News Day

The New York Times today has plenty of coverage of who, how, when, and where the United States illegally attacked Venezuela and abducted its president and first lady. But that’s far from the whole story. A few easily overlooked but essential facts: 

• Trump claims that Vice President Delcy Rodriguez welcomes the intervention and will cooperate with whatever he plans—totally false. At the same hour that he made this preposterous announcement, she was speaking on Venezuelan television to denounce the U.S. actions, insist that Maduro is still the rightful president, and decry the “Zionist undertones” of the U.S. action. 
• Venezuela actually has a legitimately elected president who is NOT Nicolas Maduro. That is Edmundo González, who won the July 2024 election by a wide margin. Maduro refused to leave office and falsely claimed that he won the election. González is living in exile in Spain. Trump has not mentioned González or made any move to support him. 

For informed insights on the consequences of Trump’s attack on Venezuela, see: 

• Timothy Snyder’s analysis of the Venezuela situation in the light of historical precedents;
• Robert Reich’s warning about oil companies, oligarchs, and the looting of both Venezuela and the United States; 
• Stephen Vladeck’s careful dissection of the legal issues involved in the law-breaking invasion and Trump cabal’s “deeply thuggish” approach to foreign policy. 

50 USC Ch. 33: WAR POWERS RESOLUTION

§1541. Purpose and policy

(a) Congressional declaration

It is the purpose of this chapter to fulfill the intent of the framers of the Constitution of the United States and insure that the collective judgment of both the Congress and the President will apply to the introduction of United States Armed Forces into hostilities, or into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances, and to the continued use of such forces in hostilities or in such situations.

(b) Congressional legislative power under necessary and proper clause

Under article I, section 8, of the Constitution, it is specifically provided that the Congress shall have the power to make all laws necessary and proper for carrying into execution, not only its own powers but also all other powers vested by the Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof.

(c) Presidential executive power as Commander-in-Chief; limitation

The constitutional powers of the President as Commander-in-Chief to introduce United States Armed Forces into hostilities, or into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances, are exercised only pursuant to (1) a declaration of war, (2) specific statutory authorization, or (3) a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces.

(Pub. L. 93–148, §2, Nov. 7, 1973, 87 Stat. 555.)

U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 8, Clause 11

Article I Legislative Branch

Section 8 Enumerated Powers

• ArtI.S8.1  Overview of Congress’s Enumerated Powers …
  • Clause 11 War Powers To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;

Over at Law Dork, Chris Geidner has a great column on the four key lessons we can and must take from 2025. The first: pushing back is essential — and it works. I won’t try to summarize his column, but encourage you to go and read it and, if you can, support the good work he does year-around by subscribing.

For a more humorous insight–grimly humorous, but still, laughing at tyrants is good for us and them–here’s Attorney General Pam Bondi’s recent post on X [below] celebrating a big reduction in drug overdose deaths. Just one problem, which led her to quickly remove the post: the reduction took place entirely in the Biden administration. The chart she posted ends in October 2024.

Jamal Khashoggi was a U.S. permanent legal resident and a columnist for the Washington Post in 2018 when Saudi operatives lured him to the Saudi consulate in Turkey, and then abducted, tortured, and murdered him. Then they cut up his body with a bone saw. U.S. intelligence agencies investigated and determined that his assassination was ordered by Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman. 

The U.S. intelligence report was issued in 2021, and the Biden administration shamefully failed to censure Mohamed bin Salman, although they did impose sanctions on some other Saudis implicated in the assassination.

Now Trump has gone several steps further, welcoming Mohamed bin Salman to the White House, praising him effusively, and holding an Oval Office press event with him. When a journalist asked bin Salman about the assassination of Khashoggi, Trump interrupted and chastised the journalist. Trump then answered the question that had been directed to bin Salman: 

“You’re mentioning somebody [Khashoggi] that was extremely controversial. A lot of people didn’t like that gentleman that you’re talking about. Whether you like him, or didn’t like him, things happen. But he [bin Salman] knew nothing about it, and we can leave it at that.”

“Things happen.” 

That is what the president of the United States has to say about abduction, torture, and assassination—”things happen.” 

That is what the president of the United States has to say, while sitting next to his good friend, the man who ordered the abduction, torture, and assassination. 

Things happen. Donald Trump knows a lot about things that happen. He makes things happen. 

Things like the January 6 insurrection. 

Things like illegally bombing Venezuelan and Colombian boats, resulting in the deaths of 83 people and counting. 

Things like thousands of death threats against six Congress members after Trump called them traitors and said they should be executed.

The “thing” that should happen now is the impeachment, trial, conviction, and removal from office of Donald Trump. 

You remember the Hans Christian Anderson story: the vain emperor orders the most beautiful suit of clothes from swindlers who dress him in exactly nothing. The sycophants around him exclaim over the beautify of his new clothes. And everyone agrees, afraid to say that they cannot see anything, because that would mean they are stupid or traitors. Finally, as the emperor parades through the city, a small child says, “But he hasn’t got anything on.”

