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What to know about Trump’s strikes on alleged drug boats

admin - Latest News - October 30, 2025
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President Trump claims that recent military strikes on alleged drug smuggling boats have each saved at least 25,000 American lives. NBC News’ Dan De Luce explains what we know about the impact of the strikes.



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Oct. 30, 2025, 5:23 PM EDTBy Natasha KoreckiCHICAGO — Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Thursday flatly rejected a request by Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker to suspend immigration enforcements in the Chicago area until after Halloween.Pritzker cited children’s safety and an incident from Saturday in which Customs and Border Protection agents deployed tear gas in a neighborhood where kids were preparing for a Halloween parade.In turning down the request, Noem also cited children’s safety.“We’re absolutely not willing to put on pause any work that we will do to keep communities safe,” Noem said at a news conference in Gary, Indiana, on Thursday. “The fact that Gov. Pritzker is asking for that is shameful and, I think, unfortunate that he doesn’t recognize how important the work is that we do to make sure we’re bringing criminals to justice and getting them off our streets, especially when we’re going to send all of our kiddos out on the streets and going to events and enjoying the holiday season.”Noem made the comments amid a firestorm of controversy in the Chicago area, as a spasm of immigration enforcement operations devolved into chaotic confrontations with residents and activists in which immigration officers deployed chemical agents. In a widely reported event over the weekend, they used tear gas in the Old Irving Park neighborhood, just as kids and families were gathering for a Halloween parade. Pritzker appeared to reference the incident in his letter to Noem.“I am respectfully requesting you suspend enforcement operations from Friday, October 31 to Sunday, November 2 in and around homes, schools, hospitals, parks, houses of worship, and other community gatherings where Halloween celebrations are taking place. Illinois families deserve to spend Halloween weekend without fear,” Pritzker wrote in a letter sent to Noem. “No child should be forced to inhale tear gas or other chemical agents while trick or treating in their own neighborhood.” A federal judge earlier this week cited the incident in Old Irving Park as she admonished Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino that his agents must abide by a court order dictating that chemical agents were not to be used without warnings in public settings where they are not under imminent threat. Residents say immigration agents contending with neighbors upset over their activity used aggressive tactics including deploying tear gas — which the judge pointed to as the kind of activity she sought to curb in residential areas.A Border Patrol agent walks through a cloud of tear gas in Chicago on Oct. 14.Terrence Antonio James / Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service via Getty ImagesGovernment attorneys said they didn’t want to hamstring agents who had to contend with sometimes threatening crowds. Noem said Thursday that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have increasingly been threatened. “What we’ve seen in attacks on ICE officers is unacceptable,” Noem said. “I’ll remind you, every single ICE officer has someone who loves them.” Before the end of Tuesday’s hearing, the judge pleaded with the government to tamp down activities over Halloween. “The last thing that I will say is Halloween is on Friday. I do not, do not want to get violation reports from [attorneys] that show that agents are out and about on Halloween where kids are present and tear gas is being deployed or pepper balls are being deployed,” U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis told Bovino on Tuesday. “I expect everybody to act reasonably. You know that it is a day when people are going to be out minding their own business.”In court filings Monday, lawyers submitted affidavits from residents of the Old Irving Park neighborhood, who described getting out of the shower, still being in pajamas or getting their kids ready for a Halloween day parade when they heard loud noises.One Old Irving Park resident, Brian Kolp, told NBC News he was drinking coffee in his house when he noticed fast movement outside. Agents were arresting an immigrant who had been doing contract work in the area, on his front lawn, he said. Kolp, an attorney who previously worked as a state’s attorney, ran outside in his pajama pants and said while neighbors were upset and shouting at agents, they did not impede or threaten them. At one point, he saw an agent with “some sort of munition in his hand.”“Are you seriously about to throw that in the middle of the neighborhood?” Kolp said he told the agent. He then queried the agent on why he wasn’t wearing a body camera, he said. The agent then walked away, according to Kolp, but at the other end of the street, a chemical agent was deployed. “There was nothing to justify any of their use of force. At no point did they give a verbal or audible warning,” he said.As for Old Irving Park on Halloween, longtime resident Anna Zolkowski said it will be the first time she doesn’t hand out candy in more than 30 years. The neighborhood, which boasts of larger lots, older trees and front yards that transform with elaborate Halloween decor, draws trick-or-treaters from surrounding areas. One recent year, it logged 1,300 trick-or-treaters. “I’m too shaken,” she said, after witnessing Saturday’s confrontation with immigration agents. Instead, she’ll be on the corners with a whistle to warn of any immigration activity should it transpire. She donated her candy money to a legal defense fund for immigrants and said other residents also signed up to watch for immigration activity on Halloween. “We’re not going to let this ruin a traditional Chicago Halloween, where children and their families can feel safe and have fun,” she said. Natasha KoreckiNatasha Korecki is a senior national political reporter for NBC News.
