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Hegseth and Rubio to brief members of Congress on boat strikes as questions mount – live

Hegseth and Rubio to brief members of Congress on boat strikes as questions mount

Good morning and welcome to the US politics live blog.

This morning we start with the news that president Donald Trump’s top Cabinet officials on national security, Pete Hegseth and Marco Rubio, are due on Capitol Hill to brief members of Congress amid investigations into US military vessel strikes in the Caribbean.

The briefing from the defense secretary and secretary of state comes as questions mount over the escalation of military force and deadly boat strikes in international waters near Venezuela. The Associated Press notes that lawmakers have been examining the 2 September attack as they sift through the rationale for a broader US military buildup in the region that increasingly appears pointed at Venezuela.

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Starmer says Trump legal action is a matter for the BBC

Across the pond today, Keir Starmer’s office has said that any legal action against the BBC was a matter for the broadcaster but the UK government supported its independence.

It comes after Donald Trump finally filed his lawsuit demanding damages worth up to to $10bn for the way a BBC Panorama documentary – which aired over a year ago – edited a speech he gave to supporters on 6 January 2021 before they attacked the US Capitol.

“Any legal action is a matter for the BBC itself. They’ve made clear they believe there’s no case around the broader point of defamation or libel, but that’s for them and their legal teams to engage with,” a spokesperson for the UK prime minister told reporters.

“We will always defend the principle of a strong, independent BBC as a trusted, relied-upon national broadcaster, reporting without fear or favour. But as we’ve also consistently said, it’s vitally important that they act to maintain trust, correcting mistakes quickly when they occur.”

My colleague Andrew Sparrow notes on our UK politics live blog: “Starmer has, up to now, done his best to avoid getting embroiled in this row, arguing that the BBC is operationally independent and that this is a matter for the corporation and the president to settle themselves. Although there were suggestions at one point that he and Trump would speak about the dispute, that does not seem to have happened. However, he may find it hard to remain uninvolved as this goes on. The lawsuit has been filed as there is evidence in other areas – trade policy, for example – that US-UK relations are no longer quite as warm as they were at the time of the state visit.”

On Monday night the US military said it launched a fresh round of deadly strikes on foreign vessels suspected of trafficking narcotics, killing eight people.

The US Southern Command posted footage of the strikes on social media on Monday, announcing it had hit three vessels in international waters.

“Intelligence confirmed that the vessels were transiting along known narco-trafficking routes in the Eastern Pacific and were engaged in narco-trafficking,” US Southern Command said in a post on X.

The black-and-white footage showed the vessels moving through the water before being consumed by large explosions.

This combination screen grabs from a video posted by US Southern Command X account shows what the US military says are lethal strikes on three separate alleged narco-trafficking vessels as they get hit in the eastern Pacific Ocean.

The closed-door congressional briefings with Marco Rubio and Pete Hegseth come as the US is building up warships, flying fighter jets near Venezuelan airspace and seizing an oil tanker as part of its campaign against Nicolás Maduro, who has insisted the real purpose of the US military operations is to force him from office.

A reminder that the Trump administration has not sought any authorization from Congress for action against Venezuela. But lawmakers objecting to the military incursions are pushing war powers resolutions toward potential voting this week.

The administration’s exclusion of Congress has led to problematic military actions, experts told the Associated Press, particularly the strike that killed two people who had climbed on top of part of a boat that had been damaged in an initial attack.

Congress has received little information about why or how the US military was conducting a campaign that has destroyed more than 20 boats and killed at least 95 people.