SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
executive power
Venezuela, Executive Defiance, and the Last Chance to Restore Congressional War Powers
Members of the House and Senate must act to ensure the US does not go to war without the people's consent.
Dec 17, 2025
This is not a call for spectacle. It is not a public declaration. It is a sober appeal, written for those among you who still recognize the fragile architecture of our Republic and the danger that comes when its foundation is ignored. It is written for those who remember why Congress—not the Executive—is entrusted with the solemn power to send this nation to war.
Today, the United States Navy maintains a forward-deployed combat fleet off the coast of Venezuela. At least 12 warships now patrol waters once governed by diplomacy, now steered by executive will alone. And still, Congress has issued no declaration of war. No authorization of force. No public debate. No roll-call vote. The War Powers Resolution lies dormant—its reporting mandates ignored, its withdrawal timeline untriggered, its constraints publicly mocked.
This is no abstract concern. The precedent is Syria.
For over a decade, US troops have operated in Syria under the shifting pretexts of counterterrorism, chemical weapons enforcement, and later, oil field protection. All of it unfolded without a single Syria-specific authorization from Congress. The executive claimed continuity under the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force, invoked Article II powers, and redefined “hostilities” so narrowly that armed conflict somehow ceased to qualify as war. Congress, through passivity or political caution, allowed this to become precedent. That precedent now extends to the Caribbean.
This is not just about Venezuela, or Syria, or this presidency. It is about whether Congress still holds the power the Constitution gave it—or whether that power has already been quietly surrendered.
The danger off Venezuela’s coast is not theoretical. Intelligence assessments confirm that anti-ship missile systems have already been deployed by foreign actors in response to US naval activity. We are, at this moment, one miscalculation away from open conflict. And we are there without legal cover, without strategic necessity, and, most concerningly, without your consent.
Some of you may be asking—why now? Why Venezuela? The official answer is narcotics. But the record speaks otherwise. The 2025 National Drug Threat Assessment does not list Venezuela as a major conduit for fentanyl or cocaine. Expert testimony, including from senior Drug Enforcement Administration officials, confirms that the overwhelming flow of narcotics originates elsewhere—Mexico, Colombia. The rationale, in short, does not withstand scrutiny.
So what then is the real purpose of this deployment?
The answer many of you already suspect—but may hesitate to say aloud—is political theater. A projection of military might as domestic performance. A maneuver meant not to protect the homeland, but to flex power unbound by law. This is war making as messaging, and that messaging is not to foreign governments—it is to political opponents here at home. The weaponization of the military for electoral ends is no longer a distant fear. It is present, palpable, and accelerating.
This moment bears a dangerous resemblance to the final phases of past democratic declines elsewhere—when legislatures abdicated their constitutional duties in the face of strongman rule, often for fear of public reprisal, partisan division, or political cost. But no cost compares to the one history will impose if this is allowed to proceed unchecked.
The truth is stark. The president has refused to honor a submission of a War Powers report as required by §4(a)(1). He has dismissed the 60-day withdrawal trigger under §5(b), where such a dismissal is deemed unconstitutional by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel since 1980. He has redefined “hostilities” to exclude the use of lethal force against targets unable to return fire—effectively nullifying the Resolution itself. He has removed independent legal advisers within the military who might challenge unconstitutional orders. He has promoted false pretexts for war. And he has called for the execution of members of Congress who questioned these actions.
These are not simply impeachable acts—they are an attempt to reorder the structure of government itself.
To those among you who still believe in deliberation, in institutional balance, in constitutional restraint—this is your moment. Congress must compel the executive to honor any submitted legal reports, as required. Failing that, it must move to demand withdrawal of US forces from Venezuelan waters absent a new authorization. This will require bipartisan courage, legislative resolve, and leadership that can transcend factionalism. But it can be done—quietly if necessary, firmly if unavoidable.
And if the president continues to deploy the military in open defiance of congressional authority, uses force under fabricated pretexts, retaliates against lawmakers for performing oversight, and purges legal constraints on command—then impeachment is not optional. It is the only lawful recourse left.
Neither path is easy. Both carry risk. But continued inaction carries more.
Consider the cascading consequences if this is not addressed now: a lethal escalation with foreign adversaries in the Caribbean, the collapse of US deterrence credibility, the internal fracturing of civil-military relations, and a precedent that may outlive us all—a presidency that may wage war without ever seeking the people’s consent.
Some of you may hope the moment will pass, that the ships will eventually turn around, that the next crisis will distract. But this time, the moment must not pass. The gravity is too great. The erosion has gone too far. This is not just about Venezuela, or Syria, or this presidency. It is about whether Congress still holds the power the Constitution gave it—or whether that power has already been quietly surrendered.