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Sept. 28, 2025, 5:00 AM EDTBy Berkeley Lovelace Jr.Last winter, Brian Noonan read online that some doctors were prescribing an obscure drug, typically given to cancer patients, for autism. Curious, he looked into it for his son Benjamin, who had just been diagnosed with autism in October.“We jumped on it,” Noonan said. “It felt right and it made sense.”The medication was leucovorin, also called folinic acid. It’s a synthetic form of vitamin B9 or folate, which the body needs to make healthy blood cells. During pregnancy, folate is important to reduce the risk of birth defects.Last Monday, the drug was thrust into the national spotlight by President Donald Trump in a rambling press conference about autism that mainly focused on the president and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy’s claim that taking acetaminophen during pregnancy could cause autism. Trump briefly mentioned that an “existing drug” — referring to leucovorin — may help with certain symptoms of autism. For those in the autism community, leucovorin is not new. Dr. Richard Frye, a behavioral child neurologist in Phoenix has studied leucovorin and autism for two decades. He made clear that it is not a cure for autism and that more research is needed. He does, however, prescribe it to some people with autism.Noonan’s son Benjamin, who is 4 years old, is one of Frye’s patients. “He’s higher functioning,” Noonan said. “He’s verbal, but he really struggled to put together sentences.” Since starting on the medicine, the family believes Benjamin’s speech has improved, though he still has difficulties with hyperactivity and impulsiveness.Still, Noonan added, he’s under no impression that the drug is a miracle pill. Benjamin also attends a behavioral program preparing him for kindergarten, Noonan said, and he plans to enroll him in speech and occupational therapy. “We very, very much understand we’re still taking an experimental medication,” he said. The Noonan family. Benjamin, 4, who has autism, has used leucovorin.Courtesy of Brian NoonanOther families say the drug conferred larger benefits.Ben Blomgren, of Minneapolis, said his 11-year-old son, Josh, had been prescribed leucovorin off-label in February after he was at risk of being kicked out of school, even as they tried behavioral modification methods.“He’s pretty severe,” Blomgren said. “He didn’t have any language skills. He was not toilet trained.” After starting the medication, Blomgren said Josh’s sleep improved, he’s fully toilet trained and he’s stopped running away from them. “It wasn’t overnight, but we saw major improvement,” he said. Yomarie Miranda, of Florida, said she saw improvements in her 7-year-old son Ethan after he started the medication, including following instructions in class.Ethan was prescribed the medication off label earlier this month, she said.“He’s now looking at me when I speak with him. He’s talking more than before with complete sentences,” she said.A highly unusual moveThe Food and Drug Administration first approved leucovorin in the 1980s to help reduce the toxic side effects of certain chemotherapy drugs.In the decades since, researchers have also studied whether it might treat cerebral folate deficiency (CFD), a neurological condition that makes it harder for folate to reach the brain. Some children with autism also have cerebral folate deficiency, which neurologists say can affect speech, mood and behavior. Last Monday, the FDA said it planned to update the drug’s label to include that use.But the agency’s decision, experts say, rests on just a handful of small studies. And despite Trump’s endorsement, the maker of the brand-name version, GSK, has yet to submit an application to the agency to change the label. In a statement, GSK said it will be submitting the request to expand the approval to include cerebral folate deficiency, though the statement does not mention autism. (Because leucovorin is already an FDA-approved drug, doctors have been able to prescribe it “off label” for other uses, though insurance may not cover it.) It’s a highly unusual move for the FDA: pushing a drug for chemotherapy side effects as a therapy for autism without a formal submission and limited evidence.“It’s incredibly irresponsible,” said Dr. Aaron Kesselheim, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. “For 60-plus years, we’ve counted on the FDA to help patients distinguish between products that work and products that don’t work. And here we saw the FDA making an announcement relying on a summary of unclear data and announcing that they had already decided to approve it.”Alycia Halladay, chief science officer at the nonprofit Autism Science Foundation, was frustrated by the implication that this is a breakthrough in autism research.“It’s not like scientists have just been staring at their belly buttons for 20 years, not looking at autism treatments,” Halladay said in an interview earlier this week. “They have, but the standards have been very high to get [treatments] approved.”Andrew Nixon, a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the FDA, said in a statement: “Analysis across 23 publications from 2009-2024 demonstrated the effectiveness for CFD. Overall, 85% of patients experienced some type of clinical benefit including improved speech/communication capabilities.” Nixon’s statement did not mention autism, and he did not respond to follow-up questions.David Mandell, a psychiatry professor at the University of Pennsylvania, said HHS’ claim that 85% of patients experienced a benefit is a “quite a conceptual leap” because it assumes people with cerebral folate deficiency also have autism.Cerebral folate deficiency “is an extremely rare event, and it is accompanied by symptoms of epilepsy, really severe neurodevelopmental problems and some of those symptoms can look like autism, but it’s not,” he said.