The most advanced US aircraft carrier has travelled to the Caribbean Sea in what has been interpreted as a show of military power and a possible threat to Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro regime.

The USS Gerald R Ford and other warships arrived in the area with a new influx of troops and weaponry on Sunday.

It is the latest step in a military build-up that the Donald Trump administration claims is aimed at preventing criminal cartels from smuggling drugs to America.

Since early September, US strikes have killed at least 80 people in 20 attacks on small boats accused of transporting narcotics in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific Ocean.

Mr Trump has indicated that military action would expand beyond strikes by sea, saying the US would “stop the drugs coming in by land”.

The US government has released no evidence to support its assertions that those killed in the boats were “narcoterrorists”, however.

The arrival of the USS Gerald R Ford now rounds off the largest increase in 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.

Rear Admiral Paul Lanzilotta, who commands the strike group, said it will bolster an already large force of American warships to “protect our nation’s security and prosperity against narco-terrorism in the Western Hemisphere”.

Admiral Alvin Holsey, the US commander who oversees the Caribbean and Latin America, said in a statement that the American forces “stand ready to combat the transnational threats that seek to destabilise our region”.

Government officials in Trinidad and Tobago have announced that they have already begun “training exercises” with the US military that are due to run over the next week.

The island is just seven miles from Venezuela at its closest point.

The country’s minister of foreign affairs, Sean Sobers, said the exercises were aimed at tackling violent crime in Trinidad and Tobago, which is frequently used by drug traffickers as a stopover on their journey to Europe or North America.

Venezuela’s government has described the training exercises as an act of aggression.

They had no immediate comment on Sunday regarding the arrival of the USS Gerald R Ford.

The US has long used aircraft carriers to pressure and deter aggression by other nations because its warplanes can strike targets deep inside another country.

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Some experts say the Ford is ill-suited to fighting cartels, but it could be an effective instrument of intimidation to push Mr Maduro, who faces charges of narcoterrorism in the US, to step down.

Mr Maduro has said the US government is “fabricating” a war against him.

The US president has justified the attacks on drug boats by saying the country is in “armed conflict” with drug cartels, while claiming the boats are operated by foreign terrorist organisations.

US politicians have pressed Mr Trump for more information on who is being targeted and the legal justification for the boat strikes.

Elizabeth Dickinson, the International Crisis Group’s senior analyst for the Andes region, said: “This is the anchor of what it means to have US military power once again in Latin America.

“And it has raised a lot of anxieties in Venezuela but also throughout the region. I think everyone is watching this with sort of bated breath to see just how willing the US is to really use military force.”

Donald Trump has urged Republicans to vote for the release of files related to Jeffrey Epstein – a reversal of his previous opposition to the move.

The president said on Truth Social that politicians from his own party should back the move.

“We have nothing to hide, and it’s time to move on from this Democrat Hoax perpetrated by Radical Left Lunatics in order to deflect from the Great Success of the Republican Party…” Mr Trump wrote.

Thousands of Epstein’s documents were released by a committee last week – and a few mentioned Mr Trump.

One email described Mr Trump as “that dog that hasn’t barked” and that “Virginia spent hours at my house with him”.

The White House said the emails were selectively leaked to “create a fake narrative to smear President Trump”.

The president has always denied any wrongdoing and said he fell out with the disgraced financier way before his crimes against underage girls came to light.

However, pressure to release all government documents about Epstein – who killed himself in 2019 – has increased amid persistent rumours of a cover-up.

A growing number of Republican lawmakers and loyal Trump supporters also want the documents made public.

Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, a staunch MAGA loyalist, backed the petition that proposed holding the vote and provoked a vicious backlash from the president – who labelled her a “traitor” and a “ranting lunatic”.

The bill would force the Justice Department to release all files and communications on Epstein, as well as any information about his death in prison – another persistent topic among conspiracy theorists.

Information about victims or ongoing federal investigations would be redacted.

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Democratic representative Ro Khanna – an original sponsor of the petition – said on Sunday he expected 40 Republicans to support the move.

However, Republican Thomas Massie told US media “100 or more” of his colleagues could vote for the bill.

The Republicans currently have 219 seats in the House of Representatives against 214 for the Democrats, suggesting it will pass. However, its fate in the Senate is unclear.

The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, struck a similar tone to the president as he sought to play down the vote.

He told Fox News on Sunday: “We’ll just get this done and move it on. There’s nothing to hide.”

Donald Trump has said he will sue the BBC for between $1bn and $5bn over the editing of his speech on Panorama.

The US president confirmed he would be taking legal action against the broadcaster while on Air Force One overnight on Saturday.

“We’ll sue them. We’ll sue them for anywhere between a billion (£792m) and five billion dollars (£3.79bn), probably sometime next week,” he told reporters.

“We have to do it, they’ve even admitted that they cheated. Not that they couldn’t have not done that. They cheated. They changed the words coming out of my mouth.”

Mr Trump then told reporters he would discuss the matter with Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer over the weekend, and claimed “the people of the UK are very angry about what happened… because it shows the BBC is fake news”.

Separately, Mr Trump told GB News: “I’m not looking to get into lawsuits, but I think I have an obligation to do it.

“This was so egregious. If you don’t do it, you don’t stop it from happening again with other people.”

The Daily Telegraph reported earlier this month that an internal memo raised concerns about the BBC’s editing of a speech made by Mr Trump on 6 January 2021, just before a mob rioted at the US Capitol building, on the news programme.

The concerns regard clips spliced together from sections of the president’s speech to make it appear he told supporters he was going to walk to the US Capitol with them to “fight like hell” in the documentary Trump: A Second Chance?, which was broadcast by the BBC the week before last year’s US election.

Following a backlash, both BBC director-general Tim Davie and BBC News chief executive Deborah Turness resigned from their roles.

‘No basis for defamation claim’

On Thursday, the broadcaster officially apologised to the president and added that it was an “error of judgement” and the programme will “not be broadcast again in this form on any BBC platforms”.

A spokesperson said that “the BBC sincerely regrets the manner in which the video clip was edited,” but they also added that “we strongly disagree there is a basis for a defamation claim”.

Earlier this week, Mr Trump’s lawyers threatened to sue the BBC for $1bn unless it apologised, retracted the clip, and compensated him.

Legal challenges

But legal experts have said that Mr Trump would face challenges taking the case to court in the UK or the US.

The deadline to bring the case to UK courts, where defamation damages rarely exceed £100,000 ($132,000), has already expired because the documentary aired in October 2024, which is more than one year.

Also because the documentary was not shown in the US, it would be hard to show that Americans thought less of the president because of a programme they could not watch.

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Newsnight allegations

The BBC has said it was looking into fresh allegations, published in The Telegraph, that its Newsnight show also selectively edited footage of the same speech in a report broadcast in June 2022.

A BBC spokesperson said: “The BBC holds itself to the highest editorial standards. This matter has been brought to our attention and we are now looking into it.”