Trump says Venezuelan airspace should be viewed as closed

The White House did not re­spond to ques­tions about what Trump post­ed on his Truth So­cial plat­form, and it was un­clear whether he was an­nounc­ing a new pol­i­cy or sim­ply re­in­forc­ing the mes­sag­ing around his cam­paign against Maduro, which has in­volved mul­ti­ple strikes in the Caribbean Sea and east­ern Pa­cif­ic Ocean on small boats ac­cused of fer­ry­ing drugs as well as a buildup of naval forces in the re­gion. More than 80 peo­ple have been killed in such strikes since ear­ly Sep­tem­ber.

The Re­pub­li­can pres­i­dent ad­dressed his call for an aer­i­al block­ade to “Air­lines, Pi­lots, Drug Deal­ers, and Hu­man Traf­fick­ers,” rather than to Maduro.

In­ter­na­tion­al air­lines last week be­gan to can­cel flights to Venezuela af­ter the Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Ad­min­is­tra­tion told pi­lots to be cau­tious fly­ing around the coun­try be­cause of height­ened mil­i­tary ac­tiv­i­ty.

The FAA’s ju­ris­dic­tion is gen­er­al­ly lim­it­ed to the Unit­ed States and its ter­ri­to­ries. The agency does rou­tine­ly warn pi­lots about the dan­gers of fly­ing over ar­eas with on­go­ing con­flicts or mil­i­tary ac­tiv­i­ty around the globe, as it did ear­li­er this month with Venezuela. The FAA works with oth­er coun­tries and the In­ter­na­tion­al Civ­il Avi­a­tion Or­ga­ni­za­tion on in­ter­na­tion­al is­sues. The FAA and ICAO did not im­me­di­ate­ly re­spond to re­quests for com­ment Sat­ur­day.

Trump’s ad­min­is­tra­tion has sought to ratch­et up pres­sure on Maduro. The US gov­ern­ment does not view Maduro as the le­git­i­mate leader of the oil-rich but in­creas­ing­ly im­pov­er­ished South Amer­i­can na­tion and he faces charges of nar­coter­ror­ism in the US

US forces have con­duct­ed bomber flights near Venezuela and the USS Ger­ald R. Ford, Amer­i­ca’s most ad­vanced air­craft car­ri­er, was sent to the area. The Ford rounds off the largest buildup of US fire­pow­er in the re­gion in gen­er­a­tions. With its ar­rival, the “Op­er­a­tion South­ern Spear” mis­sion in­cludes near­ly a dozen Navy ships and about 12,000 sailors and Marines.

There are bi­par­ti­san calls for greater over­sight of the US mil­i­tary strikes against ves­sels in the re­gion af­ter The Wash­ing­ton Post re­port­ed that De­fense Sec­re­tary Pe­te Hegseth is­sued a ver­bal or­der for all crew mem­bers to be killed as part of the Sept. 2 at­tack on sus­pect­ed drug smug­glers.

Re­pub­li­can Sen. Roger Wick­er of Mis­sis­sip­pi, chair­man of the Sen­ate Armed Ser­vices Com­mit­tee, and its top De­mo­c­rat, Rhode Is­land Sen. Jack Reed, said in a joint state­ment late Fri­day that the com­mit­tee “will be con­duct­ing vig­or­ous over­sight to de­ter­mine the facts re­lat­ed to these cir­cum­stances.”

Trump’s team has weighed both mil­i­tary and non­mil­i­tary op­tions with Venezuela, in­clud­ing covert ac­tion by the CIA.

Trump has pub­licly float­ed the idea of talk­ing to Maduro. The New York Times re­port­ed Fri­day that Trump and Maduro had spo­ken. The White House de­clined to an­swer ques­tions about the con­ver­sa­tion. (AP)