This time a federal judge called out the sycophants and swindlers surrounding the emperor. 

The emperor called Portland “war ravaged,” as a chicken-suited protester with an American flag kept vigil outside ICE headquarters. The emperor ordered the National Guard federalized and deployed to Portland. 

Not a child this time, but a federal judge, a former prosecutor appointed judge by the emperor himself, delivered the message. 

Her language was a little different, but the message was clear.  Portland is not war ravaged. Protest is legal. Law enforcement is doing just fine without the military. The president is acting ultra vires, beyond his legal power or authority. The emperor has no clothes. 

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U.S. District Judge William Young, a Reagan appointee, issued a scathing 161 page opinion telling the Trump administration that free speech is for everyone, and that their arrest, imprisonment, and attempted deportation of international students for pro-Palestinian statements violates the U.S. Constitution. 

Because we have so little good news from courts or Congress, and none at all from the executive branch these days, I am quoting at length from this opinion in tonight’s post. I fully realize that this is a district court ruling, subject to appeal and possibly even to reversal. But in these hard times, the judge’s ringing defense of the Constitution gives me, at least, some hope to continue fighting. 

“This case -– perhaps the most important ever to fall within the jurisdiction of this district court –- squarely presents the issue whether non-citizens lawfully present here in United States actually have the same free speech rights as the rest of us. The Court answers this Constitutional question unequivocally “yes, they do.” “No law” means “no law.” The First Amendment does not draw President Trump’s invidious distinction and it is not to be found in our history or jurisprudence.” [Opinion, pp. 4-5]

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The Trump regime’s paramilitary troops pose a greater threat to U.S. democracy than its threats to deploy National Guard or regular military in U.S. cities. Merriam Webster says that “paramilitary” means “of, relating to, being, or characteristic of a force formed on a military pattern especially as a potential auxiliary military force.” That’s exactly how the Trump paramilitary task forces operate. 

Trump’s paramilitary forces include a wide array of federal law enforcement agents, drawn from multiple agencies, including the FBI, DEA, IRS, ATF, and many others. The Cato Institute reports that more than 28,000 federal law enforcement officers have been ordered to leave their work and focus instead on arresting immigrants. That includes one in five FBI agents and half of all DEA agents. As Cato’s David Bier dryly observes, “This diversion has significantly curtailed the government’s capacity to address criminal activity in the United States.”

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A common thread connects the August school shooting in Minneapolis with the 2011 terror attacks by neo-Nazi in Norway and the 2019 mosque massacres in New Zealand. The guns carried by the Minneapolis shooter carried the names of the perpetrators of the other massacres. Their social media posts idolized the shooters, expressed hatred of almost everyone—black people, brown people, immigrants, Jews, Christians, children—children! (Contrary to Kash Patel’s wild-eyed imaginings, there is no evidence that the school shooting had anything to do with anti-Catholicism.) 

The thread that connects these shootings and other mass murders, is called accelerationism. Accelerationism is both racist and violent. Its white nationalist believers see the current system collapsing into a race war, which they sometimes call a second American Revolution or a second Civil War. They advocate violence to bring that day closer. Crazy? Yes–deadly crazy.

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The Trump-declared “crime emergency” has no basis in fact. Crime in DC exists, but has been declining for two years. Many cities in the Republican states sending National Guard members to DC have higher crime rates than DC, as do many cities across the country. The whole operation has nothing to do with crime and everything to do with Trump’s authoritarian posturing.

The U.S. military has no business playing police on the streets of DC or ANY U.S. city. First, because the military’s job is to defend the United States and they are forbidden by law from engaging in civil law enforcement. That’s the job of civilian police. Our laws specifically prohibit the kind of military dominance that characterizes dictatorships. 

Second, the National Guard and other military forces are not trained in police work. That’s not their job, and they are not good at it. National Guard troops are mostly sticking to tourist areas like the Lincoln Memorial and National Mall rather than high crime areas. 

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Trump and his cronies lie about crime. They lie constantly and shamelessly. Crime has been dropping across the United States, including Washington, DC since 2022. 

Violent crime has been falling across the country since 2022, according to FBI statistics. Violent crime peaked in the 1990s, and fell steadily until 2020 during the COVID epidemic. Although crime increased in 2020-2022, it came nowhere near the 1990s levels. 

Since 2022, violent crime rates have been falling again. 

Trump-appointed FBI chief, Kash Patel on August 11, speaking from the White House, standing next to Trump: ” “We are now able to report that the murder rate is on track to be the lowest in US history.”

I don’t think he’s right about that “lowest in US history” claim, but it is true that the murder rate is back down to pre-pandemic levels in the nation as a whole.

Crime Statistics

Talking about crime is complicated. When someone starts throwing crime statistics around, here are a few important things to remember.

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