Draft Bill Would Authorize Trump to Kill People He Deems Narco-Terrorists

Draft legislation is circulating at the White House and on Capitol Hill that would hand President Trump sweeping power to wage war against drug cartels he deems to be “terrorists,” as well as against any nation he says has harbored or aided them, according to people familiar with the matter.

A wide range of legal specialists have said that U.S. military attacks this month on two boats suspected of smuggling drugs in the Caribbean Sea were illegal. But Mr. Trump has claimed that the Constitution gave him the power he needed to authorize them.

It was not clear who wrote the draft congressional authorization or whether it could pass the Republican-led Congress, but the White House has been passing it around the executive branch.

The broadly worded proposal, which would legally authorize the president to kill people he deems narco-terrorists and attack countries he says helped them, has set off alarm bells in some quarters of the executive branch and on Capitol Hill, according to people who spoke on the condition of anonymity about sensitive internal deliberations.

Three people familiar with the matter said that Representative Cory Mills, a Florida Republican and combat veteran who sits on the Armed Services Committee, was involved in developing the draft. Mr. Mills, a staunch Trump ally, declined to comment on the potential legislation or his role. Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, declined to comment, citing a policy against discussing “drafts that may or may not be circulating.”

An administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters, said the draft originated with a member of Congress who had asked for technical assistance in improving it. The official portrayed its circulation for input by executive branch agencies as a routine courtesy that should not be interpreted as support for the idea.

The measure has emerged amid an escalating debate in Washington over the president’s war-making power and Congress’s role in authorizing the use of American military force, after the Trump administration opened a deadly campaign against the boaters.

The two boat attacks — killing what Mr. Trump has said were 14 people he accused of smuggling drugs toward the United States — were the latest in a series of military operations the president has taken without congressional authorization, raising constitutional concerns among some lawmakers in both parties, who say their branch should play a greater role in such decisions.

Critics have also said that Mr. Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have given illegal orders, causing Special Operations troops to target civilians — even if they are suspected of crimes — in apparent violation of laws against murder.

The U.S. Coast Guard, with help from the Navy, has long treated drug trafficking as a law enforcement problem, interdicting boats and arresting their crews if a search confirmed suspicions of drug smuggling. Regular forces repeated that approach with a Venezuelan fishing boat last week, releasing its crew after the suspicions apparently proved to be inaccurate.

But the administration has insisted that Mr. Trump has legal authority, under his constitutional power as commander in chief, to direct Special Operations forces to instead summarily kill those suspected of drug running as if they are combatants on a battlefield. Citing the roughly 100,000 overdose deaths of Americans each year, the administration has invoked self-defense and the law of armed conflict.

Congress has not authorized any armed conflict with drug cartels. The draft legislation, which the White House Office of Management and Budget has circulated within the executive branch for comment, would address that potential weakness in the administration’s argument — at least as a matter of domestic law.

Following the first boat strike, on Sept. 2, Democrats and some Republicans expressed concern about the White House’s legal basis for the attack, even as administration officials like Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is also Mr. Trump’s national security adviser, said there would be more to come.

Before Mr. Schiff did so, Mr. Trump on Monday announced a second deadly strike against what he described as a Venezuelan boat in international waters. Together with Senator Tim Kaine, Democrat of Virginia, Mr. Schiff on Friday morning introduced the measure, which would direct the administration to end any additional planned strikes and reassert congressional authority over the use of military force.

The resolution also states that Congress has received insufficient information about the vessels, their threat level or the legal basis for using force against them. It also reaffirms a commitment to funding intelligence gathering, diplomatic tools and counternarcotics efforts to fight drug trafficking.

At a Senate Armed Services Committee confirmation hearing on Thursday, several Democrats asked questions about the legal authority for the military strikes. But a Pentagon nominee said he was unable to answer them. At the end of the hearing, the Republican chairman of the panel, Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi, said the administration must respond.

“The questions about what happened in the Caribbean are going to have to be answered,” Mr. Wicker said. “This committee has congressional oversight responsibility. Members are entitled to ask the questions that they’ve asked, and answers will be given. And I just think it’s important for every American to understand that obligation.”

