WASHINGTON, CMC – United States Senators Tim Kaine and Adam Schiff on Friday introduced a War Powers Act resolution that would block the use of US Armed Forces to engage in hostilities against specific non-state organizations following multiple unauthorized military strikes on unverified alleged drug trafficking operations in the Southern Caribbean Sea.
“President Trump has no legal authority to launch strikes or use military force in the Caribbean or elsewhere in the Western Hemisphere,” said Kaine, Democrat of Virginia, stating that the Trump administration has refused to provide the US Congress with basic information about the multiple strikes it has carried out, including who was killed, why it was necessary to put servicemembers’ lives at risk, and why a standard interdiction operation wasn’t conducted.
“Congress simply cannot let itself be stiff-armed as this administration continues to flout the law,” Paine added. “That’s why we’re introducing this legislation to require a debate and vote on whether the US should be conducting these strikes without congressional approval.”
Schiff, a Democrat from California, said the US Congress alone holds the power to declare war.
“And while we share with the executive branch the imperative of preventing and deterring drugs from reaching our shores, blowing up boats without any legal justification risks dragging the United States into another war and provoking unjustified hostilities against our own citizens,” he said.
“Congress must be fully briefed on these operations and, if the administration believes there is a case to make for a war authorization, it should make it,” Schiff added. “But this unauthorized and illegal use of our military must stop.”
Paine and Schiff said war powers resolutions are privileged, meaning that “the Senate will be required to consider and vote upon the resolution promptly.”
The resolution reaffirms that trafficking of illegal drugs does not itself constitute an armed attack or threat of an imminent armed attack that would justify military action, and that the designation of an entity as a foreign terrorist organization does not provide any legal authority to the US President to use military force.
The resolution also emphasizes the importance of Congress retaining its power to declare war, as President Trump has stated that “it is not possible at this time to know the full scope and duration of military operations that will be necessary.”
The resolution reiterates the lawmakers’ commitment to providing the Executive Branch the resources necessary to prevent and mitigate drug and narcotics trafficking into the United States.
The Ranking Member of the US Senate Armed Services Committee, Jack Reed (D-RI), on Monday, Sept. 15, strongly condemned the US military strikes in the Caribbean as Trump disclosed that he had ordered a second strike this month on a boat allegedly carrying drugs from Venezuela, killing three on board.
“President Trump’s actions are an outrageous violation of the law and a dangerous assault on our Constitution,” said Reed, who is also a senior member of the Senate’s Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee. “No president can secretly wage war or carry out unjustified killings – that is authoritarianism, not democracy.
“These reckless, unauthorized operations not only put American lives at risk, they threaten to ignite a war with Venezuela that would drag our nation into a conflict we did not choose,” added Reed, one of just eight senators in US history to graduate from West Point Military Academy in New York. “The American people deserve to know what is being done in their name and why.
“Congress must demand answers, force transparency, and hold this administration accountable before it plunges us into another needless war,” he continued.
In announcing the second strike on his social media, Truth Social, Trump intimated that the US military could expand its strikes on alleged drug cartels in the Caribbean.
Trump then told reporters from the Oval Office that he has strong evidence that the latest boat was carrying drugs.
“We have proof,” he said. “All you have to do is look at the cargo that was spattered all over the ocean, big bags of cocaine and fentanyl all over the place.”
Trump warned that the military strikes would expand to land, potentially triggering a land war with Venezuela.
“We’re telling the cartels right now we’re going to be stopping them, too,” he said. “When they come by land, we’re going to be stopping them the same way we stopped the boats.
“But maybe by talking about it a little bit, it won’t happen,” the US President added. “If it doesn’t happen, that’s good.”
Speaking from the Senate’s floor last week, Reed noted that Trump gave two orders to the US military that he described as “astonishing, even by this administration’s standards.
“First, he ordered the Department of Defense to be renamed the ‘Department of War’ – a political theater exercise designed to sound tough while distracting from the real issues facing this nation,” he said. “Second, he ordered a military strike on a speedboat operating in the Caribbean, reportedly killing eleven people on board.”
In response to the attack, Reed said Venezuela has placed its military on high alert, “and we are one miscalculation away from a shooting war that no one in this chamber has authorized.
“Rather than rebranding itself, the Pentagon should be providing to Congress and the American public answers: the intelligence that justified that strike, the legal authority the president relied upon, and an assurance that we are not drifting toward another undeclared war,” Reed said.
“I am deeply concerned about the president’s military actions in the Caribbean, which were taken without congressional authorization, without clear legal justification, and without any evidence presented that it was necessary to protect the United States or its forces from an imminent threat,” he added. “Now, nearly a week after the operation and amid threats of additional actions, the administration is just beginning to brief Congress on these issues.
“I want to be very clear: we all share a commitment to protecting the American people from transnational criminal organizations. Cartels are violent and dangerous, and they cannot be allowed to traffic across our borders. But we cannot allow that homeland security mission to become a blank check for war,” the senator warned. “We cannot let one man’s impulsive decision-making entangle this nation in another conflict we neither need nor want.”
Reed said the initial US strike in the Caribbean was “no minor confrontation.
“This was a deliberate, lethal use of American military power,” he said. “There is no evidence that this strike was conducted in self-defense. That matters because under both domestic and international law, the US military does not have the authority to use lethal force against a civilian vessel unless acting in self-defense.
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