Republican Sen. Rand Paul said he will join Democratic colleagues in sponsoring a bill seeking to prevent the Trump administration from conducting strikes on suspected drug boats in the Caribbean.
"We can't have a policy where we just blow up ships where we don't even know the people's names," Paul said in an interview with Bloomberg Television. "It can't be the policy for drug interdiction, either in the country or outside the country," he added.
Paul went on to say that previous Coast Guard interdictions didn't yield drugs about 25% of the time. "So they have made an error, but they don't kill them. But we've blown up four boats now, and if the percentages hold true, did one of those four boats not have drug dealers on it?" he wondered.
In this context, Paul will cosponsor a resolution invoking the 1973 War Powers Act, noting that the Trump administration can't launch strikes without approval from Congress. The resolution requires the president to notify Congress within 48 hours of introducing troops into hostilities and limits their duration to 60 days unless Congress authorizes further action.
At the same time, Democratic Senator Adam Schiff anticipated that he, along with colleague Tim Kaine, will force a vote to block the strikes. "Congress has not authorized these strikes. They are illegal and risk dragging America into another war," Schiff said in a social media publication.
Democrats are increasingly voicing their opposition to the strikes in the public discourse. On Tuesday, lawmakers in the House Foreign Affairs committee criticized President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio for "pushing for regime change" in the South American country.
"The American people don't want another war—and Congress can't let any president start one illegally or unilaterally. That's not how the Constitution works," the lawmakers claimed in a post.
CNNreported this week that the Department of Justice released a secret opinion justifying strikes against cartels and suspected drug traffickers.
Concretely, the opinion issued by the Office of Legal Counsel claims that President Donald Trump is allowed to authorize deadly force against the targets because they pose an imminent threat to Americans, the outlet noted. It also quoted legal experts who said the opinion is significant because it appears to justify an open-ended war against secret enemies. It also allows him to have them summarily killed without legal review, in contrast with past cases in which they got due process rights.
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