Some Republicans have discussed ways to shore up Mr. Trump’s legal authority. Mr. Mills, who served during conflicts in Kosovo and Iraq, advised the Pentagon in Mr. Trump’s first term before launching his bid for Congress in 2021 and winning election the following year.

The draft, which was described to The New York Times, would cover groups that the executive branch designates as terrorists and that Mr. Trump determines, in consultation with Congress, have either trafficked in drugs to finance terrorist activities or used terrorist tactics to advance narcotics-related enterprises. Nations that harbored such groups would also be covered.

It does not define what constitutes sufficient consultation with Congress or what counts as terrorist tactics.

Such an authorization would amount to giving Mr. Trump “a blank check,” said Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard Law School professor and a former senior Justice Department official in the Bush administration.

“It’s insanely broad,” Professor Goldsmith said. “This is an open-ended war authorization against an untold number of countries, organizations and persons that the president could deem within its scope.”

Professor Goldsmith said that Congress had the authority, as a matter of domestic law, to authorize the use of military force against nonstate groups. But deliberately killing civilians who are not directly participating in hostilities — even those suspected of being criminals — would still violate international law, he added.

The draft appears to be modeled on the broad authorization that Congress granted President George W. Bush after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Like that one, it does not name a specific enemy — empowering the president to decide whom to target — and is not confined to geographical limits.

The 2001 law was originally understood to target Al Qaeda and its Taliban hosts in Afghanistan. But over the years, as the original Al Qaeda splintered and morphed, administrations of both parties stretched it into standing legal authority to fight related groups of Islamist militants, like the Islamic State and Al Shabab, in places like Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen.

The draft has one key difference: It would expire after five years if Congress did not act to extend it. The 2001 law will remain on the books until lawmakers repeal it. Repeated efforts in Congress to do so have foundered over disagreements about what should replace it.

Any decision to push the draft legislation to Congress is likely to set off a pitched political fight over how to weigh a serious problem against fatigue with open-ended “forever wars,” and the wisdom of what would be a massive expansion of Mr. Trump’s ability to use the military as he sees fit. It would also raise the question of whether Congress was effectively giving Mr. Trump the authority to wage a regime-change war in Venezuela.

Mr. Trump’s administration has been ratcheting up pressure on Venezuela and its president, Nicolás Maduro, calling him an illegitimate leader and accusing him of directing the actions of criminal gangs and drug cartels.

Starting in February, the Trump administration broke new ground by labeling various Latin American criminal gangs and drug cartels as “terrorist” organizations, including some from Venezuela. That label and status has traditionally been given only to violent groups with religious or ideological ends, as opposed to criminals seeking illicit profits.

Mr. Trump claimed the right to use an 18th-century wartime deportation law, the Alien Enemies Act, to summarily remove Venezuelans suspected of belonging to one of the criminal gangs his administration had deemed to be terrorists, Tren de Aragua, without due process hearings.

To invoke the law, Mr. Trump claimed that Tren de Aragua was committing crimes in the United States under the direction and control of Mr. Maduro. But the U.S. intelligence community, weighing the available evidence about the gang, believed that accusation was false, a memo declassified in May showed.

Mr. Trump used the law to send several planeloads of Venezuelan migrants to a notorious Salvadoran prison. But courts have for now blocked more such transfers, and have raised doubts about whether the law could be legitimately invoked under present circumstances.

A congressionally authorized armed conflict, however, would provide a new basis for the administration to claim a right to resume using it for summary deportations.

In July, Mr. Trump signed a still-secret order directing the Pentagon to begin using military force against certain Latin American criminal gangs and drug cartels, while stepping up rhetorical attacks on Mr. Maduro. And in August, the U.S. Navy sent a heavy amount of firepower into the southern Caribbean Sea, leading to the Sept. 2 and Sept. 15 attacks.

This week, before Mr. Trump announced the second boat strike, Mr. Maduro condemned the Sept. 2 attack as a “heinous crime” and “a military attack on civilians who were not at war and were not militarily threatening any country.”

He said that if the United States believed that the boat’s passengers were drug traffickers, they should have been arrested. He accused the administration of trying to start a war.

Helene Cooper and Eric Schmitt contributed reporting.