U.S. Rep. Jake Auchincloss, D-Newton, is not mincing words when it comes to the Defense Department’s recent air strikes against boats the administration suspects are smuggling drugs, especially a September incident in which Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is accused of ordering all passengers on a boat killed. A follow-up strike was carried out to kill two survivors instead of capture them.

“If the Secretary of Defense ordered those non-combatants who were huddled around a boat, defenseless after initial strike, to be killed, that’s a war crime,” Auchincloss said in an appearance on CNN with host Jessica Dean this weekend. “He should be prosecuted for it.”

The killings, Auchincloss continued, show a much bigger problem of presidents ignoring the separation of powers when it comes to war, and that the Trump administration is “edging this nation closer to land hostilities in Venezuela absent any congressional authorization.”

But he doesn’t just blame Hegseth.

“I’m furious at Congress because, since the year 2001 after the 911 attacks, this Congress has ceded all of its war-making authority to presidents of both parties, and it has led us to a state of war constantly, everywhere and always,” Auchincloss told Dean. “And it’s bad for the American people. It’s bad for the rule of law, and it’s time for Congress to take back its Article One war-making powers.”

What he’s referring to is Article One of the U.S. Constitution, which lays out what powers belong to Congress. Section 8 of Article One reads, in part, that it’s Congress’s job to declare war and Congress’s job to “define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas” as well as to “make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water.”

A week after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks in New York and Washington, D.C., Congress passed an Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) allowing President George W. Bush to use military force against the terrorist organizations that had participated in the attacks and to prevent future terror attacks. Presidents Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Donald Trump have since used the AUMF to authorize military force, citing concerns over terrorism.

Congress also passed an AUMF in 2002 allowing Bush to use military force in Iraq without a formal declaration of war from Congress, and that war went on through three administrations.

House members, including Auchincloss, have been trying to get the 2001 AUMF repealed with a congressional vote for the past few years.

“It has led America down these rabbit holes of military adventurism,” Auchincloss said. “It has undermined the rule of law here at home, and the American public are sick of it, and they want Congress to do its job and to be the one that declares war, not the president.”

The Venezuela boat strikes controversy is ongoing. On Monday, the Trump administration admitted Hegseth had ordered the killing.