{"id":14769,"date":"2025-11-03T16:24:55","date_gmt":"2025-11-03T16:24:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/?p=14769"},"modified":"2025-11-03T16:24:56","modified_gmt":"2025-11-03T16:24:56","slug":"anyone-anywhere-for-any-reason-at-all","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/?p=14769","title":{"rendered":"Anyone, Anywhere, for Any Reason at All"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

by William Kristol<\/em>. THEBULWARK<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In the 1948 classic, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre<\/em>, a gang of local bandits confronts American adventurers south of the border. Both groups are in pursuit of the gold treasure of the movie\u2019s title. The criminals demand the cooperation of the Americans, implausibly claiming to be \u201cfederales\u2014you know, the mounted police.\u201d One of the Americans (Humphrey Bogart) asks, \u201cIf you\u2019re the police, where are your badges?\u201d To which the gang leader \u2018Gold Hat\u2019 famously and indignantly responds: \u201cBadges? We ain\u2019t got no badges. We don\u2019t need no badges! I don\u2019t have to show you any stinkin\u2019 badges!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This exchange is supposed to exemplify the regime of lawlessness that allegedly prevailed south of our border. In the United States, by contrast, it was assumed that the authorities act with the sanction of law. Around here, we carry badges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That was then. The Trump administration is now. Masked ICE agents seize law-abiding individuals on our cities\u2019 streets. The U.S. military sinks defenseless boats on the high seas. At home and abroad, the administration has ever more brazenly embraced the proposition that they need no law to authorize their actions. The Trump administration believes it doesn\u2019t need no badges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And so the Washington Post<\/em> reported<\/a> Saturday that the Trump Justice Department has told Congress that the administration will continue its lethal strikes against boats with alleged drug traffickers aboard while ignoring the law requiring Congressional approval for ongoing hostilities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Under the 1973 War Powers Resolution, the president needs congressional approval for any military action that lasts more than 60 days. The attacks on the alleged drug boats began on September 2. On September 4, the administration seemed to acknowledge that the act had triggered the 1973 law, informing Congress that it had conducted the strike and stating an alleged rationale. Since then, there have been over a dozen such strikes and many dozens of people have been killed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ongoing military action has now passed the 60-day mark for congressional approval as specified in the law. But the administration has decided the strikes don\u2019t meet the definition of \u201chostilities\u201d under the law. And so it doesn\u2019t intend to seek congressional approval of the ongoing action. In other words, it intends to ignore the law.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A senior administration official\u2014who spoke on the condition that he not be named\u2014told the Post<\/em> that because U.S. troops don\u2019t appear to be in direct danger in the ongoing attacks, which are being conducted at a distance on targets that can\u2019t shoot back, the law does not apply. While the War Powers Resolution has a long and complicated history, the administration\u2019s argument doesn\u2019t stand up to serious legal analysis, as these articles<\/a> at the website Just Security demonstrate<\/a>, and as NYU Law\u2019s Ryan Goldman carefully explained<\/a> yesterday on The Bulwark on Sunday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But all you have to do is consider the implications of the administration\u2019s argument. The Trump administration is basically claiming the right to kill anyone anywhere, with bombs or missiles or drones, for any reason or for no reason, with no evidence provided and no accountability to Congress or the American people. As Brian Finucane, the War Powers Resolution lawyer at the State Department in the first Trump administration, told the Post<\/em>, this<\/a> is \u201ca wild claim of executive authority.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even congressional Republicans are getting restive. On Friday, Sen. Roger Wicker (R.-MS), chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, made public two letters he\u2019d sent to the administration along with his Democratic counterpart, Sen. Jack Reed, challenging the administration\u2019s failure to provide legal justifications and other information they\u2019re obliged by law to provide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the Trump administration doesn\u2019t take this or other legal obligations seriously. On October 23, Trump was asked about seeking congressional approval for these acts of war. \u201cWe may go to the Senate, we may go to the Congress and tell them about it. But I can\u2019t imagine they\u2019d have any problem with it,\u201d he said. He went on to boast, \u201cI think we\u2019re just gonna kill people that are bringing drugs into our country. Okay, we\u2019re going to kill them. You know, they\u2019re going to be, like, dead.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You know what is, like, dead: The guardrails that protect the rule of law. The Trump administration won\u2019t abide by congressional constraints on the use of military force abroad. It has been demolishing the internal guardrails in the executive branch against presidential lawlessness. And when you put all this together with the use of the military not just abroad but at home, we are well down the road to becoming\u2014to use a term popular in the era of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre<\/em>\u2014a banana republic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre<\/em> doesn\u2019t end well. Lots of Americans and Mexicans are dead, and the treasure is nowhere to be found.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One hopes that generations of Americans will have the pleasure of watching The Treasure of the Sierra Madre<\/em>. But one wonders if they\u2019ll be mystified by Humphrey Bogart\u2019s assumption that we\u2019re entitled to expect government officials to act under legal authority. Because we\u2019re the ones who now say that we don\u2019t need no stinking badges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That won\u2019t end well either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by William Kristol. THEBULWARK In the 1948 classic, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, a gang of local bandits confronts American adventurers south of the border. Both groups are in pursuit of the gold treasure […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14771,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62],"tags":[85],"class_list":{"0":"post-14769","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-slider","8":"tag-politics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14769","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14769"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14769\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14772,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14769\/revisions\/14772"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14771"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}