The decisive moment is before us. Once crossed, it cannot be undone. But there is still time.
Stand together. Speak through action. Enforce the law you swore to uphold. The Constitution does not protect itself. It relies on you.
Keep ReadingShow Less
From Executive Overreach to Undeclared Wars, We Are Living in the World Cheney Made
Dick Cheney midwifed the emergence of a new warfare marked by extrajudicial killing, torture, secrecy, and endless war that transformed American society and politics, perhaps forever.
Nov 04, 2025
Dick Cheney has died, according to reports Tuesday morning, at the age of 84.
A formidable White House and defense department aide (under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford) who left to head an equally formidable Texas-based oil company (with vast federal contracts) and then back in Washington as vice president to George W. Bush, Cheney is probably the most symbolic figure of the failure of the post-9/11 wars. In particular, the Iraq War. It was his amassed power and special cadre of operators known as neoconservatives inside the Old Executive Office building and E Ring at the Pentagon, who with strategic treachery dominated the politics and intelligence necessary to march Washington into the invasion of 2003 and to proliferate a Global War on Terror that lasted well beyond his tenure in office.
By all accounts it was his midwifed lies over WMDs that got us there, followed by the blunders (not anticipating the Iraqi insurgency); the loss of life (millions); the cost to our treasury; and the emergence of a new warfare marked by extrajudicial killing, torture, secrecy, and endless war that transformed American society and politics, perhaps forever.
For it was the exploitation of American grief, fear, and patriotism after 9/11 to pursue neoconservative wars in the Middle East that zapped the people's faith in government institutions. It pretty much destroyed the Republican Party and gave rise to populist movements on both sides of the aisle. It created a generation of veterans harboring more mistrust in elites and Washington than even the Vietnam War era. On the other end of the spectrum, it unleashed mercenary warfare, killer drones, civil wars, and police powers in the United States that have only served make the people less free and more fearful of their government. Thanks in part to Dick Cheney, the Executive, i.e. the president, has more power than ever—to bomb, detain, and "decapitate" any government leader he does not like.
There will be many obituaries written for Dick Cheney, all will be scarred with his role in the Iraq War. For a time he was a very, very powerful man and then he went away to retire and help raise his grandchildren. How many hundreds of thousands of American families were unable to do the same, plagued by death, disease, mental injuries, sterility, divorce, addiction, suicide—because of a war that he so relentlessly pushed but should never have been.
Cheney's Quest for More Executive Power and 'Machtpolitik'
Cheney first came to national prominence when he served as White House chief of staff (1975-77) to President Gerald Ford. In that position, he worked closely with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to counter and eventually derail Henry Kissinger's strategy of "detente" with the Soviet Union.
In that initiative, Cheney and Rumsfeld also worked closely with the Washington-based leaders of the emergent neoconservative movement, a number of them, including Richard Perle and Elliott Abrams, working in the office of Washington State Democratic Senator and Senate Armed Services Chairman Henry "Scoop" Jackson, to promote, among other things, Jewish emigration to Israel and in persuading Ford to convene an ultra-hawkish "Team B" outside the intelligence community to hype the alleged military threat posed by Moscow.
Their mutual interest in pursuing a massive US arms buildup and an aggressive foreign policy more generally would form the basis of an alliance between the aggressive nationalism and Machtpolitik of Cheney and Rumsfeld on the one hand, and the Israel-centered neoconservatives on the other that created the infamous Project for the New American Century in 1998 and ultimately became dominant in the post-9/11 "global war on terror" (GWOT) and the Iraq invasion for which he always remained unrepentant.
In the 1980s, Cheney, who chafed at the post-Watergate restrictions on presidential power, particularly regarding foreign policy, served as Wyoming’s single congressman in the House of Representatives where he became a staunch and powerful defender both of Ronald Reagan’s anti-Soviet policies and of the “Reagan Doctrine” of rolling back leftist regimes and movements in the Global South, notably in Central America and southern Africa. A staunch defender of the protagonists of what became the Iran-Contra scandal, a secret operation to sell weapons to Iran and use the proceeds to fund the Nicaraguan contras (for whom Congress had prohibited any US assistance), he later prevailed on President George H.W. Bush, for whom he served as defense secretary, to issue pardons to those, like Abrams, convicted as a result of the affair.
In the wake of the first Gulf War, Cheney commissioned his undersecretary of defense for policy, Paul Wolfowitz, to draft a long-term US strategy, called the Defense Planning Guidance (DPG), whose global ambitions, when leaked to the Washington Post, provoked a flurry of controversy about the future US role in the world.