“I could not think of a single FDA approval that has such weak evidence in the past 20 years,” Mandell added.Frye, the Phoenix neurologist, estimates up to three-quarters of autistic children have antibodies linked to cerebral folate deficiency, based on his research. Other estimates are much lower: Alycia Halladay, chief science officer at the nonprofit Autism Science Foundation, put the rates at roughly 10% to 30%.The studies on leucovorin are small but look interesting, said Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a former FDA commissioner.“It certainly merits follow up,” Gottlieb said.One of the studies was conducted by Frye: a placebo-controlled trial of more than 40 children with the antibodies, published in Molecular Psychiatry in 2018. It found around two-thirds of kids who got the drug saw improvements in verbal communication after 12 weeks. Others saw no changes. The children all had language impairments, as well as a common type of autism that’s not linked to other neurological diseases.Mandell, however, said the results shouldn’t be taken as evidence.“They claim that in certain subgroups of kids in their already small sample, they find these very large effects,” he said, adding that larger-scale trials that establish clear outcomes ahead of time are needed to verify the results. Kesselheim said it’s important for patients to have access to medications that could have a benefit, especially when there is an unmet medical need. But, he said, there are still a number of unanswered questions.“There is no accurate testing for this,” he said. “What are low folate levels? What are normal folate levels? All of that stuff should be worked out.”Frye said he currently uses two methods to assess whether a child has a folate deficiency: a spinal tap — also known as a lumbar puncture — which involves inserting a needle into the lower back to collect fluid from the spinal cord, and a folate receptor antibody test originally developed for pregnant women that isn’t approved by the FDA for diagnosing folate deficiency in children. Edward Quadros, a research professor at SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University who has worked with Frye studying leucovorin for autism, said parents are already trying the drug, including supplement versions, which aren’t regulated and can be dangerous.“By making the FDA approve it, and reputable pharmaceutical companies manufacturing it and selling it, at least it gives you quality dosing,” Quadros said.Berkeley Lovelace Jr.Berkeley Lovelace Jr. is a health and medical reporter for NBC News. He covers the Food and Drug Administration, with a special focus on Covid vaccines, prescription drug pricing and health care. He previously covered the biotech and pharmaceutical industry with CNBC.Aria Bendix contributed.
October 30, 2025
Oct. 29, 2025, 5:41 PM EDTBy Katherine DoyleGYEONGJU, South Korea — President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping will meet in Busan, South Korea, on Thursday morning, looking to cool an increasingly heated relationship.The two sides are expected to discuss moves on tariffs, combating fentanyl and access to rare-earth minerals, while leaving bigger targets for later. The meeting is set to begin at 11 a.m. local time (10 p.m. Wednesday ET).With a Nov. 10 deadline to reach a tariff deal approaching, what began as Trump’s crackdown on the flow of fentanyl into the U.S. has broadened into a longer list of trade and security issues.The working expectation is that Trump and Xi will agree on a pause in the fight rather than finalizing a sweeping deal, a person familiar with the meeting planning said. Beijing could ease export curbs on strategically crucial rare earths, Washington could hold off on broad tariff hikes, and both sides could reach for gestures, such as expanded purchases of U.S. farm goods by China.Xi is also weighing steps on fentanyl chemicals, likely focused on choking off money-laundering networks tied to gangs, this person said. A rollout of a larger agreement could be staged around Trump’s planned visit to China next year.Trump has sounded upbeat about the prospect of reaching agreements. “I think we’re going to do well with China,” he said this week. “We meet, as you know, in South Korea with President Xi … and they want to make a deal. We want to make a deal.”He added that he and Xi have agreed to meet again in China and in the United States, “in either Washington or at Mar-a-Lago.”Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told NBC News this week that meeting is likely to come before Xi’s trip to the U.S. for the G20 at Trump’s Doral property in Florida next fall. Trump is likely to visit Xi in Beijing early next year, just ahead of the Lunar New Year, Bessent said.The president has said he expects to lower tariffs on China that he imposed over its role in the illicit international flow of fentanyl components. And he hopes to finalize a deal on TikTok that would allow the social media app to continue operating in the U.S. despite a law, passed before he took office, which had been poised to ban it.On Wednesday, Trump was overheard telling leaders at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum that he expects the meeting with Xi to last three to four hours. Both Trump and his Chinese counterpart want the optics and tactical aspect of this meeting to go well, the person familiar with the meeting planning said.Dan Caldwell, a former senior adviser to U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, said Trump deserves credit for pursuing a pragmatic China policy that maintains what he said was strategic ambiguity while taking steps to restore important military capabilities to deter Chinese aggression.