It began innocently enough in 1982 when a schoolgirl asked former First Lady Nancy Reagan what she should do if someone offered her drugs. Mrs. Reagan smiled and said the immortal words, "Just say no." Four years later, the Just Say No campaign began a Quixotic quest to bend the demand curve in the United States for illicit drugs. The campaign eventually morphed into D.A.R.E, or Drug Abuse Resistance Education, and by the mid-2000's, upwards of a billion dollars had been spent through various grants and other programs attempting to break the cycle of drug abuse by targeting kids early about the dangers and evils of narcotics.
Mrs. Reagan's simplistic answer to the child was mocked and ridiculed by the left for decades as being too naive to be taken seriously. On the practical front, the drug war, if it was ever going to be fought effectively, had to be a two-front war. It couldn't just be a demand-side campaign, although that very much needs to continue. At some point, the supply chain had to be interdicted as well, something that, despite both political parties talking a good game over the years, never really accomplished anything productive to stop the flow of illegal drugs into this country.
I understand the libertarian argument - legalize drugs, and the problem will eventually work itself out. I'm here to tell you that, as a Californian, anything is virtually legal for the simple reason that the state doesn't prosecute drug offenses to the fullest extent of the law. So for all intents and purposes, it's wide open. And this is the result you get.
Sunday before dawn: Drugs dealers and addicts near a San Francisco MUNI station on Market St. Mere blocks from major hotels, offices and two shopping malls (essentially abandoned). City officials and Mayor Lurie turned away fed enforcement assistance.https://t.co/6VHFoVpl19
— Richie Greenberg (@greenbergnation) October 26, 2025
That's San Francisco. Los Angeles doesn't fare too much better. Hundreds of thousands of Americans have died from fentanyl overdoses alone, let alone heroin, cocaine, meth, and more. We lost Tom Petty way too soon because of an accidental overdose of fentanyl-laced opioids, and that alone, to me, is worth splashing at least a hundred Venezuelan drug boats. Losing Petty was catastrophic.
Donald Trump campaigned that he would do something to fix and/or control the growing drug problem that exploded during Joe Biden's regency, and do something, he has.
Narcotics flowing across the border, with and without illegal migrants attached, have all but ceased. Eight drug cartels south of the border have been officially designated as terrorist groups, opening up the ability of the administration to fight the drug war in a real and consequential way for the first time in my adult life. And on September 2nd, the first of what would be two dozen strikes and counting on suspected drug-carrying boats in international waters have sent hundreds of drug runners, and tons of poison as cargo intended to kill Americans, to Davy Jones' locker.
Naturally, because Donald Trump is the one finally taking it to the cartels, Never Trump, Inc. (Democrats, Never Trump Republicans, and Resistance Media) have gravitated to the position of defending the Constitutional and due process rights...of the drug runners. They argue that Trump does not have the authority to conduct these strikes without Congressional approval, and that the President, by authorizing these strikes, is providing the evidence the so-called Seditious Six needed to defend their stupid video warning American servicemembers not to carry out illegal orders. They believe that each strike is self-evidently an illegal order.
The bottom line? Of course, it's legal. And if one cuts through their animus towards Trump and spends two seconds looking at the issue clearly, not only does Trump have the Constitution on his side, he has hundreds of years of precedent.
Hugh Hewitt has taught Constitutional law for three decades and wrote a column for Fox News a couple weeks ago that summarizes what powers Article II bestows in the unitary executive.
The short summary of the president’s powers spelled out in Article II is: "The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America…. The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United…"
That short excerpt from the Constitution defines the power of every sovereign with just a few words.
In short, with regard to the military and/or foreign policy, the President has the power to do what he or she believes is in the best interest of the United States until Congress says no.
Thomas Jefferson, who thought he was going too far, nevertheless carried out the Louisiana Purchase without Congressional approval, and got away with it because Congress didn't challenge him.
Ronald Reagan invaded and liberated Grenada without getting Congressional approval. Democrat John Conyers filed a lawsuit against Reagan for violating the War Powers Act, but that lawsuit was dismissed by the district court. And on appeal, the D.C. Circuit dismissed it as moot, because it deemed Congress had other options than to sue the president. Among those options? Pass a law saying the President can't act. They didn't.
