Good morning. The government is creaking back to life. But before we get to the news, I’d like to take us to Santa Marta, Colombia, a port city on the Caribbean, to meet the family of a fisherman who Colombia says was killed in a U.S. military strike.
Boat strikesThe United States military has killed at least 80 people on boats in the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean since early September. Officials said the 20 strikes by the Navy had targeted boats smuggling drugs, but the government hasn’t provided any evidence. (We’re tracking the strikes here.) Simon Romero, a longtime correspondent for The Times in Latin America, traveled to Colombia to see what he could learn. Alejandro Carranza, 42, had been a fisherman in Santa Marta for a long time, his family said. He had an easygoing personality and enjoyed drinking beer and playing pool. Was he also a drug smuggler? Colombia’s president said at a news conference last month that Carranza “may have been involved very intermittently” with drugs, adding that many fishermen along the country’s coast dip into the drug trade because their poverty leaves them few alternatives. But Katerine Hernández, who is the mother of three of Carranza’s children, told Simon that he had never smuggled drugs. “If he was some kind of narcoterrorist,” she asked, “then why are we living in misery instead of a mansion?” The U.S. claim
Experts on the use of lethal force say the strikes are illegal, partly because the intentions of targets like Carranza have not been proved. International law says the military cannot kill civilians unless they pose an imminent threat of violence — even if they appear to be engaged in criminal activity. The Trump administration, for its part, told Congress that the president had “determined” that the U.S. was in an armed conflict with drug cartels in Venezuela and elsewhere in the region, making the boat crews “combatants”: fair game for extrajudicial killing. (Last night, The Times reported on the secret legal memo that justifies the strikes by relying on the president’s assertions about cartels.) “The president is going to defend the national interest and national security of the United States, which is under threat by these terrorist organizations,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said yesterday. The strikes, along with a huge U.S. military buildup in the region, have ignited a diplomatic feud between the United States and Colombia. Gustavo Petro, Colombia’s president, called the strikes “murder” and stopped sharing intelligence with the United States. President Trump retaliated by branding Petro an “illegal drug leader” and placing him on a sanctions list generally reserved for drug criminals. A human toll
Carranza’s death has left his family shattered, Simon told me. “I was taken aback at how vulnerable they are,” he wrote. “These are people who already had very little prior to what happened, and now they are deprived of their breadwinner.” The children have been particularly affected. One was shown the video of the attack by another child. Carranza’s 14-year-old daughter, Cheila, held back tears, Simon wrote, “as she gazed at a photo of him on her phone in her grandmother’s crowded home, where she lives in one room with her mother and two siblings.” Simon told me that fear grips the family now, that it envelops the whole community. Some family members were hesitant to speak to him at all, he wrote, frightened of reprisal from parts unknown: the U.S. military, maybe, or local organized crime groups. Leonardo Vega, a friend of Carranza’s who leads a local fisherman’s association, told Simon that was true of his colleagues as well. It is tuna season now, a lucrative one. But many fishermen in Santa Marta are staying home. They’re scared they’ll be seen as drug traffickers and killed, far out to sea, in a ball of flame. Federico Rios, who went to Santa Marta with Simon, captured evocative images from Colombia. See them and read more of Simon’s story here. Now, let’s get you caught up.
Government Shutdown
Epstein Files
More on Politics
Higher Education
International
Other Big Stories
Penn Station in Manhattan is America’s busiest transit hub. It’s also a dank basement under a basketball arena, filled with grimy passageways and gloomy passengers awaiting chronically delayed trains. Why does such a prominent gateway into one of the world’s great metropolises remain so miserable? It is, the longtime transit reporter Patrick McGeehan writes, “a stagnant symbol of something deeper in America, a condition that afflicts so many attempts to get big things done: inertia.” Patrick’s new story explains how the station became this way — and the larger forces that are preventing it from getting better. Read it here.
The Constitution gave Congress, not Trump, the authority to tax and spend. If Congress refuses to assert itself, it’s up to the courts to face Trump instead, the editorial board writes. Legalized gambling has not ruined sports. It has brought accountability and standards to the betting markets, Chris Christie, former governor of New Jersey, writes. The Times Sale: Our best rate for readers of The Morning. Save now with our best offer on unlimited news and analysis as part of the complete Times experience: $1/week for your first year.
Underdogs: The Faroe Islands, population 55,000, have a sliver of a chance to make next year’s World Cup. The team includes carpenters, electricians and a car salesman. Classroom devices: How much screen time is your child getting at school? We asked 350 teachers. Modern Love: Despite her children’s worries, a senior widow found true love in assisted living. Cool head: William Rataczak, the co-pilot of a passenger jet that was hijacked in 1971 by the man known as D.B. Cooper, has died at 86. Cooper sipped bourbon before parachuting into the night with $200,000 in ransom money and disappearing forever.
220 feet— That’s at least how far the base camp of Mount Everest has sunk since the 1980s. It sits on a melting glacier.
M.L.B.: The Dodgers’ Shohei Ohtani unanimously won his fourth M.V.P. award, for the National League, and the Yankees’ Aaron Judge won his third M.V.P. award, for the American League. N.F.L.: Charlotte Jones, co-owner of the Cowboys, defended Bad Bunny being selected for the Super Bowl halftime show, saying, “Our whole society is based on immigrants that have come here and have founded our country, and I think we can celebrate that.” Motorsports: The drag racer John Force, a 16-time champion, retired after a record-breaking career. At 76 years old, Force hadn’t raced in 17 months after surviving an engine explosion at the National Hot Rod Association Virginia Nationals in June 2024.
If you see fresh, wild-caught shrimp at the market, pounce, then make this terrific new recipe for |