“A lot of folks wanted to assume that he was going to be reflexively hawkish on China,” Caldwell said of Trump. “That hasn’t been the case.”But Caldwell cautioned against expecting a breakthrough in Busan. “I don’t think the overall push hinges on one meeting,” Caldwell said. “Ideally, these go well, but the whole thing does not hinge on just one set of talks.”In other words, the goal is to make enough progress to get to the next date between the leaders of the world’s two biggest economies.Miles Yu, a former State Department adviser on China, said the U.S. and Beijing are “sizing each other out” with trade now a key battleground issue. Washington is pushing for concrete steps on fentanyl, market access and more, he said, while China “stonewalls and foot-drags” and offers only broad “frameworks.”“This is the root cause of the five rounds of futile negotiations so far with China without a breakthrough,” Yu said, adding that the administration is trying to shift China’s approach by rallying its neighbors, a strategy that he said “may or may not work.”After talks with Chinese counterparts in Malaysia last weekend, Bessent said negotiators had shaped a framework for the two leaders to consider that spanned tariffs, trade, fentanyl, rare earths and “substantial” purchases of U.S. agricultural products such as soybeans. He credited Trump’s threat of an additional 100% tariff with creating leverage and said he believes that the framework would avoid that outcome and open space for tackling other issues.Trump’s meeting with Xi in Busan marks the end of a three-country Asia swing, during which he signed agreements with Malaysia, Cambodia, Thailand, Japan and South Korea; made new foreign investment announcements; and proclaimed that tariff leverage can drive warring parties to stand down. Reflecting on his approach, Trump said going against the grain can sometimes deliver results.“Oftentimes you’ll go the opposite way of almost everybody, and you’ll be the one that’s right, and the others will be the one that’s wrong,” he said, offering a peek into his thinking. “That’s where you have your greatest successes.”Still, Trump is continuing a long-standing practice of meeting with allies before Beijing, which former Assistant Secretary of State Dave Stilwell said indicates that the U.S. is not going to trade its alliance commitments for a deal with China.Some of the most sensitive terrain in the discussions involves critical minerals, said Stilwell, who also underscored the political guardrails around concerns for the Beijing-claimed island of Taiwan: “Acknowledge the words, but look at the actions,” he said, citing Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s recent comments that the U.S. isn’t trading away Taiwan’s sovereignty for better deal terms.Some of Trump’s aides are worried that the president could shift the U.S. position on independence for Taiwan, walking away from long-standing U.S. policy, and have advised him against it, NBC News reported this week.Trump seemed to downplay any discussions, saying, “I don’t know that we’ll even speak about Taiwan.” Xi “may want to ask about it,” Trump said. “There’s not that much to ask about. Taiwan is Taiwan.”Analysts in the region, too, see limited room for a sweeping agreement this week. It’s unlikely that Trump and Xi will reach a comprehensive deal that settles the long-term structural differences between the U.S. and China, said Zeng Jinghan, a professor of international relations at the City University of Hong Kong. “But some sort of consensus and agreements are very possible,” said Zeng, given that both sides want “a little bit of de-escalation.”The hope, Zeng added, is for “less aggressive” rhetoric, with both Beijing and Washington likely to come back and declare the meeting a success.After the meeting, Trump plans to board Air Force One and return to the U.S. He has appeared to relish the receptions from foreign leaders on this quick trip across Asia. In Tokyo, he stood alongside Japan’s new prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, accepting a gift of cherry blossom trees and a putter that belonged to his late friend and former Japanese leader Shinzo Abe, and in Seoul received from South Korean President Lee Jae Myung a large gold crown, a replica from the Silla period.In one snapshot, Trump and Lee were pictured in a gift shop at the Gyeongju National Museum, where items on display included a red “USA” hat, Trump-branded sneakers and a shirt bearing the president’s mugshot.Trump praised the welcome he received in “vibrant” Malaysia, where Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim compared their experiences with their countries’ legal systems, saying, “I was in prison, but you almost got there.”Katherine DoyleKatherine Doyle is a White House reporter for NBC News. Carol E. Lee, Peter Guo and Peter Alexander contributed.
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