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U.S. Southern Command said on social media that the boat "was transiting along known narco-trafficking routes in the Eastern Pacific and was engaged in narco-trafficking operations." It said the strike killed three people. A video linked to the post shows a boat floating in the water before bursting into flames.

Friday's attack raises the death toll from the Trump administration's strikes on alleged drug boats to at least 148 people in at least 43 attacks carried out since early September in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean.

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President Donald Trump has said the U.S. is in "armed conflict" with cartels in Latin America and hasjustified the attacksas a necessary escalation to stem the flow of drugs. But his administration has offered little evidence to support its claims of killing "narcoterrorists."

Criticshave questioned the overall legalityof the strikes as well as their effectiveness, in part because the fentanyl behind many fatal overdoses is typically trafficked to the U.S.over land from Mexico, where it is produced with chemicals imported from China and India.

The boat strikes alsodrew intense criticismfollowing the revelation that the military killed survivors of the very first boat attack with a follow-up strike. The Trump administration and many Republican lawmakers said it was legal and necessary, while Democratic lawmakers andlegal experts saidthe killings were murder, if not a war crime.

The 6-3 decision included three liberals and three conservatives in the majority. The coalition included Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett and Ketanji Brown Jackson. Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Brett Kavanaugh dissented.

The six justices found that the law known as the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA, does not give the president the power to impose tariffs.

Enacted in 1977, IEEPA authorizes the president to "regulate … importation" to deal with "any unusual and extraordinary threat" to national security, foreign policy or the U.S. economy. When he announced hismost sweeping tariffs on nearly every countrylast April, Mr. Trump invoked IEEPA to respond to what he said were "large and persistent" trade deficits. He also relied on the law tohit China, Canada and Mexico with leviesover what the president claimed was their failure to stem the flow of illicit fentanyl and other drugs into the U.S.

No president before Mr. Trump had used IEEPA to impose tariffs, and the law does not use that word or others like it, such as duty, levy or tax.

All six of the justices who were in the majority agreed that IEEPA does not give the president the power to impose levies.

"Our task today is to decide only whether the power to 'regulate … importation,' as granted to the president in IEEPA, embraces the power to impose tariffs," Roberts wrote for the majority. "It does not."

756.07 KBThe Supreme Court's decision in Learning Resources v. TrumpThe Supreme Court struck down President Trump's authority to impose broad tariffs under an emergency powers law.

The court said tariffs are different from the other authorities laid out in IEEPA and, unlike those, they "operate directly on domestic importers to raise revenue for the Treasury." The majority said that under the government's interpretation of the phrase "regulate … importation," the president could impose duties "of unlimited amount and duration, on any product from any country."

"When Congress grants the power to impose tariffs, it does so clearly and with careful constraints," Roberts wrote in a portion of his decision joined by the other five colleagues in the majority. "It did neither here."

While the six justices agreed that the president does not have the authority to impose tariffs under IEEPA, there were notable divisions over their reasoning.

Major questions doctrine

The three conservative justices — Roberts, Gorsuch and Barrett — applied what's known as the major questions doctrine, which says that broad assertions of power claimed by the executive on issues of political or economic significance must be clearly authorized by Congress.

The Supreme Court's conservative wing has relied on that doctrine in past cases testing the legality of major policies from the executive branch, including when itstruck downPresident Joe Biden's student loan forgiveness plan andblocked an eviction moratoriumduring the COVID-19 pandemic.

Only Gorsuch and Barrett joined the section of Roberts' opinion that invoked the major questions doctrine.

The president, Roberts wrote, "must 'point to clear congressional authorization' to justify his extraordinary assertion of power to impose tariffs. He cannot."

Congress would not be expected to "relinquish its tariff power through vague language" or without constraints, the chief justice wrote.

"When Congress has delegated its tariff powers, it has done so in explicit terms, and subject to strict limits," Roberts said.

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He also said that the economic and political consequences of the tariffs implemented under IEEPA are "astonishing."

