STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
U.S. military strikes on boats in the Caribbean raise a question that has come to dominate the Trump administration. It's not just what the government does, it's who gets to decide. And President Trump says it's only him. Yesterday, a reporter asked the president if he plans to ask Congress for a declaration of war against Venezuela, one of the sources of boats the United States has been striking.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I don't think we're going to necessarily ask for a declaration of war. I think we're just going to kill people that are bringing drugs into our country, OK? We're going to kill them, you know? They're going to be, like, dead, OK?
INSKEEP: And Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth says that six more are dead after a strike overnight. It is common in recent decades for presidents to bypass Congress when ordering acts of war, but the administration is leaving lawmakers in the dark in other ways. NPR's Quil Lawrence has been covering all this. Quil, good morning.
QUIL LAWRENCE, BYLINE: Good morning.
INSKEEP: I just want to note, I mean, I'm a taxpayer. You're a taxpayer. We pay for Congress. Congress works for us, and one of the things they're supposed to do is oversee administrations and look in on things that the administration is doing. How much is the administration sharing about what they're doing in the Caribbean?
LAWRENCE: Not much, really - and as a little bit of background, we obtained a memo this week from the Secretary of Defense stating that they are going to limit unauthorized engagements with Congress. And I'm quoting from the memo here, "no matter how well-intentioned, may undermine the department-wide priorities," meaning that they're going to cut off hundreds of communications - routine communications between the Department of Defense and Congress. So that may further limit what little information had come out. We've just really seen these grainy videos of alleged drug boats exploding in the sea. We haven't had many other details. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has said that the tactics the military is using here sort of mirror what was done in the so-called war on terror.
INSKEEP: And I guess some of the language also mirrors what was said in the war on terror, like when the administration calls these people enemy combatants, which is a term with a particular legal meaning or says the drug cartels are foreign terrorist organizations like al-Qaida or ISIS.
LAWRENCE: Yeah, that's the legal justifications that used for killing them even when they aren't armed. And it's - I'm talking to members of congressional staff and Pentagon officials who aren't authorized to speak publicly. And they say as harsh as it sounds, they don't think the administration's really going to pay a political price for this. These people, many of them possibly are drug mules or maybe they're subsistence fishermen. Regardless, they don't have the sort of constituency that's going to cause a huge international outcry.
Colombian president - the Colombian president has condemned one of the killings - one of his citizens who was killed in the strike. His name was Alejandro Carranza. It's one of the few names we know. That is causing a little bit of a backlash in U.S.-Colombian relations. But there's another concern here, and that's really what this is doing, I'm hearing from Pentagon sources, to the U.S. military's reputation and sort of moral standing in the world.
INSKEEP: Oh. Well, let's talk about that then. What are you hearing?
LAWRENCE: Well, I mean, one thing is very practical. I mean, if these are illegal orders, then someone could get arrested by the International Criminal Court - a U.S. military, a naval officer traveling in Europe. But more importantly, what I'm hearing is that it's about honor and morality. Last week, we learned that Admiral Alvin Holsey is leaving SOUTHCOM with less than a year in the job. Speculation is he was not comfortable with a system where the White House was declaring these civilians enemy combatants and killing them just on the president's say-so. And a Pentagon official told me that the biggest worry is that this could somehow become the norm.
INSKEEP: OK. Ongoing operations in the Caribbean. We'll continue trying to learn what we can, although the administration is saying less than they might. NPR's Quil Lawrence from our national security team, thanks so much.
LAWRENCE: Thank you, Steve. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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