Dec. 7, 2025, 4:01 a.m. ET
I’ve written two recent columns expressing concerns about the Trump administration’s actions in campaign against suspected drug boats, one about the lack of congressional authorization and another about allegations that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave “kill them all” orders.
Since those two columns, my emails have been full of people making the charge that because I have concerns over the administration’s air strike campaign against alleged narcotics traffickers, I must love drug smugglers. Quite the contrary, actually. I hate drug smugglers and hope they all constantly fear the potential for sudden death from above.
However, my own personal policy preference doesn’t mean I give the government a longer leash to act with impunity. Making sure the process is followed is vital to ensuring the government is doing what it claims, even when unsympathetic targets blind you.
When the government routinely follows a legal process, the American people will have more faith in their leaders’ propensity to continue to do so. When they don’t, they will face heightened scrutiny from Americans.
I have no sympathy for traffickers, but I respect the process and the law
I wrote clearly at the outset of this campaign that I support the policy of ominous death from above for anyone peddling illicit drugs that kill Americans in our country. Legal arguments aside, I am probably more hawkish on the issue of combating the cartels than most right-wingers.
However, just because something is a policy preference of mine doesn’t mean I condone shortcuts, illegal actions or war crimes committed to reach that end. Nor does it mean that I will reflexively defend anyone who carries out my preferred policies from scrutiny when they play fast and loose with the rules.
The charge that any critique of the administration’s actions is done out of a love for drug traffickers is obviously a laughable one, but it does raise an interesting distinction between process and policy.
Process matters because process is the only thing that ensures the government is doing what it says it is doing. Refusing to scrutinize the administration because White House officials are “just blowing up narco-terrorists” would mean that the government can kill anyone it deems to be a “narco-terrorist,” true or not. I shouldn’t have to spell out why the government getting a license to kill anyone it labels a certain term is a bad idea.
Nor am I reassured by the lack of transparency surrounding these operations. Sure, we have seen all sorts of aerial footage of boats blowing up, but we have yet to see much evidence to quell concerns over whether these are actually drug boats or not.
Ideally, we would be reassured that Congress has vetted the claims from the executive branch and given the White House the authority to conduct these strikes. I still am under the belief that these strikes require congressional authorization. This allows Congress to debate and vet the facts on the ground, to ensure that the president is doing what he says he is doing. When this is actually followed, this makes the executive branch’s military actions accountable to the American people.
In this case, Congress is now tasked with an investigative role, as it has opened investigations into Hegseth and others’ conduct in the missile strikes. It’s vastly preferable for the facts to be vetted on the front end rather than after misconduct has been alleged.
Process matters more than blindly justifying policy goals
I want to jump back to an earlier point and elaborate on it, which is why process matters. Just as it is in the present matter, process mattered because it held the government accountable. When governments are allowed to cut corners, they inevitably make mistakes or knowingly violate the rights of the afflicted.
Earlier in President Donald Trump’s second term, I was forced to oppose the deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a suspected gang member who came to the U.S. illegally from El Salvador about 2011 but had legal status in America since a judge’s order on the issue in 2019. He is not someone I was eager to defend, and I believe he should have been deported.
However, the Trump administration’s lack of care for process led to him being deported to a country he legally should not have been in. In that case, the subject wasn’t sympathetic, just as drug traffickers aren’t, but the process is what ensures such heinous actions don’t happen to just anyone.
Those who argue that any of these critiques come from a love for illegal immigrants or drug traffickers are revealing something about themselves. It shows a lack of principles and respect for the guardrails built into the Constitution. They are nothing more than partisan mouthpieces, blindly defending anyone on their team.
I will continue to defend the process as a matter of principle. Part of being conservative is not only about having conservative policy goals, but also about respecting the guardrails built into the American system to prevent abuses of power. Without them, a tyrannical government can act with impunity, to the detriment of Americans.
Dace Potas is an opinion columnist for USA TODAY and a graduate of DePaul University with a degree in political science.
