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President Trump is keeping everyone guessing about his military buildup near Venezuela. The U.S. has carried out 15 strikes on boats that he says were carrying drugs. More than 60 people have been killed. And Trump won't say whether he's planning to strike inside Venezuela as a next step to pressure that country's leader, Nicolas Maduro. NPR's Michele Kelemen reports some lawmakers are worried that Trump is dragging the U.S. into war without explaining why.
MICHELE KELEMEN, BYLINE: The ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Jeanne Shaheen, has been frustrated by the lack of briefings on the Trump administration's military buildup near Venezuela. She says even her former colleague on the committee, former senator and now Secretary of State Marco Rubio, has been unresponsive.
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JEANNE SHAHEEN: I don't talk to Secretary Rubio on a regular basis. He doesn't return my calls.
KELEMEN: The Republican Chairman Jim Risch's spokesperson says he's satisfied with the communications from the Trump administration on this matter. But Shaheen and other Democrats have written to Rubio calling for hearings and arguing that the public deserves to know why the U.S. is blowing up fast boats and sending more military assets to the region.
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SHAHEEN: The potential for escalation here gets higher as the administration puts more military assets into the region, as the president talks about the CIA taking action, as he talks about land strikes in Latin America.
KELEMEN: Republican Senator Rand Paul has echoed these concerns and has co-sponsored a resolution that would block the use of force against Venezuela. It points out that only Congress has the ability to declare war. And under the War Powers Act, the administration must notify Congress within 48 hours of an initial strike, and then it has 60 days to get authorization from lawmakers to continue military action. That deadline is today, says Heather Brandon-Smith, who's with a Quaker organization called the Friends Committee on National Legislation.
HEATHER BRANDON-SMITH: And if the administration continues to conduct this campaign of strikes, they will be violating the War Powers Resolution.
KELEMEN: The Trump administration disagrees. A senior administration official explains in a statement that because these are mostly drone strikes launched from naval vessels in international waters, U.S. service members are not put in harm's way. So the administration believes it doesn't need congressional authorization. Brandon-Smith calls that a breathtaking claim.
BRANDON-SMITH: What the administration is claiming is that it has the right to kill people who are not firing upon the U.S. and do not pose a threat of violent attack on the U.S., and that it can do this indefinitely without any say-so from Congress.
KELEMEN: Trump's critics also don't buy the rationale that the strikes are focused on stopping the drug trade. Asked if this is about drugs or regime change in Venezuela, President Trump told CBS' "60 Minutes" that it's about many things. He predicted Maduro's days are numbered, and he wouldn't say whether he would approve strikes inside Venezuela. While this may be just an attempt to intimidate Maduro, Amnesty International's Daniel Norona is worried that the Venezuelan leader will respond by cracking down on activists at home.
DANIEL NORONA: For example, one scenario that could be seen is that the government will start collective-punishing people, arguing that they are spies from the U.S. or something similar to that. So that's one of our biggest concerns at the time.
KELEMEN: He says Maduro has already been reaching out to his allies in Russia, China and Iran.
Michele Kelemen, NPR News, the State Department.
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