Republican Senators, with an assist from Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., voted down an attempt block the Trump administration’s missile strikes on alleged Venezuelan drug boats on Wednesday, hours after a nominee to serve as the CIA’s top lawyer dodged questions from Democrats about the secret legal justification for the strikes at his confirmation hearing.
The Senate voted 51-48 against a War Powers Act resolution sponsored by Sens. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and Tim Kaine, D-Va. — the first time members of Congress went on the record about the strikes.
If passed, the resolution would have blocked Donald Trump’s administration from conducting further strikes without congressional approval.
Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska were the only Republicans to vote in favor of the resolution. Fetterman was the sole Democrat to break with the rest of his caucus, mirroring his vote earlier this year for a similar resolution in response to the Trump administration’s strike on Iran. (Fetterman’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.) Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, did not vote.
“There is also the policy issue of the risk of the U.S. getting embroiled in another war.”
The vote came days after the fourth confirmed boat strike conducted by the U.S. military. Those strikes, which the administration claims hit boats carrying drugs, have taken the lives of at least 21 people.
Hours before the vote, Colombian President Gustavo Petro said on social media that evidence suggested that the fourth boat strike was against a Colombian vessel carrying Colombian citizens.
While Colombia is a nominal U.S. ally in the war on drugs, the strikes have led to increased tensions with Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who has pledged to defend his country by force if necessary as the U.S. deploys thousands of military personnel in the Caribbean.
Schiff said the strikes raised questions about the balance of power between the executive and legislative branches.
“There is also the policy issue of the risk of the U.S. getting embroiled in another war,” he said.
The Trump administration has not sought congressional approval for the strikes, despite declaring last week that it was at war with drug traffickers. Scholars have said the Trump administration’s legal case for the attacks is baseless.
Speaking on the Senate floor, Sen. Jim Risch, R-Idaho, who chairs the Foreign Relations Committee, defended the Trump administration’s actions.
“People were attacking our country by bringing in poisonous substances,” he said. “The people carrying those drugs were terrorists, plain and simple. They were trafficking drugs that finance a designated foreign terrorist organization.”
“We will never know, because they were blown to smithereens.”
His fellow Republican, Paul, said that the terrorist label has been twisted out of recognition.
“The blow-them-to-smithereens crowd might stop to ponder that a good percentage of the ships that we actually search turn out not to be drug smugglers,” Paul said. “We will never know, because they were blown to smithereens.”
Ahead of the vote, Schiff and Kaine sought to cast it as an attempt to force the administration to comply with the Constitution in order to win over Republicans who might take a principled vote in favor of checks and balances. That prospect was dashed by the vote, which turned into a nearly party-line affair.
The most salient political effect for Democrats may have been putting virtually the entire Republican caucus on record.
Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., has introduced a similar War Powers Resolution in the House of Representatives that has yet to come up for a vote.
As Kaine acknowledged earlier Wednesday, Trump could veto the measures even if they overcome an uphill battle in the Republican-controlled Congress.
Still, he argued that a similar War Powers Resolution that Trump vetoed in 2020, after he ordered a strike on an Iranian military commander, served as a check on further military actions.
Elsewhere on Capitol Hill, the debate over the boat strikes spilled over into the confirmation hearing of Joshua Simmons, a top legal adviser to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, to serve as general counsel for the CIA.
Simmons evaded questions from Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee about whether he was involved in internal discussions about the legal basis for the strikes, which has not been made public.
Simmons said, “I’m not in a position to discuss any legal advice that I may or may not have provided.”
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“They have a big plant or a big facility where the ships come from. Two nights ago, we knocked that out. We hit them very hard.”