By Matthew Olay

During a media interview at the Pentagon that spanned a handful of topics yesterday, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said plans to declare Venezuela’s state-embedded criminal network Cartel de los Soles a terrorist organization will bring “a whole bunch of new options” to how the U.S. deals with narco-terrorists in that region.

The cartel, whose name translates to “Cartel of the Suns” and is alleged to be headed by Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, is set to be designated as a terror organization by the State Department Nov. 24.

If the designation goes through, Cartel of the Suns will be the ninth such criminal network designated as a foreign terrorist organization by the Trump administration’s Executive Order 14157 since February.

“[The terror designation] gives more

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