Donald Trump does not plan to ask Congress for a declaration of war against drug cartels after his administration killed at least 37 people with missile strikes on alleged drug-carrying boats in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean.
Asked why he won’t seek a resolution from Congress for a military campaign taking aim at South American regimes he claims are fueling a drug epidemic in the United States, Trump said his government is “just going to kill people” instead.
“I don’t think we're going to necessarily ask for a declaration of war. I think we’re just going to kill people that are bringing drugs into our country, OK? We’re going to kill them,” Trump said during a White House roundtable with administration officials Thursday.
“They’re going to be, like, dead, OK,” he said.
The president had said one day earlier that he would seek permission from Congress if “they come in by land.”
“And they haven’t experienced that yet, but now we’re totally prepared to do that,” he said Wednesday. “We’ll probably go back to Congress and explain exactly what we’re doing when [they] come to the land.”
The power to declare war belongs solely to Congress, as established under Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution. A resolution must be passed by a majority vote in both the House of Representatives and the Senate and then signed by the president to craft a formal declaration of war, which was last officially declared in 1942.
Thus far, the administration has declared that the United States is formally engaged in an “armed conflict” with drug cartels that the president has labeled “unlawful combatants,” according to a confidential notice to members of Congress.
Last week, Trump said he authorized the CIA to perform covert operations inside Venezuela, marking a significant escalation of his aggressive campaign against Nicolas Maduro’s regime and drug cartels that Trump claims are fueled by Maduro’s government.
Trump told reporters at the White House that he “authorized” CIA operations because Venezuela “emptied their prisons into the United States of America” and flooded the country with drugs.
He said defense officials are now “looking at land” strikes in Venezuela.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced two operations Wednesday that bring the death toll from the administration’s attacks to at least 37.
Officials have not identified the groups or countries accused of running drugs in the Pacific.
Critics have argued the military’s campaign amounts to illegal extrajudicial killings, while members of Congress and civil rights groups are pressing the administration for evidence and the legal memos shared among White House officials to justify the attacks.
Asked why the military isn’t capturing people on the boats, including survivors in one attack who have since been repatriated to their home countries, rather than kill them, Hegseth compared that to “catch and release.”
Hegseth said killing people suspected of running drugs — rather than arresting them — “ought to change the psychology of these foreign terrorist organizations.”
Trump said Thursday that his administration will “definitely” brief members of Congress about plans for the strikes, “and they’re probably going to like it, except for the radical left lunatics.”
The top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee is demanding a hearing.
“The absence of any credible legal rationale for the administration’s armed campaign against drug cartels raises alarming questions about whether it intends to conduct similar extrajudicial strikes elsewhere in the world — or even within the United States,” Rep. Gregory Meeks said in a statement Thursday.
“Equally troubling is the credibility of the intelligence underpinning these operations,” he said.
The president’s “unilateral, ongoing expansion of these strikes into a potentially broader regional war should concern every Member of Congress who wishes to reclaim Congress’ authority to prevent endless wars that lack clear objectives and needlessly endanger American lives,” according to Meeks.
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