Omar Brings War Powers Resolution After Trump Bombed Boat in Caribbean With 'No Legal Justification'

US Rep. Ilhan Omar introduced a war powers resolution in the US House of Representatives on Thursday, seeking to restrain President Donald Trump from conducting attacks in the Caribbean after he ordered a drone strike on a ship from Venezuela last week, killing 11 people.

The Trump administration has claimed, with little evidence, that the boat was a drug trafficking vessel that posed an imminent threat to the United States. But that narrative has come increasingly into doubt in recent days.

In a statement on the resolution provided to The Intercept, Omar (D-Minn.) said:

There was no legal justification for the Trump administration’s military escalation in the Caribbean... It was not self-defense or authorized by Congress. That is why I am introducing a resolution to terminate hostilities against Venezuela, and against the transnational criminal organizations that the administration has designated as terrorists this year. All of us should agree that the separation of powers is crucial to our democracy, and that only Congress has the power to declare war.

Article I, Section 8 of the US Constitution gives Congress the "sole authority to declare war," but presidents have often carried out military actions without congressional approval, citing their role as commander-in-chief of the armed forces, particularly since the passage of the Authorization for Use of Military Force in 2001.

The War Powers Act of 1973 allows Congress to check the president's war-making authority, requiring the president to report military actions to Congress within 48 hours and requiring Congress to authorize the deployment of troops after 60 days.

Omar unveiled the resolution alongside several of her fellow members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, including Chair Greg Casar (D-Texas) and caucus whip Rep. Jesús “Chuy” García (D-Ill.).

"Donald Trump cannot be allowed to drag the United States into another endless war with his reckless actions," Casar said. "It is illegal for the president to take the country to war without consulting the people's representatives, and Congress must vote now to stop Trump from putting us at further risk."

In the days following Trump's strike on the ship, the administration's narrative that it contained members of Venezuela's Tren de Aragua gang bound for the United States has been called into question by news reports and by those briefed by the Department of Defense, which the Trump administration recently rebranded as the "Department of War."

After his staff was briefed on Tuesday, Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told CNN that the Pentagon has "offered no positive identification that the boat was Venezuelan, nor that its crew were members of Tren de Aragua or any other cartel."

While Trump has stated that the boat was en route to the US, the briefers themselves acknowledged that they could not determine its destination. Secretary of State Marco Rubio contradicted the president, saying "these particular drugs were probably headed to Trinidad or some other country in the Caribbean, at which point they just contribute to the instability these countries are facing."

The New York Times, meanwhile, reported Wednesday that the boat "had altered its course and appeared to have turned around before the attack started," which further contradicts the claim of imminent harm to the US.

“There is no evidence—none—that this strike was conducted in self-defense," Reed said. "That matters, because under both domestic and international law, the US military simply does not have the authority to use lethal force against a civilian vessel unless acting in self-defense.”

Even if the people aboard the boat were carrying drugs, as the administration claims, there is no legal precedent for the crime of drug trafficking justifying such an extraordinary use of military retaliation.

The White House has attempted to argue that the president has the legal authority to summarily kill suspected drug smugglers using an unprecedented legal rationale, which labels cartel members as tantamount to enemy combatants, who are allowed to be killed in war, because the product they carry causes thousands of deaths per year in the US. Legal analysts have described this as a flimsy pretext for extrajudicial murder.

Scott R. Anderson, a senior fellow in the National Security Law Program at Columbia Law School and a former legal adviser at the US State Department, wrote for the Lawfare blog:

There is no colorable statutory authority for military action against Tren de Aragua and other similarly situated groups. Occasional suggestions in the press that the Trump administration’s description of Tren de Aragua as a terrorist organization is meant to invoke the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) are almost certainly mistaken: That authorization extends only to the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks and select associates, and no one—not even in the Trump administration—has accused Tren de Aragua of being that.

Marty Lederman, who served as deputy assistant attorney general in the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel from 2009 to 2010, wrote for Just Security:

Regardless of which laws might have been broken, what’s more alarming, and of greater long-term concern, is that U.S. military personnel crossed a fundamental line the Department of Defense has been resolutely committed to upholding for many decades—namely, that (except in rare and extreme circumstances not present here) the military must not use lethal force against civilians, even if they are alleged, or even known, to be violating the law."

The resolution introduced by Omar is the first seeking to restrain Trump's ability to launch military strikes against Venezuela. But it's not the first seeking to rein in his wide-ranging use of unilateral warmaking authority.

In June, following his launch of airstrikes against Iran, war powers resolutions introduced in the House and Senate to limit Trump's actions in the Middle East narrowly failed despite receiving some Republican support.

Though specific attempts to rein in Trump's power have failed, the House did pass a bipartisan resolution earlier this week to repeal the AUMFs issued by Congress in the lead-up to the Iraq War, and which presidents have used for over two decades to justify a wide range of military actions across the Middle East without congressional oversight.

If passed, Omar's measure would require Trump to obtain congressional approval before using military force against Venezuela or launching more strikes on transnational criminal organizations that he has designated as terrorist groups since February, including Tren de Aragua.

García, the Progressive Caucus whip, said the resolution was an effort to begin restoring Congress' authority to check a president operating with impunity.

"The extrajudicial strike against a vessel in the Caribbean Sea is only the most recent of Trump’s reckless, deadly, and illegal military actions. Now, he’s lawlessly threatening a region already profoundly impacted by the destabilization of U.S. actions,” said García. "With this War Powers Resolution, we emphasize the total illegality of his action, and— consistent with overwhelming public opposition to forever war—reclaim Congress' sole power to authorize military action.”