Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) emerged from a classified Senate briefing this week with a blunt assessment: the Trump administration's recent military strikes in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific have neither legal authorization nor any real connection to protecting Americans.
What Murphy Heard in the Briefing Room
The Connecticut Democrat posted on X Wednesday after sitting through a classified presentation led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on U.S. military operations targeting drug trafficking routes.
"Bottom line: there is no legal or national security justification for what they're doing. Not even close," Murphy wrote, sharing video of his subsequent remarks.
The briefing revealed something particularly striking: officials acknowledged that Venezuela isn't actually a significant source of fentanyl entering the United States.
"There's no fentanyl coming to the United States from Venezuela," Murphy said flatly.
While Venezuela does export cocaine, Murphy explained, "almost all of the cocaine that is coming out of Venezuela into the Caribbean isn't going to the United States. It's going to Europe."
Which raises an obvious question about why American taxpayers are footing the bill. "We are spending billions of your taxpayer dollars to wage a war in the Caribbean" that doesn't actually protect Americans, Murphy argued.
The Constitutional Question Nobody Asked
Murphy also dismantled the administration's legal reasoning for the strikes. The Trump team has argued that designating drug cartels as terrorist organizations gives them authority to launch military operations.
Not so fast, Murphy said. "The president does have the ability to designate certain groups as terrorist organizations, but that does not give him the ability or the authorization to carry out military strikes."
He added: "Only Congress, only the American public, can authorize war."
The Body Count Keeps Rising
The debate comes as the strikes continue. Defense Secretary Hegseth announced that the U.S. military carried out a lethal strike on a vessel in the eastern Pacific, killing four people.
Hegseth posted on X that Joint Task Force Southern Spear had targeted a vessel operated by a designated terrorist organization in international waters, which intelligence confirmed was on a known narco-trafficking route. No U.S. military personnel were harmed.
The strike came a day after Trump announced a blockade of sanctioned Venezuelan oil tankers, accusing Venezuela of funding drug trafficking and other crimes while pledging to escalate the U.S. military presence.
Earlier in the week, the Pentagon said it had struck three additional boats accused of drug trafficking in the Pacific, killing eight people. Since September 2, more than 20 strikes have killed at least 99 people, mostly off Venezuela's coast.
Democrats Line Up Against the Strikes
Murphy characterized the campaign as essentially "the war on European cocaine," given that the strikes target shipments headed across the Atlantic rather than to American cities.
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) escalated the criticism further, accusing Republicans of blocking the release of footage showing a strike that killed shipwrecked survivors. Schiff alleged the administration is edging toward war with Venezuela.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) warned that Trump lacks the authority for the strikes without Congressional approval and promised a bipartisan resolution to block unauthorized military action.
The fundamental disconnect is hard to ignore: an administration claiming to fight fentanyl deaths by bombing cocaine shipments to Europe, all while the Constitution's war powers clause sits gathering dust.