President Trump has caused federal drug prosecutions to plummet as his administration prioritizes kidnapping immigrants off the streets. 

Reuters has reported that the Trump administration is prosecuting people for breaking federal drug laws at the lowest rate in over two decades. 

“We’re seeing a reduced amount of time on long-term investigations so agents can go out in their raid gear and be seen supporting immigration raids,” an anonymous senior Justice Department official told Reuters. 

While drug overdose deaths did drop during the Biden administration, drug trafficking itself hasn’t tailed off at all. In fact, it rose by six percent this year, while the number of people charged with drug trafficking fell by six percent, according to Reuters. Charges for “drug conspiracy” fell by 15 percent, and prosecutions for using illegal guns for drug trafficking fell by five percent.  

This has, in all likelihood, been caused by the Trump administration’s decision to prioritize arresting as many immigrants as possible. “You cannot conduct thorough, multi-agency drug investigations if you’re running around doing this other stuff,” said a former DEA official who oversaw the shift diverting agents to immigration enforcement. 

That, along with decisions like shutting down the Justice Department’s Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force, has made it harder for officials at the Drug Enforcement Agency and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to do their jobs. Instead of investigating cartels, they’re whisked away to assist in immigration raids, even if they have no background or experience in them.

Trump and his Cabinet seem to think that Mexican and South American immigrants are the primary arbiters of drug trafficking. “[President Trump’s] highly successful efforts at closing the border and removing dangerous criminal illegal aliens from our communities, along with prosecuting violent drug traffickers and targeting transnational cartels, means less illegal drugs are circulating in American communities,” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said in response to Reuters’s story.

But the numbers prove that’s simply not the case. It’s been clear from the very start that this administration is more concerned with the appearance of strength and success than actually being strong and successful. Echoing Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s depraved photo ops, ATF and DEA agents have been specifically directed to display their agency badges on their armor so that the White House can post them on social media. 

“A lot of good cases are just going stagnant for some photo-op bullshit,” said a former ATF agent. 

The ATF and DEA did not respond to Reuters’s questions about the priority shift.

Stephen Miller was apparently calling the shots in the Trump administration’s lethal military strikes on Venezuelan boats accused of drug smuggling. The White House deputy chief of staff and homeland security adviser played a principal role in the operations, which were led by his homeland security council, The Guardian reported Monday.

According to three Guardian sources familiar with the matter, Miller’s influence over the strikes “at times” even “superseded” that of Marco Rubio, who is President Trump’s secretary of state and national security adviser. This comes as Miller continues to consolidate power in the homeland security council.

Miller’s role, The Guardian notes, helps account for the shaky legal justification the administration has provided for the attacks: The Trump administration claims the president was using his authority under Article II of the Constitution, based on the notion that the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua is a foreign terrorist organization. This recalls Miller’s repeated assertions that TdA is “running Venezuela” in his argument for deporting Venezuelan immigrants under the Alien Enemies Act.

The revelation about Miller’s role also recalls reports that he mused about bombing unarmed immigrants in boats as an adviser in the first Trump administration.

Miles Taylor, a former Department of Homeland Security official who resigned in Trump’s first term and became a vocal critic of the president, recounted an exchange between Miller and the then-commandant of the Coast Guard—which Miller vehemently denies—in his book Blowback.

Miller, according to Taylor, asked the commandant why the administration couldn’t “use a Predator drone to obliterate” boats “full of migrants” in international waters. The commandant replied that it would violate “international law,” but Miller was interested not in “the moral conflict of drone-bombing migrants,” but “whether anyone could stop America from doing it.” He told the commandant, per Taylor, “I don’t think you understand the limitations of international law.”

The president threatened a bevy of new tariffs against foreign-made products Monday morning, rattling America’s industries for another among countless times.

In a post to Truth Social, Donald Trump announced he intended to impose a 100 percent tariff on films made outside of the country, blaming California Governor Gavin Newsom for what he perceived to be a “stolen” industry.

“Our movie making business has been stolen from the United States of America, by other Countries, just like stealing ‘candy from a baby,’” Trump wrote.

Hollywood did not react positively when Trump first aired the possibility of such a tariff in May. One industry insider told CNN at the time that it would “represent a virtually complete halt of production.”

“But in reality, he has no jurisdiction to do this and it’s too complex to enforce,” the insider said.

In a separate post Monday, Trump claimed he would be helping North Carolina—the so-called........

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