Two senators from opposite sides of the political aisle reportedly expressed rare bipartisan concern on Friday over the Trump administration’s growing military campaign against alleged drug-running boats traveling from Venezuela toward the United States.
Both lawmakers insisted that Congress must be properly briefed on a strategy that has already resulted in lethal force in international waters.
According to public accounts cited during a joint appearance on C-SPAN, the administration has conducted nine airstrikes on vessels in the Caribbean and the Pacific Ocean, killing dozens of people.
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth escalated the approach further this week, declaring that an aircraft carrier is being deployed to the coast of Latin America to intercept suspected narcotics shipments.
Sen. Chris Coons, Democrat of Delaware, and Sen. James Lankford, Republican of Oklahoma, said that despite the gravity of these missions — and their potential implications for U.S. policy in the region — Congress has been kept largely in the dark.
“I’ve gotten more valuable updates from the press than from either the Pentagon or the White House,” Coons said, voicing deep frustration with the lack of communication from the administration. Identifying himself as “the senior Democrat on Defense and Intelligence Appropriations” with significant security clearance, the senator added pointedly, “Bluntly, these programs, I should not find out about in the press.”
Coons, who has supported efforts to strengthen democracy in Venezuela, emphasized that his concern lies not with targeting the narcotics trade but with the potential political consequences of unchecked military action.
“I agree that we should be interdicting drugs, that we should be preventing drugs from coming to the United States and killing Americans,” he said. He also underscored that Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro “is not a legitimate leader,” and that he “did not win his last election.” However, Coons warned that the United States must not take actions “to do so by force of arms, without consultation in any meaningful way with Congress,” cautioning that such a situation “gravely concerns me.” The senator questioned whether “the facts here fully support how it’s being presented,” urging “deep consultation before they go the next step.”
Moderator Dasha Burns turned to Lankford and asked whether he agreed with Coons, a Democrat who has often criticized the administration’s foreign policy handling.
“Shockingly, I do,” Lankford responded. The conservative senator stressed that the executive branch must provide Congress with necessary information — not to seek permission, he clarified, but to maintain basic accountability. “The administration needs to give insight into Congress, that’s part of it,” he said. Lankford added that if similar decisions had been made under Democratic leadership without proper briefings, “I’d be apoplectic.”
As a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, he argued that consultation is a fundamental expectation between co-equal branches of government. “It’s not permission, but it is, ‘Hey, I want to let you know this is happening and here are the details of what’s happening, and here’s why and what. And here’s what we know…that’s important,’” Lankford said. “We’re all elected officials, we’re in a co-equal branch of government, and we’ve got to be able to have that kind of coordination.”
The senators’ joint stance signals a cautious but firm demand: that even strong action against deadly narcotics must be guided by transparency and constitutional oversight — not unilateral military escalation.
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