Senate Democrats failed Wednesday to pass a measure under the War Powers Act that would have blocked President Donald Trump from carrying out airstrikes without congressional approval on what his administration has alleged are drug-carrying boats in the Caribbean Sea.
The resolution, led by Sens. Adam Schiff and Tim Kaine, failed 51-48.
Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska were the only two Republicans to join Democrats, with Paul warning that the administration was “blowing people to smithereens” without due process.
“Is it too much to ask to know the names of those we kill before we kill them? To know what evidence exists of their guilt?” Paul said on the Senate floor before the vote. He also quoted the decorated former Naval officer Jon Duffy: “A republic that allows its leaders to kill without law, to wage war without strategy, to deploy troops without limit, is a republic in deep peril.”
Sen. John Fetterman was the only Democrat to cross party lines to vote “no” on the measure.
The failed vote comes amid growing scrutiny of the administration’s campaign in the Caribbean Sea, which has so far involved four U.S. airstrikes on boats the White House says were smuggling drugs into the United States. The strikes, which began in early September, have killed 21 people. The first strike took place on Sept. 2, killing 11 people, followed by two more later that month and another last week. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called the targets “narco-terrorists” and vowed the strikes would continue “until the attacks on the American people are over.”
Schiff on Wednesday called the strikes “plainly unconstitutional.”
“There has been no authorization to use force by Congress in this way,” he said, warning that the president’s claimed authority “has no limiting principle.”
“This is the kind of thing that leads a country unexpectedly and unintentionally into war,” Schiff added.
Kaine said lawmakers “have not gotten answers” about the targets or the legal basis for the strikes.
“Talk about disrespect,” Kaine said. “We have not gotten answers to these questions.” “If you interdict, you get evidence. If you bomb boats and there’s no evidence, you may actually be less effective,” he told reporters before the vote.
Both senators told reporters before the vote that the administration has failed to provide proof the vessels were smuggling narcotics. “We just have little or no information about who was on board these ships or what intelligence was used,” Schiff said.
Kaine warned that “human-trafficking victims” could have been on the ship. “Self defense has always been understood as imminent attack,” Kaine said. “It is not within the norm of self defense to define a drug runner’s operation that way.”
Most Republicans sided with the White House.
Sen. Rick Scott told NOTUS he considered the cartel targets “narco-terrorists” and praised Trump for “trying to get drugs out of this country.” Sen. Mike Rounds also told NOTUS that the resolution was “purely a political action,” adding that “you can’t direct the president not to exercise his authorities that the Constitution provides to him.”
Sen. Jim Risch, an Idaho Republican who serves as chair of the Foreign Relations Committee, wrote on X that the strikes were “fully compliant with the War Powers Resolution and fully justified under the president’s article II constitutional authority.”
“This resolution is purely political and meant to discount President Trump’s good decision to protect the American people,” he added.
The White House has maintained that the strikes are consistent with Trump’s constitutional powers as commander-in-chief and that U.S. intelligence determined the boats were affiliated with designated terrorist organizations.
A confidential notice sent to congressional committees last week said that the United States is engaged in a “non-international armed conflict” with Latin American cartels — a claim that has alarmed both parties.
Legal experts, including former State Department attorney Brian Finucane, say the administration is stretching the post-9/11 legal framework for counterterrorism. “There has been no armed attack on the United States,” Finucane told NOTUS. “The facts do not support that application.”