President Donald Trump is inviting fresh congressional scrutiny over his power as commander in chief with a crackdown on drug smuggling off the coast of Venezuela.
In the coming weeks, Democrats will force a vote on Trump’s authority to sink boats that he says are run by “narcoterrorists” trafficking drugs into the United States, while the strikes have brought a new wave of congressional briefings.
The House Armed Services Committee will receive a classified briefing from Pentagon officials on Wednesday, according to Punchbowl News. The Senate’s counterpart held its own briefing last week, before news of the second strike.
The flurry of activity on Capitol Hill marks a repeat of June, when Trump’s strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities prompted similar concern that the White House was stepping on Congress’s power to declare war.
At the time, Republicans rejected a push to limit future strikes against Iran, rebuffing Democratic objections that Trump was leading the country into a wider Middle East conflict.
His authorities again became a flashpoint last week, when the House voted to repeal two decades-old war powers laws relating to the 1991 and 2003 invasions of Iraq, this time with the help of Republicans.
In a bipartisan vote, 49 Republicans joined Democrats to repeal the authorizations, which members say have been abused to justify later military actions.
Republicans, who control both chambers of Congress, have largely given the White House wide latitude to conduct military operations without congressional approval, and on Tuesday, GOP leaders expressed support for Trump’s attacks on the Venezuelan boats.
“I mean, I think that obviously there’s a certain amount of consultation that happens. But again, this is partly a function of his, I think, authority as commander in chief to protect the American people,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) told the Washington Examiner.
The strikes have nonetheless reignited a debate over presidential power that long predates Trump. Congress passed a law to limit the president’s war powers in the 1970s, but the changing nature of war, including the rise of terrorism, has repeatedly strained that commitment to power-sharing.
Under Trump, the bulk of the criticism has come from Democrats, who want a clearer legal justification for the Venezuelan boat strikes and distrust the assurances that the boats were carrying drugs. Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI), the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, told the Washington Examiner he wants to see an all-senator meeting with Pentagon staff to explain operational details and justify its legality.
Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) is also co-sponsoring a war powers resolution with Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) that would thwart a president’s ability to conduct strikes on groups designated as foreign terrorist organizations, such as the Tren de Aragua gang, the administration says it is targeting with its military operations.
Republicans, too, have questions over the legality of the Venezuela boat strikes, while Trump has suggested he could push the limits of his authority further with strikes on land.
“I think it’s a question that needs to be explored,” said Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS), the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. “It also depends on the facts.”
But Republicans writ large have backed the military’s actions unequivocably, including Sen. James Risch (R-ID), the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
“Absolutely, 100%,” Risch said when asked if he supported the military actions near Venezuela, adding that he had no “need” for a briefing.
“I know what I need to know,” Risch said.
The only outspoken GOP opposition has so far come from Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), a libertarian who opposed Trump’s Iran strike in June. He was noncommittal to Schiff’s resolution of the war powers but criticized a buildup of forces in the Caribbean that he said could provoke Venezuela into a military response.
Venezuelan leader Nicholas Maduro, whom the United States believes is complicit in the drug trade, has denounced the strikes as an “act of war” and claimed they were intended to foment regime change, not stop trafficking.
“It’s a terrible policy to just shoot boats without, you know, without trying to interdict them,” Paul said.
Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ), a former Navy pilot, said his preference was for the boats to be apprehended as well, a function normally undertaken by the Coast Guard.
“Then you get the chance to interrogate the people, and maybe you can figure out what the whole larger network is and apprehend other individuals,” Kelly said.
On the question of legality, Kelly said it was “unclear” whether Trump had the authority to conduct the strikes, but that Congress must have greater consultation in the absence of a war declaration.
“I’m a guy who’s sunk a couple ships myself, much bigger,” he added. “But in a war, this is not — we haven’t declared war.”
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In the past, Democrats have found greater willingness to buck Trump within the Republican Party. Eight GOP senators voted to oppose the strikes Trump undertook against Iranian leadership in his first term, seven of whom are still in Congress today.
But the votes have increasingly become a party-line exercise, with all Senate Republicans but Paul rejecting the June war powers vote on Iran.