NYT (“Trump Says He Will Not Seek Authorization for Cartel Strikes“):
President Trump said on Thursday that he would bypass Congress rather than seek its approval to carry out military strikes against drug cartels that traffic narcotics to the United States, even as he vowed to expand the operation from attacks at sea to targets on land.
“I don’t think we’re going to necessarily ask for a declaration of war,” Mr. Trump told reporters of his campaign of deadly strikes against vessels in the Caribbean Sea near Colombia and Venezuela. “I think we are going to kill people that are bringing drugs into our country, OK? We are going to kill them, you know? They are going to be, like, dead.”
He made the remarks during a news conference at the White House to promote the work of agencies that Mr. Trump said were working to “arrest, prosecute and permanently remove” people who were part of an elaborate drug cartel operation inside the United States.
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Though he repeatedly referred to the military operation targeting drug trafficking as a “war,” Mr. Trump said he would not seek any formal approval from lawmakers to continue striking boats or expand it to include airstrikes against countries like Venezuela, where he says the cartels originate.
“The cartels are waging war against America and just like I promised in the campaign, we are waging war against them,” he said in the White House state dining room flanked by members of his cabinet, including Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth; Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence; and Attorney General Pam Bondi.
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Mr. Trump said that he “may go to the Senate” to inform lawmakers as the campaign shifts from maritime operations to land strikes, and told Mr. Hegseth to “go to Congress, you tell them about it.”
But he appeared to be referring to a briefing rather than any formal request for approval. He appeared confident that lawmakers would support the action — or at least shy away from criticizing it.
“What are they going to do? Say, ‘Gee, we don’t want to stop drugs pouring in?’” Mr. Trump said. “They’re killing 300,000 people a year.”
In an analysis piece, Charlie Savage points to “The Peril of a White House That Flaunts Its Indifference to the Law.”
Since he returned to office nine months ago, President Trump has sought to expand executive power across numerous fronts. But his claim that he can lawfully order the military to summarily kill people accused of smuggling drugs on boats off the coast of South America stands apart.
A broad range of specialists in laws governing the use of lethal force have called Mr. Trump’s orders to the military patently illegal. They say the premeditated extrajudicial killings have been murders — regardless of whether the 43 people blown apart, burned alive or drowned in 10 strikes so far were indeed running drugs.
The administration insists that the killings are lawful, invoking legal terms like “self-defense” and “armed conflict.” But it has offered no legal argument explaining how to bridge the conceptual gap between drug trafficking and associated crimes, as serious as they are, and the kind of armed attack to which those terms can legitimately apply.
The irreversible gravity of killing, coupled with the lack of a substantive legal justification, is bringing into sharper view a structural weakness of law as a check on the American presidency.
Moving to broader issues, his colleague Carl Hulse points to “The Abdication of Congress.”
As the Trump administration shifts billions of dollars around to take care of its priorities during the shutdown with scant input from lawmakers, ignoring Congress’s clear constitutional supremacy over the power of the purse, Republicans in control have done nothing to push back. Nor have they exercised oversight of President Trump’s legally questionable military moves off the coast of Venezuela, his imposition of tariffs or anything else that has challenged the authority of their beleaguered institution.
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Trump and his aides have usurped congressional power with little G.O.P. resistance. In many instances, House and Senate leaders have willingly ceded their prerogatives and cheered on the president. The Constitution gives Congress responsibility for levying tariffs, and Trump’s may hurt rural America, but the Republicans who represent it have been mainly silent.
The same goes for the administration’s operations against alleged drug runners from South America. Despite bipartisan support for sanctions on Russia, Republicans reversed course and delayed action because of mixed signals from Trump. He seemed willing to restrain Moscow, then pulled back, then finally imposed sanctions unilaterally yesterday.
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There are evidently some limits to what Congress will swallow. Republicans this week pressed the White House to withdraw the nomination of Paul Ingrassia to head the Office of Special Counsel after Politico disclosed racist texts he had sent.
Senate Republicans also raised the alarm on behalf of cattle ranchers after Trump suggested that he might increase imports of Argentine beef to bolster markets there. The administration showed signs of heeding their calls.
But the funding impasse now has top Republicans talking about a yearlong extension of current federal spending, instead of a new budget. That would further undermine Congress’s authority, shifting the power to shape spending from the once formidable Appropriations Committees to the White House and its budget director, Russell Vought.
While Trump’s brazenness in flouting Congress has been unprecedented, at least in peacetime, it has been made possible by decades of erosion of legislative assertiveness.
Congress has slowly let the war power whittle down to nothing. Partly, it’s a function of a massive standing military putting Congress in reactive mode rather than being necessary to “raise an army,” putting it in reactive mode. Partly, it’s a function of partisan sorting all but ending the institutional jealousy Madison envisioned. Partly, it’s moral cowardice: they can sit on the sidelines bitching if POTUS does something unpopular, but they don’t get held accountable.
In the case of the extrajudicial killings of those identified as drug traffickers, there is also the matter of international law. But that’s largely a dead letter when it comes to major powers.
