The President has certified Colombia's aerial drug interdiction for another year, and the memorandum goes to the Secretary of War where last year's went to the Secretary of Defense

The document is one page long and most of it is a signature block.

Presidential Determination No. 2026-20, signed at the White House on 3 August and published in Monday's Federal Register, certifies two things about Colombia. That interdiction of aircraft reasonably suspected of illicit drug trafficking in Colombian airspace is necessary because of the extraordinary threat that trafficking poses to Colombia's national security. And that Colombia has appropriate procedures in place to protect against innocent loss of life in the air and on the ground, including effective means to identify and warn an aircraft before force is used against it.

Both sentences appeared last year.

The comparison

Presidential Determination No. 2025-07 was signed on 4 August 2025 and published on 15 August. Set the two texts beside each other and the certifications are the same, word for word, with one comma after the word necessary in the older one and none in the new one.

The certification has run in each of the last eight years. It rests on section 1012 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1995, as amended, and in both years the Secretary of State is authorised and directed to publish it and to notify Congress. Neither document explains what the certification unlocks, and this brief does not guess.

The line that changed

Last year the memorandum was addressed to the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense. This year it is addressed to the Secretary of State and the Secretary of War.

The determination gives no reason and names no reorganisation. The billing code moved too, from 4710-05-P to 4710-10-P.

That is the whole of the difference. On a document whose purpose is to repeat itself annually, the repetition is the point, and the departure from it is the only thing in the file that was not true twelve months ago.

Status

Signed 3 August 2026. Filed 7 August at 11.15 in the morning. Published 10 August.