The legislative branch has all but abdicated its war powers, and lawmakers on both sides have let successive presidents preside over secret kill lists. Without the reporting order in place, there is no way for the public to know what the Trump administration is up to, theoretically in its name.

Subjecting any president to so little accountability is imprudent. And Trump warrants particular mistrust, given his habit of surrounding himself with unscrupulous individuals and statements he has made on the use of lethal force, e.g., “When the students poured into Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government almost blew it. Then they were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength. That shows you the power of strength.”

Representative Adam Schiff, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, released a statement asserting “the need for Congress to make this reporting mandatory.” The Democrat tried to force an increase in transparency under Obama too.

What he proposes would be better than nothing.

It is nevertheless disheartening––as a longtime critic of America’s program of lethal drone strikes––to assess the state of the policy debate in Washington, D.C.

The president wants the power to kill people in secret far from any battlefield without having to disclose how often he exercises it or how many innocents die.

The Democratic Party purports to regard him as a morally depraved, power-hungry opportunist who lacks wisdom, judgment, and restraint, rendering him unfit for high office. But it won’t push to strip him of the ability to unilaterally kill an indeterminate number of people in various countries where we are not at war. It will merely try to force him to disclose the body count once a year. And it likely doesn’t have the votes in Congress to accomplish even that.