“President Trump has no legal authority to launch strikes or use military force in the Caribbean or elsewhere in the Western Hemisphere,” said Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia.
Miami News Report on U.S. Strike that killed three in the Caribbean. (YouTube screenshot)
With 14 people killed in the Caribbean in recent days by U.S. forces at the direction of President Donald Trump, two Democratic senators on Friday moved to stop the Trump administration from continuing military strikes against boats that it claims are involved in drug trafficking.
Sens. Tim Kaine (D-VA) and Adam Schiff (D-CA) introduced a joint resolution calling for the U.S. to stop engaging in military hostilities that have not been authorized by Congress, days after Trump announced that U.S. forces had killed three people whom the president claimed were part of “extraordinarily violent drug trafficking cartels” based in Venezuela.
Blowing up boats in the Caribbean without any legal authority risks dragging the United States into another war, and provoking attacks against American citizens.
I’m getting ready to force a vote with @SenTimKaine to ensure Congress’ power to declare war is not so easily… https://t.co/hx5FiSC6BZ
— Adam Schiff (@SenAdamSchiff) September 19, 2025
That strike followed the killing of 11 people aboard another boat in the Caribbean earlier this month, which U.S. officials later acknowledged had turned back toward Venezuela before the U.S. carried out the strike—further calling into question the claim that the vessel was headed toward the U.S. and posed a threat.
Sen. Tim Kaine (Gage Skidmore/Wikipedia, CC ASA 2.0)
“President Trump has no legal authority to launch strikes or use military force in the Caribbean or elsewhere in the Western Hemisphere,” said Kaine in a statement, adding that the administration has refused to release basic information showing it was necessary to attack the vessels.
The strikes have been condemned by legal and human rights experts as “murder” and “extrajudicial executions” of civilians—people who, if they were in fact bringing drugs to the U.S. as the White House has claimed, would typically be confronted by law enforcement agencies instead of struck by the military.
The U.S. Coast Guard has in the past intercepted boats and searched them to confirm suspected drug smuggling and arrested their crews.
As Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) said last week, Trump’s claim that boats are carrying fentanyl, which caused roughly 48,000 drug overdoses in the U.S. last year, is likely inaccurate. Fentanyl is primarily trafficked from Mexico and Central America into the US, he noted, not from Venezuela.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said earlier this month that the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime’s assessment that Venezuela is also not a major source of cocaine was of no importance to the administration.
“I don’t care what the U.N. says,” Rubio told reporters after the first military strike in the Caribbean.
The White House has not released evidence showing that the boats were carrying drugs; after the first bombing, the president said the administration had “tapes of [the victims] speaking” that showed they were members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, which it has designated a terrorist organization that works directly with the South American country’s government—despite U.S. intelligence agencies’ finding that the group does not work with President Nicolás Maduro.
Even if the president’s suspicions were correct, said Sarah Yager, Washington director at Human Rights Watch, “U.S. officials cannot summarily kill people they accuse of smuggling drugs.”
“The problem of narcotics entering the United States is not an armed conflict, and U.S. officials cannot circumvent their human rights obligations by pretending otherwise,” Yager said Thursday.
While claiming the military is targeting drug traffickers, Vice President J.D. Vance suggested this week that the U.S. could mistakenly kill civilians who are not involved in drug activity, joking, “I wouldn’t go fishing right now in that area of the world.”
Vance on Trump’s strikes on boats: “I wouldn’t go fishing right now in that area of the world.” pic.twitter.com/YdXmvCkV2B
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 17, 2025
The administration has not disclosed a legal analysis of why it believes the strikes, which it has said will continue, are lawful.
Congress has not authorized any military conflict with drug cartels, and at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Thursday, a nominee for a position at the Pentagon was unable to answer Democratic lawmakers’ questions about the legality of the administration’s strikes.
On Friday, reporting by The New York Times suggested that Republican lawmakers and the White House are working to grant the administration the legal authority to continue the strikes.
A draft bill is circulating around the White House and Congress to grant the president the power to order military strikes to carry out “the drug trafficking war.”
The authority would last for five years, and longer if renewed by Congress, and would cover groups that the administration has designated terrorist organizations as well as nations that harbor those groups.
Jack Goldsmith, a former George W. Bush administration official and a Harvard Law School professor, told the Times that the legislation is “insanely broad.”
“This is an open-ended war authorization against an untold number of countries, organizations, and persons that the president could deem within its scope,” said Goldsmith.
Introducing their resolution on September 19, Kaine and Schiff said they do not want to prevent the U.S. from carrying out strikes in self-defense against an “armed attack.”
But, they emphasized, “the trafficking of illegal drugs does not itself constitute such an armed attack or threat.”
Yager called on Congress to also “open a prompt and transparent investigation into the decision-making process behind these attacks, including the legal rationale and chain of command.”
“The U.S. military should immediately halt any plans for future unlawful strikes,” she said, “and ensure that all military operations comply with international human rights and humanitarian law.”
Julia Conley is a staff writer for Common Dreams.
This article is from Common Dreams.
Doesn’t every Pres. have to start a war ?
The USA didn’t win the last iteration of the ‘War on Drugs’, maybe because the USA is the major facilitator for the production and supply of said drugs and the USA is the biggest market for said drugs. Look in the mirror if you want to see who the actual criminals are.
It’s all just pissing in the wind!
The arrogant ignorant illiterate Prez of yours has stated that he can do anything that he wants…
Surely a good enough reason for the military to remove him (if not for hubris alone).
This type of senseless arrogance must be stopped at the start before it becomes an offence against your Constitution.
“A draft bill is circulating around the White House and Congress to grant the president the power to order military strikes to carry out “the drug trafficking war.””
Oh wow! So they’re going to strike the big banking conglomerates in the U.S. that launder all the proceeds. This should be interesting.
Nailed it! Could this be the reason Schiff and Kaine are protesting so much?
Right!
The democrats are finally going after a true Trump threat. Let’s see if they DO force the vote to stop the murders on the high seas.