As a lawyer at the Justice Department, and later at accountability nonprofits, I’ve had a front row seat to ever-expanding interpretations of executive authority used to justify things like torture, secret mass government surveillance and civilian drone assassinations with no due process — or any process whatsoever. That’s why President Donald Trump’s killing frenzy of suspected drug smuggling boats in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific Ocean, along with his flimsy, constantly-shifting rationales for unilateral, unchecked executive authority, are so concerning.

What we have read and seen is brutal. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has posted videos of vessels exploding with the glee of a hormone-addled tween playing Call of Duty, and more than a dozen strikes since early September have k

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