Sen. Rand Paul used his appearance on “The Will Cain Show” to take a flamethrower to the administration’s newest anti-cartel tactic at sea. Fresh off a U.S. strike that destroyed a Venezuelan drug boat, Paul argued that preemptively sinking suspected traffickers—without boarding and verifying contraband—violates the Constitution and basic due process.

“If this is a new policy, realize that off of Miami, a dozen ships will be interdicted today,” Paul warned. “The reason we board them before we blow the crap out of them is some of them don’t have drugs.” He stretched the analogy to the absurd—likening a high-speed smuggling craft in international waters to a suspected drug house in your neighborhood—before landing on his bottom line: “You can’t blow up any ship that you think might have drugs on it.”

Will Cain pushed back, noting the unique stakes: cartels and their proxies have been designated foreign terrorist organizations and are funneling chemicals that are killing tens of thousands of Americans every year. That matters. You don’t fight a transnational terror-cartel consortium with parking tickets and polite strongly worded letters.

Paul, ever the absolutist, retreated to proceduralism: “But not by Congress—not by Congress, by the president. That’s not constitutional. Under the Constitution, Congress must declare war.” He also questioned whether a skiff “2,700 miles away” could be tied to U.S.-bound poison, sneering, “Maybe they’re selling drugs to Trinidad. Is it our job?”

Here’s the problem with Paul’s stance: it treats cartel warfare like a courtroom seminar. The men in those boats aren’t neighborhood toughs. They’re armed runners for industrial-scale killers, moving product that slaughters Americans by the busload. The entire point of maritime interdiction is to stop the cargo before it hits our shores—not to wait until the dope lands in Miami and hope a Soros-funded DA doesn’t kick the case.

Out on the water, seconds matter. Smugglers dump bales the instant they spot a cutter. By the time a boarding ladder hits the rail, your evidence—and the body count tied to it—can be swirling in the wake. That’s why the administration is escalating: persistent surveillance, rapid interdiction, and—where lawful and necessary—kinetic action against hostile craft supporting FTOs. Call it deterrence with teeth.

Paul’s “get a warrant” riff also ignores a basic reality: the ocean isn’t your cul-de-sac. At sea, you operate under a mesh of authorities—Title 14 for the Coast Guard, maritime drug laws, bilateral agreements, and, yes, the commander in chief’s inherent responsibility to repel threats. When the target is tied to a foreign terrorist organization moving chemical death, the mission isn’t to serve papers; it’s to stop the threat.

None of this means rules go out the window. It means the rules of war and interdiction are not the same as the rules for a traffic stop on Main Street. The White House’s posture is simple: if you crew a terror-cartel boat pushing fentanyl toward American families, you chose your battlefield—and you don’t get a Miranda warning at 40 knots.

The political contrast couldn’t be sharper. On one side, a president who says the worst traffickers will face overwhelming force anywhere in the pipeline—ports, jungle labs, and open water alike. On the other, a senator who wants to litigate chain-of-custody while the coroner’s vans keep rolling. Voters can see which approach protects their kids.

Paul has always been consistent. He was wrong when he opposed Trump’s strike on Soleimani, and he’s wrong now. The Constitution is not a suicide pact, and it doesn’t require our government to let terror-cartels exploit loopholes while they flood our towns with poison. We’ve tried the lawyer-first strategy. It produced record overdoses, stronger cartels, and grieving parents.

This isn’t complicated. America is done tolerating floating fentanyl factories masquerading as “fishing boats.” The administration is finally fighting the war the cartels started—on the terms that make them lose. If that makes the libertarians uncomfortable, so be it. The rest of us are choosing life over legalese.