Charlie Savage

And thanks to the Supreme Court last year, the president now, of course, has...

immunity for his official actions and so i don't think there's going to be a lawsuit or a prosecution anywhere that will give us a definitive answer i think what we're talking about more is just a political reaction and just a thought of you know what does this mean for the soldiers under the command of these people who are executing these orders to say nothing of what does this mean for people on boats in the caribbean

Theoretically, yes, if there were political will.

And that's a huge question right now, obviously.

Under the War Powers Resolution, which is a Vietnam-era law that gives Congress some tools, it could, for example, vote on a resolution directing the executive branch to end its military operation.

And in fact, there is such legislation being introduced right now by Senators Adam Schiff and Tim Kaine.

You will notice that they are both Democrats and there is not a majority of Democrats in either the House or the Senate right now.

And Trump could veto such a resolution directing him to end the operation.

So you would need two thirds majorities in both chambers.

Not likely to happen.

The flip side is, one of the things we learned last week is that there is a slightly mysterious draft bill that is circulating within the executive branch and within Congress that would authorize use of armed force against groups that Trump deems to be narco-terrorists.

And it's interesting that that's floating around.

And whether it could, in fact, pass Congress to at least legalize this as a matter of domestic law—

is questionable in a period in which there's a lot of fatigue over the forever war, open-ended war on terror.

This bill, yes.

And, you know, we're so used to thinking about the war on drugs going back to the 80s as this sort of metaphor, right?

And so, yes, this would be a literal war on groups and people that Trump deems to be narco-terrorists and countries he deems to have harbored or aided them.

And so to the extent that all this military hardware in the Caribbean and the

Discussion of cartels as terrorists also seems to be pointed at Nicolas Maduro, the president of Venezuela, who the Trump administration very clearly would like to see not in power.

Yes, I think that is perhaps the most important question in trying to make sense of all this from the outside.