Donald Trump is reportedly charging ahead with his administration’s campaign of indiscriminate bombings in the Caribbean Sea by leveraging a “two-part hack to the system” of checks and balances on his power as president.
“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,” according to a new report from the New York Times.
Beginning in early September, the White House has initiated a rabid military campaign in waters off the southern coast of the United States. Its stated goal: combating international drug traffickers with targeted attacks against vessels allegedly operated by Latin American cartels, such as Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua.
To date, the MAGA administration has carried out at least 10 airstrikes on what they claim are drug-smuggling vessels in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific, resulting in 43 deaths. These bombardments have been accompanied by escalating rhetoric against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and Colombian President Gustavo Petro, who Trump recently accused of being involved in “narcotrafficking.”
In its report, the NYT argues Trump has weaponized two tactics in order to outwardly legitimize his attacks. The first was laid bare in a February executive order, in which the MAGA leader proclaimed “the President and the Attorney General’s opinions on questions of law are controlling on all employees in the conduct of their official duties.” This, the newspaper contends, effectively amounted to telling White House lawyers they were in no position to question the legal rationale behind Trump’s actions.
The second tactic pertains to the president having perceivably decided that “the factual and legal scenarios” are already in play for him to legitimately exercise powers ordinarily reserved for times of war. Trump doing this against targets who are only suspected, rather than convicted, of involvement in international drug trafficking operations.
“The two tactics combined create a gigantic loophole,” as the NYT puts it. “Mr. Trump is able to dictate his own factual and legal realities, and executive branch lawyers who want to keep their jobs must treat them as settled.”
“By asserting that he can have the military kill people suspected of drug trafficking as if they are enemy soldiers on a battlefield, Mr Trump is blurring a line between enforcing the law and waging a war,” the newspaper adds.
Previous administrations have proven themselves at pains to develop robust legal justifications for aggressive policies slammed by critics as potential violations of domestic and international law. At the Trump White House, officials routinely cite only U.S. deaths from drug overdoses and the fact the president has determined the country is at war with drug cartels, according to NYT sources familiar with recent closed-door congressional briefings.
Trump himself has also spoken and posted with abandon about his ongoing campaign in the Caribbean, boasting of how “it is violent and it is very… it’s amazing, the weaponry” and even of greenlighting covert CIA ops in Venezuela.
“Nixon tried to keep his criminality secret, and the Bush administration tried to keep the torture secret, and that secrecy acknowledged the norm that these things were wrong,” Professor Jack Goldsmith said. “Trump, as he often does when he is breaking law or norms, is acting publicly and without shame or unease. This is a very successful way to destroy the efficacy of law and norms.”
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment on this story. A spokesperson told the NYT that Trump is merely fulfilling his campaign promise of consequences for cartels whose operations have “resulted in the needless deaths of innocent Americans,” and asserted that his “unprecedented action” would only continue.
“All of these decisive strikes have been against designated narcoterrorists, as affirmed by U.S. intelligence, bringing deadly poison to our shores, and the president will continue to use every element of American power to stop drugs from flooding into our country and to bring those responsible to justice,” the spokesperson added.
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