Bill Clinton authorized cruise missile strikes on Somalia twice in 1993, multiple times in Bosnia a year later, and authorized kinetic military action in Haiti that same year. Clinton also hit Iraq in 1993, 1996, and 1998. He attacked Afghanistan and Sudan repeatedly in 1998, including the now-infamous aspirin factory. In 1999, Kosovo and Yugoslavia was where Clinton repeatedly sent missiles to rearrange the furniture of Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic. And during his entire time in office, he used the military to enforce a no-fly zone over Iraq. In any of these interventions, did Clinton seek pre-authorization from Congress? No. And did a court swoop in and tell him he couldn't? No. And why not? Because we only have one commander-in-chief. Yes, Congress is the only entity that can declare war, but foreign policy is conducted by the Executive solely, and decisions and actions based upon those decisions are often times immediate due to the threats to or interests of the United States. The President most times simply cannot wait for Congressional action. He sometimes has to act on the international stage as a sovereign.
Barack Obama used technology that didn't exist during Clinton's time in office. Obama was the drone king, authorizing somewhere between 500-600 drone strikes on a myriad of targets around the world he deemed to be a potential threat to the United States, all without Congressional approval.
And Donald Trump took action against ISIS early in 2017, liberating Raqqa from the Islamist caliphate, without Congressional approval.
But now that the very same president is using kinetic action to seriously interrupt the supply line of deadly narcotics into the country, the idea that we have to protect the presumption of innocence afforded by the American legal system to drug runners and stop Trump from acting is beyond preposterous.
Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton, who chairs the Senate Intel Committee and also runs the Senate Republican Conference, said this yesterday on Meet the Press.
Tom Cotton says those on alleged drug boats ‘all valid targets’ for strikes: Full interview https://t.co/ZCPPoVFR9z pic.twitter.com/UT513wcIda
— Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) December 7, 2025
If and when Congress passes a law restricting the President's use of force to protect America from imminent danger, then you'll get the Supreme Court weighing in on a conflict between the Article I and Article II branches. Until then, barring Congressional action, Trump can and should continue to act with the authority precedence has provided him. Cotton is reflecting the overall mood of 53 Republicans in the United States Senate. Some may quibble publicly, like Lisa Murkowski and Rand Paul, but that's just talk. They're not about to draw up legislation to move against the President's actions.
If another flotilla of rocket parts from Iran began to make its way across the Mediterranean to Israel, do you think for a second, post-10/7, that Israel wouldn't splash that boat and its contents? Of course, they would. Israel has taken kinetic action since the peace deal in the Middle East against Hezbollah, Hamas, and other threats it perceives, because it can. Europe has had no problems with American military interventions over decades to stamp out hotspots on their continent, especially during the Clinton and Obama years, and all of a sudden, they now deign to complain about the United States acting in their own hemisphere against a drug invasion? It's laughably absurd.
There is one problem lurking around the corner, however, for the administration, and it's one that frankly, I'm surprised the cartelistas to our south have not yet deployed. At some point in the near future, the narco-terrorists are going to quit using actual drug smugglers to attempt to run narcotics at high speed. They will eventually figure out they can't outrun, even with four outboard engines, fighter jets, and/or drones. But what if the next load of drugs has a dozen kidnapped nuns sitting on top of the drums, or the inhabitants of an orphanage aboard used as human shields to protect the drugs?
The threat to the United States would be no less imminent, and the President and military would be well within their rights to take the same action. But would that be the most prudent action, considering the public relations nightmare that would follow? In today's media climate, that's debatable.
Trump's drug interdiction is definitely one of many things for which I voted. I won't change my opinion if there are innocent casualties that get caught up in our increased intensity to fight the drug war. But there will be a ton of people in America, who otherwise are on board with Trump's immigration and drug policy, who will get very squeamish, very quickly when they see footage of bits of teddy bears floating in the water near a flaming wreckage of what was recently a boat carrying cocaine.
So far, the only people complaining about the drug strikes are those who hate Trump, no matter what he does, and Rand Paul. I can live with that. That will change, though, if the cartels deploy a floating version of the Gaza human shield strategy. Hopefully, American military and intelligence are factoring that into the equation, because that scenario is coming.
Short of that, I'm right there with what Secretary of State Marco Rubio said back in late October.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio: "If people want to stop seeing drug boats blown up, stop sending drugs to the United States." 🔥🔥🔥pic.twitter.com/Ap6iscmtiE
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) October 22, 2025
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