Even as the Trump administration has increasingly militarized the job of enforcing drug and immigration laws, Congress last week took a quiet, bipartisan step to restrain that trend.
House and Senate negotiators writing a compromise Homeland Security spending bill were concerned enough about the possibility the department might consider arming a new fleet of Coast Guard drones with missiles that the negotiators wrote into the bill a provision to bar such a move.
The language had not been in the earlier House or draft Senate versions of the bill.
