GOP blocks bid to halt Trump’s attacks in the Caribbean Sea

By ROBERT JIMISON

Republicans in the Senate blocked a measure earlier this week that would bar President Donald Trump from using military force against boats in the Caribbean Sea, turning back an effort to check his power to wage war without authorization from Congress.

The vote against bringing up the Democratic resolution was 51-48, mostly along party lines. It came less than a week after the U.S. military carried out the fourth strike in the Trump administration’s legally disputed campaign targeting alleged drug runners in the Caribbean.

Sens. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and Tim Kaine, D-Va., tried to force action on the measure, invoking a provision of the 1973 War Powers Act, which requires that resolutions to terminate hostilities be considered under expedited procedures.

They said they were doing so in response to the series of strikes Trump has carried out since Sept. 2, which the administration says have killed 21 people. The White House has described the strikes as part of a campaign against Venezuelan drug cartels that it accuses of smuggling fentanyl into the United States.

“This is the kind of thing that leads the country unexpectedly and unintentionally into war,” Schiff said before Wednesday’s vote. He said the resolution also sought to limit the president’s ability to expand his campaign beyond striking boats.

That was a direct response to the White House decision a day earlier to end efforts to reach a diplomatic agreement with Venezuela, a possible signal that the administration was considering escalating its campaign to stronger measures more directly targeting the government of President Nicolás Maduro.

The series of strikes on vessels has drawn criticism from both Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill, including Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Rand Paul of Kentucky, the only two Republicans who voted with nearly all Democrats in favor of limiting the president’s authority.

Paul, who opposes American military intervention abroad, said he was dissatisfied with the administration’s justification for the strikes and questioned why the boats were not intercepted. He argued that attacking them left too much uncertainty about who was on board and whether they were carrying drugs.

“If anyone gave a you-know-what about justice, perhaps those in charge of deciding whom to kill might let us know their names, present proof of their guilt and show evidence of their crimes,” Paul said.

Murkowski noted that the Trump administration’s approach to curbing the presence of drugs into the country still needed congressional input.

“We all want to get rid of the drugs in this country, absolutely,” she said. “But the approach that the administration is taking is new, some would say novel, and I think we have a role here.”

Last week in a letter to Congress, the administration said that Trump had “determined” that the United States was engaged in a formal armed conflict with certain drug cartels his administration has deemed terrorists. The notice did not name the specific groups involved.

The justification was criticized as inadequate by some, but since the first strike, some of the president’s Republican allies on Capitol Hill have sought ways to grant the administration more formal authority to continue carrying out such strikes. They have privately discussed authorizing a broad use of military force against drug cartels that Trump deems to be “terrorists,” as well as against any nation that he says has harbored or aided them, according to people familiar with the matter.

“This is an attack on the United States by people who have been designated as terrorists,” said Sen. James Risch, R-Idaho, who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, speaking against the resolution. “The president not only has the right, he has the duty to do something about this.”

Last month, Kaine, along with 23 other Democrats in the Senate, sent a letter to the White House questioning the legal basis for the first military strike conducted Sept. 2. He said that the letter had gone unanswered and that the justifications given in notices to Congress and classified briefings had been inadequate.

“We asked basic questions: Give us the intel about these particular boats, that they’re actually carrying narcotics. Tell us why you decided in these cases not to interdict but to strike,” Kaine said. “These are really important questions. They’re questions that an administration should respond to Congress about. We asked for a response within a week. We’ve not gotten answers to these questions.”

Republicans supporting the president’s campaign maintain that he is operating within the bounds of his constitutional authority as commander in chief, an assertion that past presidents of both parties have relied on when carrying out a variety of military strikes without consulting Congress.

“This looks to me like an area that’s pretty squarely within Article II,” Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., said, referring to the portion of the Constitution that lays out the president’s powers as commander in chief of the U.S. military. The Trump administration has contended that bringing illicit drugs to American shores qualifies as an imminent threat to national security, giving the president inherent authority to use military force to counteract it.