New war power bill gives Trump sweeping authority to attack dozens of nations: Report. The Cradle | September 23, 2025.
alethonews.com
Legislation has been drafted that would give US President Donald Trump unchecked power to wage war against drug cartels as well as any nation he says has harbored or aided them, the New York Times (NYT) reported on 23 September, citing people familiar with the matter.
If passed, the legislation would allow the US president to deem as “terrorists” any groups that have trafficked in drugs or financed drug-related enterprises. The president would then have the authorization to use military force against such groups and any governments allegedly harboring them.
The US military carried out attacks this month on three boats that Trump claims were smuggling drugs in the Caribbean Sea. The strikes killed 17 people and were widely criticized as illegal. Human Rights Watch (HRW) called the strikes “unlawful extrajudicial killings.”
NYT notes that the draft legislation appears to be modeled on the Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) that Congress granted former US president George W. Bush to launch the so-called “War on Terror” after the 9/11 attacks in 2001.
While theoretically passed to allow the US to target Al-Qaeda and its hosts in Afghanistan, the broad nature of the AUMF allowed the Bush, Obama, and first Trump administrations to invade Iraq and to target Islamic militant groups in Libya, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen many times over a period stretching decades.
Neither the AUMF nor the new draft legislation being considered names a specific enemy. The president is therefore empowered to attack any group, anywhere, in an open-ended war.
NYT stated that this raises the question of whether Congress was giving Trump the “authority to wage a regime change war in Venezuela.”
In addition to striking the three boats, Trump has ordered additional US warplanes and naval ships to the Caribbean, while also accusing Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro of leading a drug cartel.
In July, Trump signed a still-secret order directing the Pentagon to begin using military force against certain Latin American criminal gangs and drug cartels, NYT added.
The Institute for Responsible Statecraft stated that the legislation could be used to justify US military intervention in at least 60 countries.
In comments given to NYT, Harvard Professor Jack Goldsmith called the draft legislation “insanely broad,” essentially “an open-ended war authorization against an untold number of countries, organizations, and persons that the president could deem within its scope.”
Earlier this year, the White House added a long list of Latin American drug cartels to the national “Foreign Terrorist Organizations” (FTO) list, giving the US the pretext to launch military action against many groups in dozens of different countries if the draft legislation is passed.
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