government agencies. “There are a lot of things that just can’t get done without lawyers — appearances in court, reviewing of regulations,” one former government attorney said. The government recently started a recruiting network for legal talent. So far, that outreach has drawn the interest of just 300 people.
Marco Rubio has defined and driven his political rise by shape-shifting and reinvention, Manuel Roig-Franzia writes. A.I. trained on human knowledge is a public resource and the wealth it generates should be public wealth, Senator Bernie Sanders writes. Here are columns by Ezra Klein on the best public uses for A.I. and by David French on how polarization fuels conspiracy theories. Morning readers: Save on the complete Times experience. Experience all of The Times, all in one subscription — all with this introductory offer. You’ll gain unlimited access to news and analysis, plus games, recipes, product reviews and more.
Camo chic: The hottest fashions in Kyiv echo military fatigues. Ukrainians say it’s a show of solidarity, not a fad. Slithering specimens: A 101-year-old farmer in Ecuador spent a lifetime catching and preserving snakes. A young scientist helped him turn his collection into a scientific survey of one of Earth’s most diverse snake habitats. Your pick: The most clicked link in The Morning yesterday was an interview with an A.I. actress. Metropolitan Diary: Hamburger helper.
$7,388— That’s how much a woman spent for a business class seat on a 14-hour flight from San Francisco to Beijing. It was meant to recline into a lie-flat position, but the buttons didn’t work. A flight attendant wrenched the seat down but could not bring it back up, so the passenger remained recumbent for almost all the rest of the flight. She complained to the carrier. How much did she get?
French Open: João Fonseca, a 19-year-old Brazilian, is through to the quarterfinals after a win over Norway’s Casper Ruud that included a disputed line call. World Cup: The vibes have been pretty bad for the U.S. men’s national team. But the squad had some sensational moments against Senegal in a tuneup, winning 3-2.
Here’s a classic Mark Bittman recipe: minimalist, easy, packed with flavor. It’s for crispy chickpeas with ground beef, a cousin to chili but more bean-forward. You can riff on it endlessly, using garam masala, say, in place of the cumin, or turmeric, or saffron, and using chopped tofu or ground lamb in place of the beef. Make it the first time Mark’s way. And then make it your own.
Addiction has consequences. For Sam Levinson, the writer, director and creator of “Euphoria,” the finale of show’s third season had to tell that story. It also meant that HBO’s buzzy hit came to an end last night — for good. The story is “a tragic one in the end — but it’s also the truth,” Levinson said in an exclusive interview with Popcast. “If you are experimenting or taking drugs today, it’s very possible it’ll kill you.” More on culture
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