Senate Republicans on Wednesday blocked a measure that would bar President Trump from using military force against ships in the Caribbean Sea, fending off an attempt to check his power to wage war without congressional authorization.
The vote against the Democratic resolution was 51-48, mostly along partisan lines. It came less than a week after the U.S. military carried out the fourth strike in the Trump administration’s legally contested campaign targeting suspected drug traffickers in the Caribbean.
Senators Adam Schiff of California and Tim Kaine of Virginia, both Democrats, tried to impose the measure by invoking a provision of the War Powers Act of 1973, which requires resolutions to end hostilities to be considered under expedited procedures.
They said they were doing so in response to Mr. Trump’s series of strikes since September 2, which the administration said killed 21 people. The White House has described the strikes as part of a campaign against Venezuelan drug cartels that it accuses of smuggling fentanyl into the United States.
“This is the kind of thing that unexpectedly and unintentionally leads the country into war,” Mr. Schiff said before Wednesday’s vote. He said the resolution also sought to limit the president’s ability to expand his campaign beyond boat strikes.
It was a direct response to the White House’s decision a day earlier to end efforts to reach a diplomatic deal with Venezuela, a possible signal that the administration was considering stepping up its push toward stronger measures more directly targeting President Nicolas Maduro’s government.
The series of ship strikes drew criticism from Democrats and Republicans at the Capitol, including Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Rand Paul of Kentucky, the only two Republicans who voted with nearly all Democrats in favor of limiting the president’s authority.
Mr. Paul, who opposes U.S. military intervention abroad, said he was dissatisfied with the administration’s justification for the strikes and questioned why the boats had not been intercepted. He argued that attacking them left too much uncertainty about who was on board and whether they were carrying drugs.
“If someone gave us an idea of justice, maybe those who are responsible for deciding who to kill could let us know their names, present evidence of their guilt and evidence of their crimes,” Mr. Paul said.
Ms. Murkowski stressed that the Trump administration’s approach to reducing the presence of drugs in the country still requires input from Congress.
“We all absolutely want to get rid of drugs in this country,” she said. “But the approach the administration is taking is new, some would say unprecedented, and I think we have a role to play here.”
In a letter to Congress last week, the administration said that Mr. Trump had “determined” that the United States was engaged in a formal armed conflict with certain drug cartels that his administration considered terrorists. The notice does not name the specific groups involved.
That rationale has been criticized as inadequate by some, but since the first strike, some of the president’s Republican allies on Capitol Hill have sought ways to grant the administration more formal authority to continue carrying out such strikes. They privately discussed authorizing broad use of military force against drug cartels that Mr. Trump considers “terrorists,” as well as against any nation he believes harbored or aided them, according to people familiar with the matter.
“This is an attack on the United States by people designated as terrorists,” said Sen. James E. Risch, Republican of Idaho and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, speaking against the resolution. “The president not only has the right, he has the duty to do something about this.”
Last month, Mr. Kaine, along with 23 other Senate Democrats, sent a letter to the White House questioning the legal basis for the first military strike carried out on September 2. He said the letter went unanswered and the justifications given in congressional notifications and classified briefings were inadequate.
“We asked basic questions: give us information about these particular boats, that they are actually carrying narcotics. Tell us why you decided in these cases not to ban but to strike,” Mr. Kaine said. “These are really important questions. These are questions that an administration should answer to Congress. We asked for a response within a week. We didn’t get answers to these questions.”
Senate Republicans, who maintain a 53-47 majority, have managed to defeat similar attempts to limit Mr. Trump’s authority in his war against foreign adversaries.
In June, senators voted mostly along party lines to reject a measure that would have required the president to first seek congressional approval before carrying out further strikes against Iran. The vote came just days after the U.S. military conducted Operation Midnight Hammer, in which the president ordered Air and Navy forces to carry out strikes against three nuclear facilities in Iran.
Mr. Paul was the only Republican to break with his party to vote in favor of imposing more limits on the president in this case. Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, a strong supporter of Israel who said at the time that the strikes were necessary, was the only Democrat to oppose them.
On Wednesday, he broke with his party again and rejected efforts to curb Mr. Trump’s attacks in the Caribbean by opposing the resolution.
Republicans supporting the president’s campaign argue that he is acting within his constitutional authority as commander in chief, an assertion that former presidents of both parties have relied on when they carried out various military strikes without consulting Congress.
“This seems to me to be an area that falls squarely under Article II,” said Sen. Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri, referring to the part of the Constitution that defines the president’s powers as commander in chief of the U.S. military. The Trump administration has argued that the introduction of illicit drugs onto U.S. shores poses an imminent threat to national security, giving the president the inherent authority to use military force to counter it.
Mr. Kaine and other Democrats have long hoped that Republicans, who often express frustration behind closed doors with Mr. Trump’s unchecked exercises of power, will eventually express their disapproval publicly.
That was the case in April when Mr. Kaine managed to attract a handful of Republican votes for his efforts to reverse some of the Canadian tariffs imposed by Mr. Trump. But in the months that followed, this measure proved to be an isolated measure and did little to curb its aggressive pricing strategy.
“Having spoken to many of my Republican colleagues, I think it’s fair to say that there is bipartisan concern about the administration’s actions using deadly force in this way,” Schiff said.
Ultimately, however, all but two Republicans voted against the war powers measure on Wednesday.
Megan Mineiro reports contributed.
