Using Military Inside the U.S. — Week of Sep 8, 2025

This week, several members of Congress raised concerns about military actions inside and near the United States. The most significant was a military strike in the Caribbean that reportedly killed 11 people aboard a civilian vessel. Senator Jack Reed described the operation in a detailed floor speech, stating that the strike was carried out without congressional authorization, without evidence of self-defense, and without the legally required notifications to Congress. Venezuela placed its military on high alert in response. Meanwhile, members from Oregon and Illinois described National Guard deployments or threatened deployments to cities including Portland and Chicago for immigration enforcement purposes. Senator Durbin reported that when senators visited a military facility being used for immigration operations near Chicago, federal officials closed the building rather than provide a briefing. President Trump also signed an executive order adding "Department of War" as a secondary title for the Department of Defense.

This might matter because the legal rules separating military force from domestic policing — including the Posse Comitatus Act and the War Powers Resolution — exist specifically to ensure that Congress, not the president alone, controls when and how the military is used. If lethal military strikes are conducted without the required congressional notifications and troops are deployed to American cities for law enforcement purposes, Congress's ability to check executive military power — a safeguard built into the Constitution — could be weakened in practice even if the laws remain on the books.

There are important alternative explanations to consider. The Caribbean strike may be authorized under longstanding counter-narcotics military operations that have been conducted by multiple administrations for decades, and the delay in briefing Congress could reflect logistical difficulties rather than an intent to avoid oversight. National Guard deployments for immigration support also have recent precedent, and governors can push back on how those forces are used. The "Department of War" renaming is currently symbolic and may be intended to signal institutional identity rather than change military doctrine, as all legal authorities still reference the Department of Defense. The administration's legal justifications for these actions have not been made public in this dataset.

Limitations: This analysis draws primarily on speeches by opposition-party lawmakers, who have political incentives to characterize these actions in the most alarming terms. These speeches do not necessarily reflect a broader congressional consensus. The administration's legal justifications and classified intelligence underlying the Caribbean strike are not available in this dataset.