"The Government points to projections that the tariffs will reduce the national deficit by $4 trillion, and that international agreements reached in reliance on the tariffs could be worth $15 trillion," Roberts wrote. "In the President's view, whether 'we are a rich nation' or a 'poor' one hangs in the balance. These stakes dwarf those of other major questions cases."

Statutory interpretation

On the other side of the majority, the liberal justices — Sotomayor, Kagan and Jackson — agreed that IEEPA doesn't give the president the power to impose tariffs, but reached the conclusion using what Kagan said were the "ordinary tools of statutory interpretation."

"IEEPA gives the President significant authority over transactions involving foreign property, including the importation of goods. But in that generous delegation, one power is conspicuously missing," Kagan wrote in a concurring opinion joined by Sotomayor and Jackson. "Nothing in IEEPA's text, nor anything in its context, enables the President to unilaterally impose tariffs. And needless to say, without statutory authority, the President's tariffs cannot stand."

All six of the justices in the majority agreed that IEEPA is silent on the power to impose tariffs, and no president before Mr. Trump understood the law to authorize duties.

"Each president read the statutes as Congress wrote them, with IEEPA enabling him to regulate imports and Title 19 enabling him — in confined situations — to tax those foreign goods," Kagan wrote, referring to the portion of the U.S. Code that covers customs duties. "None, as far as anyone has suggested, even considered doing otherwise."

The dissenters

The principal dissent came from Kavanaugh, who wrote that the president's authority under IEEPA to "regulate … importation" encompasses tariffs. There is a long tradition of presidents imposing duties as a way of regulating importation and commerce, he said. Thomas and Alito joined his dissent.

"Like quotas and embargoes, tariffs are a traditional and common tool to regulate importation," Kavanaugh said.

He wrote that IEEPA allows the president to impose quotas or embargoes on foreign imports, which he said are more severe tools than tariffs. The law, he said, does not draw distinctions between those actions and instead "empowers the president to regulate imports during national emergencies with the tools presidents have traditionally and commonly used, including quotas, embargoes, and tariffs."

Regarding the major questions doctrine, Kavanaugh said it is satisfied in this case because the "statutory text, history and precedent constitute 'clear congressional authorization' for the president to impose levies under IEEPA." Plus, presidents throughout history have imposed tariffs as a way to "regulate … importation," he continued.

Kavanaugh also argued that the Supreme Court has never applied the major questions doctrine to matters of foreign affairs, including foreign trade.

"In foreign affairs cases, courts read the statute as written and do not employ the major questions doctrine as a thumb on the scale against the president," Kavanaugh said.

He noted, however, that the ruling may not significantly constrain a president's ability to set tariffs moving forward, since there are many other statutes that can be used to justify the tariffs at issue in the case.

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The siblings grew up with their parents among the Cypress trees and grassy horse fields in a rural area outside West Palm Beach. She was in kindergarten when he was born.

Virginiacalled him Skydy Bump, or just Skydy. He was named after their father.

Epstein abuse survivor Danielle Bensky holds up a photo of her younger self during a news conference with lawmakers on the Epstein Files Transparency Act outside the U.S. Capitol on November 18, 2025 in Washington, DC. The House is expected to vote today on the legislation, which instructs the U.S. Department of Justice to release all files related to the late accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

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Alleged victims of Jeffrey Epstein rally at Capitol Hill to demand release of files

Epstein abuse survivor Danielle Bensky holds up a photo of her younger self during a news conference with lawmakers onthe Epstein Files Transparency Actoutside the U.S. Capitol on November 18, 2025 in Washington, DC.The House is expected to vote today on the legislation, which instructs the U.S. Department of Justice to release all files related to the late accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

His crib was in her room, and Virginia, who later became a key voice drawing the world's attention to the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking allegations, later wrote that "I felt as if he were my baby." When he woke in the night, she comforted him.

They looked out for each other.

When their parents walked around with beer cans in their hands, she carried him.

And when Sky and Virginia were playing in a backyard sandpit one day, her little brother tugged on her T-shirt, pointing toward a snake. She grabbed him and ran to the house.

Her mom said she's saved his life. It was a deadly water moccasin.

