The Department of Defense announced last week that the USS Gerald R. Ford strike group and its 4,500 sailors and Marines would deploy to the Caribbean as part of the Trump administration’s escalating military activity in that region. The White House has for weeks expanded attacks against vessels it alleges are trafficking drugs, but it has not supplied evidence to members of Congress or the American public to support that assertion.

The nebulous and secretive nature of those operations poses significant questions about their legality and the potential liability of service members who may be carrying out extrajudicial killings of innocent civilians. Given the number of Hampton Roads-based forces being directed to that theater, elected officials who represent the commonwealth, both Republ

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