Some members of Congress bristled at a briefing from a senior administration lawyer who told them the Trump administration had no intention of complying with the War Powers Resolution regarding the ongoing campaign to crack down on Venezuelan drug cartels. According to Washington PostT. Elliot Gaiser, the Trump administration's chief legal officer, said the administration did just that. did not believe that strikes met the definition of military action under the law, and did not intend to seek an extension of the deadline or congressional approval of ongoing actions.
Heads burst. “The administration appears to be exceeding the 60-day limit,” said a senior congressional aide.
- Brian Finucane is a former State Department legal adviser and now a senior adviser to the US program at the International Crisis Group. “This is a wild claim on the executive branch.”
I really have no idea who Finucane is when he gets up and puts his trousers on, but he does seem to at least have some degree of self-importance.
- “In any normal administration, someone would be fired for this kind of abuse,” said Sen. Mark R. Warner of Virginia, ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
- “I believe the administration is committing illegal actions and doing everything it can to evade Congress,” said New York Rep. Gregory Meeks, ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
- “The last word I gave to the admiral [that would be Rear Admiral Brian Bennett, the Navy's Deputy Director for Special Warfare] I hope you understand the constitutional danger you are in and the danger you are putting our troops in,” threatened Massachusetts Democrat Seth Moulton, who is unimportant.
To avoid being cancelled, some weaker Republicans also had to take part in the show.
Sen. Roger Wicker (Mississippi), the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, joined in a rare bipartisan rebuke that same day. He and fellow Democrat Sen. Jack Reed (Rhode Island) released two letters they both sent to the Pentagon weeks earlier asking for legal documents, attack orders and a list of targets. They wrote that the Department of Defense exceeded the legal deadline for providing some materials.
Let's be clear. The War Powers Resolution is a joke. It is superficially unconstitutional because it assumes that Congress is the super-duper Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces when it states: “The Constitutional authority of the President as Commander in Chief to commit the Armed Forces of the United States to hostilities or in situations where circumstances inevitably indicate imminent participation in hostilities is exercised only pursuant to (1) a declaration of war, (2) specific statutory authorization, or (3) a national emergency caused by an attack.” the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces.” That hasn't happened since President George Washington sent the U.S. Army and Lt. Col. Josiah Harmer to push the Indians out of the Northwest Territories.
The law was forced upon a scandal-weakened Richard Nixon, and since then both presidents and Congress have pretended that it had the force of law. The President used it only once. President Gerald Ford did this on May 15, 1975, in conjunction with the SS. Mayaguez incidentand subsequent US Marines attacked Koh Tang. It was not observed during the invasion of Grenada and Panama or the invasion of Yugoslavia.
Congress twice used the War Powers Resolution to force a cessation of hostilities. Both times the President was very happy to believe that Congress had ended the conflict. The first time was the end of US involvement under President Reagan in Lebanon in 1983. Reagan signed the War Powers Resolution limiting US involvement to 18 months, but he did so by stating: “Bye he agreed to the resolution authorizing the use of force, he could not “cede any of the powers vested in me by the Constitution as President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the United States.”
The second time I got Bill Clinton. from Somalia in 1995. It is noteworthy that together with Clinton sending troops to Haiti, He said“[l]Like my predecessors in both parties, I do not agree that I am constitutionally required to obtain congressional approval for military action.
Congress tried to use the War Powers Resolution to force President Trump to end his involvement in Yemen and Iran; President Trump vetoed both resolutions (Here | Here).
The bottom line is that presidents of all parties ignored the War Powers Resolution unless it was politically advantageous to pay attention to it. Trump's brutal weaponization of his political enemies is not the same as breaking an unenforceable law. The War Powers Resolution is not used because it is virtually impossible to get a president who opposes it to agree to it. The Commander-in-Chief is not responsible to Congress on military matters. If Congress objects, it can stop funding the operation. Finally, the War Powers Resolution is clearly and manifestly unconstitutional. Everyone knows this, and the reason no one in Congress has ever sued to enforce this law is because they know how this movie ends.
Given everything about this issue, it really makes you wonder why the Democrats are going after Trump so hard, leaving the drug cartels alone even though they appear to be extremely popular. I mean, unless money was involved somehow.
Poll: 71% of Americans support Trump's strikes on drug smugglers https://t.co/UDOT20FyCM
— John Solomon (@jsolomonReports) October 10, 2025
On this issue, I think President Trump is right. two main points. First, there is no such thing as “imminent hostilities.” Secondly, the law does not contemplate the occurrence of a conflict in international waters:
1) in hostilities or in a situation where circumstances clearly indicate the inevitability of participation in hostilities;
(2) into the territory, airspace, or waters of a foreign country while equipped for combat operations, except on deployments that are solely related to the supply, replacement, repair, or training of such forces; or
(3) in a quantity that substantially increases the armed forces of the United States equipped for combat already located in a foreign country;
If any of the people complaining about this topic are that upset, they can introduce a resolution, get it through the Senate and House, get President Trump to veto it, and then override his veto. The last thing President Trump should do is hand over all executive power to this group of fools who really don't care if Americans get killed, but they care very much about hurting President Trump.
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