Now Sky Roberts is trying his best to stand up for his big sister.Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who later wrote a memoir, said she was trafficked to engage in sex withPrince Andrew, who has since been stripped of that title by the royal family, when she was a teenager. She later became one of the most outspoken people reporting they'd been sexually abused by Epstein and his longtime friend Andrew, the former Duke of York.

More:Jeffrey Epstein victimized 1,000 women and children. His survivors have a message.

A day after Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, as he's now known, was arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office, the pride Sky Roberts holds for his sister is difficult to hide.

"We're seeing her as a truthteller, and I'm happy the world is seeing that, too," Roberts said Feb. 19 in a CBS interview. "It shows we have more work to do."

In her memoir"Nobody's Girl," Roberts Giuffre describes how she was effectively Epstein's sex slave for two years and how the then-prince raped her when she was 17. The book was published in October 2025, six months after she died by suicide. Mountbatten-Windsor has not been charged with a related sex crime and Epstein died awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.

But the book also tells the story of a southern Florida childhood – of homemade bike ramps and treehouses, ponds with snapping turtles and a goat named Cordelius, and a love for her little brother who called her "Sissie."

Five years older, she protected him when their parents were fighting, covering his ears, and she shielded him from abuse at the hands of their father.

Sky Roberts later stood by her when she accused Prince Andrew, once second in line to the throne, of abuse. He supported his sister as she told her story over and over, even when people dismissed and disparaged her.

Since her death, he's stood with otherEpstein accusersas they testified before Congress in 2025. Giuffre Roberts became a lightning rod to many people who said they'd been abused or trafficked by Epstein and his associateGhislaine Maxwell.

Andrew, who was stripped of his titles in 2025 and settled a civil suit with Giuffre Roberts in 2022, did not admit to wrongdoing and he hasn't been arrested for sex crimes. The former prince's arrest came after he'd faced intense scrutiny over his friendship with Epstein. Previous reports show Mountbatten-Windsor may haveimproperly shared government documentswith the convicted sex offender.

Taking all this in, Sky Roberts told CBS News,"It shows we have more work to do."

'No one is above the law, not even royalty'

Sky Roberts woke up to a phone call at 3 a.m. on Feb. 19.

His first thought: It's bad news.

"You're always worried when you get a phone call that early in the morning," he told NPR on Feb. 19.

It was Dini von Mueffling, one of his sister's closest friends and her publicist.

Andrew had been arrested.

Sky told his wife, Amanda Roberts, who jumped out of bed.

"It was a huge moment," Amanda Roberts told NPR. "It was a moment of celebratory victory."

By 5 a.m., the couple gave their first TV interview.

Then at breakfast, Roberts broke down.

"I just bawled," he told NPR. "It's very important that we don't forget how hard these survivors and the survivors' sisters have been pushing, that we wouldn't be here today without Virginia."

By 8 a.m., Sky and his wife, and his older brother Danny and Lanette Wilson, released a statement.

"At last. Today, our broken hearts have been lifted at the news that no one is above the law, not even royalty. On behalf of our sister, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, we extend our gratitude to the UK's Thames Valley Police for their investigation and arrest of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. He was never a prince. For survivors everywhere, Virginia did this for you."

More:Epstein pulled strings, paid tuition across world for kids of powerful

Sky and his wife spent the day sharing their thoughts with reporters from CNN and CBS News, the BBC and NBC. They wore blue and silver butterfly pins, a symbol adopted by Epstein accusers to represent hope, resilience and support for victims.

They recounted how they were roused from bed, how they'd gone through a range of emotions.

"A bit of shock hits you at that moment," Amanda Roberts told CBS News. "We celebrated in that moment, and we were just like awestruck. Usually, we (could) call (Roberts Giuffre) on the phone and jump up and down and just tell her how proud we are of her tenacity and courage."

What's important now, Sky Roberts told NPR, is that people "acknowledge the survivors and what they went through."

Pushing back on abuse

Sky Roberts always knew his big sister looked after him.

She carried him, even as his toddler legs dangled alongside hers.

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By 6, she said,their father began abusing her, coming in during the night to her room. In a statement included in her memoir, he denies the abuse.

