The Washington Post reported yesterday that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth did not merely order the initial strike on a boat off of believed to be transporting drugs, but gave the specific order to kill those on the boat. After the first strike hit the boat, a second strike was ordered to take out two survivors "clinging to the smoldering wreck" caused by the first.

Jack Goldsmith posted on this report yesterday at Executive Function. His essay, "A Dishonorable Strike," begins:

One can imagine stretching Article II of the Constitution to authorize the U.S. drug boat campaign. The wildly overbroad Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) precedents, as I have written before , provide "no meaningful legal check on the president." And there are dim historical precedents one could cite. Arthur Schle

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