Trump administration highlights drug cartels as major national security threat but omits climate change

The US intelligence community’s annual threat assessment led with the threat from drug cartels for apparently the first time in the report’s nearly 20-year history, according to Senate Intelligence Chairman Tom Cotton and a CNN review of previous assessments, highlighting a top agenda item for President Donald Trump.

The US intelligence community’s annual threat assessment led with the threat from drug cartels for apparently the first time in the report’s nearly 20-year history, according to Senate Intelligence Chairman Tom Cotton and a CNN review of previous assessments, highlighting a top agenda item for President Donald Trump. The assessment also omitted any reference to the national security implications of climate change, a sharp reversal from previous intelligence assessments, including those under Trump’s first administration. Drug cartels in Mexico and other parts of the Western Hemisphere “endanger the health and safety of millions of Americans and contribute to regional instability,” the intelligence assessment says. Fentanyl and other potent synthetic opioids caused more than 52,000 deaths in the US in the 12 months ending in October 2024, according to the assessment. That’s actually a 33% decrease from the year prior and may be attributed to the increased availability of the overdose-countering medicine naloxone, the document says. The decline in drug deaths doesn’t appear to have made the cartels less potent. “Mexico-based [transnational criminal organizations] are ramping up lethal attacks in Mexico against rivals and Mexican security forces using IEDs, including landmines, mortars, and grenades,” the intelligence assessment says. In the first weeks of Trump’s return to the White House, the US military significantly increased its surveillance of Mexican drug cartels, with sophisticated spy planes flying at least 18 missions over the southwestern US and in international airspace around the Baja peninsula, CNN previously reported.