"He told me I was his special girl, his favorite, and that this was his way of giving me extra love," she wrote in her memoir.

She pushed back. Her father, she wrote, threatened to take away her horse Alice.

Soon her dad was sending her to his friend's house, where the friend abused her, too, she wrote.

Roberts Giuffre wrote about how her mother seemed jealous of her father's closeness with her. When her parents fought, Roberts Giuffre would huddle with her little brother, covering his ears. She was 11. He was 6.

Her mother sent her to live with an aunt in California and later to a facility for troubled teens. When she returned, she wrote, it wasn't her parents she had missed.

"I think of Skydy, running out the back door, the screen slamming shut as he flung himself into my arms," she wrote of her return home.

Book recalls Epstein's threat to harm her brother

At 16, Roberts Giuffre got a job as a locker room attendant at a nearby resort,Mar-a-Lago,where her father was a maintenance man.

Just before she turned 17, she met Epstein andMaxwell. Maxwell was later sentenced to prison for sex trafficking. Epstein died by suicide in 2019 while awaiting trial on similar allegations.

She didn't tell her family when Epstein began abusing her, she wrote.

She writes in her memoir that the abuse began when she was interviewing for a job as a masseuse: "My body couldn't escape this room, but my mind couldn't bear to stay, so it put me on kind of autopilot: submissive and determined to survive."

The massages led to sex with Epstein and the men he trafficked her to, she wrote.

She thought about trying to leave. That's when Epstein handed her a grainy photograph, she wrote.

"It was unmistakably my little brother. Skydy."

Virginia Giuffre memoir on alleged abuse by Prince Andrew coming months after her death.

"We know where your brother goes to school," Epstein told her. "You must never tell a soul what goes on in this house."

Her brother was 12.

"I had no choice. I believed, but to accept that and make the best of it – for Skydy's sake, if not my own."

'Don't ever walk away with my kids again'

Roberts didn't know the lengths his sister had gone to protect him until they were adults.

He and his then-girlfriend, who would become his wife, lived with Roberts Giuffre and her husband and three young children in 2013 in Florida.

Even then, he called her "Sissie."

Within a year, she and Roberts and her oldest brother, Danny Wilson, their mother's child from a previous relationship, all lived close.

The siblings all had children, three little girls among them. Roberts Giuffre kept her daughter from spending time alone with her father.

She decided she needed to tell her brothers why.

"My brothers didn't know to take those precautions because I'd never told them what Dad had done to me, she wrote.

At first, she wrote, neither brother wanted to believe her.

"By the end of the night, all of us were in tears," she wrote.

Wilson confronted his stepdad.

Then Roberts confronted his father, who had taken his daughter alone to a Tampa Buccaneers game.

"Don't ever walk away with my kids again," he said, according to Roberts Giuffre's memoir. "And you know why, right?" he told his father.

'There's only one of us telling the truth'

Roberts saw how hard his sister pushed, even when no one seemed to believe her.

Roberts Giuffre often said this: "He knows what he did. I know what he did and there's only one of us telling the truth. And I know that's me."

Her brother holds on to that now.

He remembers how she was able to create a beautiful life with three children, even through her struggles.

Now he says we need to move beyond acknowledging survivors.

"We need to see action from our DOJ," he told NPR. "I think what we're asking for is that this administration needs to stop protecting the predators and the pedophiles."

While Roberts prepares to make comments to the media after President Donald Trump's State of the Union address scheduled for Feb. 24, he wants to remind people it's not about politics. He and his wife will attend as guests of Democratic Reps. Jamie Raskin and Suhas Subramanyam, to honor the work Roberts Giuffre did in bringing Epstein's crimes to light.

"This is a human issue. We have to work politics through it because our laws are broken. They are broken for survivors of sexual abuse," Roberts said to CBS. "This generation deserves better."

Laura Trujillo is a national columnist focusing on health and wellness. She is the author of "Stepping Back from the Ledge: A Daughter's Search for Truth and Renewal" and can be reached at ltrujillo@usatoday.com.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY:Sky Roberts seeks justice for his sister Virginia Roberts Giuffre