Trump Notifies Congress That the U.S. Is at War with Drug Cartels | National Review

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

62% : As the Times report recounts, the Supreme Court recognized the non-international armed conflict with al-Qaeda as a war because of the mass-murder attack and Congress's authorization of a forcible military response.
47% : As a result, our armed forces not only carried out combat operations; they detained alien enemy combatants under the laws of war and tried some of those detainees for war crimes in military commissions that were initially ordered by President George W. Bush and later authorized by congressional statute.
45% : Hence, we have reached a point at which the president believes he can use force whenever he sees fit for whatever serves the national interest as he sees it; Congress, rather than being asked for authorization, is reduced to using its powers to curtail military operations if it objects.
36% : The Framers did not intend to endow in the president the power that President Trump is claiming.
35% : Anything less than that (e.g., President Obama's bombing of Libya in furtherance of promoting a hoped-for democratic transformation in the Middle East, and now, President Trump's intermittently blowing up vessels suspected of transporting drugs) is a subset of hostilities that falls short of war and therefore needs no congressional approval.
34% : Although the law mandates notice within 48 hours of the engagement, the three reported U.S. missile attacks on seacraft began a month ago (on September 2), and the last one publicly disclosed by President Trump appears to have occurred almost two weeks ago, on September 19.
31% : The importation and distribution of illegal drugs is simply not analogous to a missile strike or other violent mass-murder attack.
20% : Rather, it reportedly claims President Trump has "determined" that the drug smuggling actions of the cartels "constitute an armed attack against the United States.

*Our bias meter rating uses data science including sentiment analysis, machine learning and our proprietary algorithm for determining biases in news articles. Bias scores are on a scale of -100% to 100% with higher negative scores being more liberal and higher positive scores being more conservative, and 0% being neutral. The rating is an independent analysis and is not affiliated nor sponsored by the news source or any other organization.