President Donald Trump indicated on Thursday that he will not seek a congressional war declaration to continue lethal U.S. strikes on alleged drug traffickers. He also signaled that operations would move from sea to land.
New boat strikes in the Pacific Ocean, a B-1 flight near Venezuela and Trump’s assertion of unrestricted presidential power under Article II of the Constitution have drawn legal objections ahead of a Senate vote next week on a bipartisan resolution to bar hostilities inside Venezuela without explicit congressional authorization.
“I don’t think we’re going to necessarily ask for a declaration of war,” Trump said at the White House, adding the U.S. is “going to kill” people bringing drugs into the country.
“We’re going to kill them,” he said. “They’re going to be, like, dead.”
Where has the campaign expanded?
NPR reported that two additional strikes this week targeted boats in the eastern Pacific, an apparent expansion from earlier operations in the Caribbean.
The administration says strikes so far have killed at least 37 suspected drug traffickers.
The Pentagon has also ramped up the presence of troops and ships near Venezuela. CNN reported a U.S. B-1 Lancer bomber flew near Venezuela on Thursday, and open-source data showed a brief appearance within the country’s flight information region.
Is the campaign shifting to land strikes?
At the White House on Thursday, Trump said “the land is going to be next” and directed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to brief Congress on upcoming plans.
“Sea drugs, as they call them — they use the term ‘sea drugs’ — the drugs coming in by sea are like 5% of what they were a year ago, less than 5%,” Trump said. “So now they’re coming in by land, and even the land is concerned, because I told them that’s going to be next.”
He did not specify targets but has suggested hitting cartel infrastructure on land.
Bloomberg reported that Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has expanded troop deployments following earlier U.S. boat strikes.
What legal basis is the White House claiming?
The administration has said Trump is acting under Article II powers and that certain cartels are “nonstate armed groups” whose actions amount to an “armed attack” on the United States.
Legal experts quoted by NPR questioned that rationale, saying the conclusions were reached by “executive fiat” and warning that lethal force at sea without a proper legal basis could amount to extrajudicial killings under international law.
How are officials and lawmakers responding?
Hegseth said the military confirmed each targeted boat was trafficking drugs and framed the mission as deterrence and elimination. He has provided no evidence of those confirmations.
“Every boat we strike is 25,000 Americans whose lives were saved,” Hegseth said.
Some lawmakers, including Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., raised concerns that the strikes violate domestic and international law.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, “Bottom line, these are drug boats.”