Among other things, the draft called for Washington to maintain permanent military dominance of virtually all of Eurasia to be achieved by “deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role” and by preempting, using whatever means necessary, states believed to be developing weapons of mass destruction. It foretold a world in which US military intervention would become a “constant fixture” of the geopolitical landscape, and Washington would act as the ultimate guarantor of international peace and security.
One of the document’s principal drafters was I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, who would later become Vice President Cheney’s highly effective chief of staff and national security adviser during George W. Bush’s first term until he was indicted for perjury.
The draft DPG would essentially become the template for what became in 1997 the Project for New American Century, a letterhead organization launched by neoconservatives Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan that in some ways formalized the coalition of Machtpolitikers like Cheney, Rumsfeld, and John Bolton; pro-Israel neoconservatives like Perle, Abrams, Libby, Eliot Cohen, and Frank Gaffney; and Christian Zionists, such as Gary Bauer and William Bennett.
PNAC subsequently published a series of hawkish statements and open letters demanding substantial increases in the US defense budget and stronger US action against perceived adversaries, notably Iraq, Iran, and China. Led by Cheney as vice president and Rumsfeld as defense secretary, many PNAC associates, particularly neoconservatives, took key posts in the George W. Bush administration in 2001, while PNAC became the leading group outside the administration banging the drum for invading Iraq and prosecuting the “global war on terror.” A legacy that leads directly to the current moment where Cheney's hard won Executive powers rule over a landscape of unauthorized US military interventions and undeclared wars all over the globe.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Spineless Mike Johnson Grovels to Trump and Shutters the House Early
Imagine Johnson, a lawyer, took an oath to uphold the Constitution yet has no interest in safeguarding the independence of the congressional branch of our government.
Jul 26, 2025
The Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Mike Johnson—probably the worst speaker in American history—shut down the House early this week before its five-week vacation. He wants to avoid holding votes on releasing the Epstein files that reportedly include, among other notables, President Donald J. Trump.
This is the latest valet service provided by a spineless Johnson, a Trump toady, whose groveling has no known boundaries. Imagine Johnson, a lawyer, took an oath to uphold the Constitution yet has no interest in safeguarding the independence of the congressional branch of our government.
Like Trump, he falsely characterizes what is in the Trump corporate giveaway tax-budget bill that shattered the country’s social safety net for American families. No one has ever even dared to promote such a draconian tax bill. Our country’s safety net has had the support of both parties until the wrecking crew of Trump, Johnson, and Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) showed up.
Johnson declined to protect his own party members who were raising serious questions about Trump’s big, destructive bill. He allowed the Trumpsters to physically threaten these dissenters to get them back in line.
No matter who is in control, the GOP or the Democrats, the crass obeisance to the executive branch remains the surrendering norm.
Most seriously, he has further crumpled the Founders’ system of checks and balances by turning the House of Representatives into an automatic rubber stamp for Trump. Johnson even refuses to allow his committee chairs to hold hearings on legislation Trump wants to ram through Congress. Johnson and his cronies do no oversight of the executive branch despite Trump’s vast violations and vicious cruelties, such as firing tens of thousands of key federal civil servants and further debilitating the resources of the Internal Revenue Service to collect taxes from the evasive super-rich and big companies. And the list goes on.
As The New York Times elaborated further with this description:
Mr. Johnson’s decision to shut down the House early was the latest example of how the speaker has in many ways ceded the chamber’s independence in order to please or avoid angering Mr. Trump. He has deferred to the president on matters large and small, including when it comes to Congress’ spending power. He quietly maneuvered this year to yield the House’s ability to weigh in on Mr. Trump’s tariffs, in order to spare Republicans from having to cast politically tricky votes on whether to end them.
The larger decline of Congress providing countervailing checks and balances reflecting the interests of the people, whose sovereign power under the Constitution has been delegated to it as a public trust, and has been eroded for decades. (See, “Congressional Surrender and Presidential Overreach” by Bruce Fein).
No matter who is in control, the GOP or the Democrats, the crass obeisance to the executive branch remains the surrendering norm.
The consensus by the two parties extends to the minimal days that Congress is actually in session. The members take numerous vacations (they call them “recesses”). They see the weeks they work as starting on Tuesday and ending on Thursday. In between even those days, they are busy in fundraising offices dialing for campaign dollars.
With such limited workdays for a full-time, well-paying job, members of Congress have less time for hearings to investigate wrongdoing, waste, and neglect of actions in the executive branch or the dubious ethical practices in the federal judiciary and federal prosecutors’ offices.
Increasingly, it is nearly impossible for informed citizens to secure congressional hearings and be invited as witnesses, as was the case in the 60s and 70s. Congress is, however, “open for business” if you represent big corporations. Congress has built a cocoon around itself with a sign reading: Business Lobbyists Only. People are bitterly complaining about their inability to get through to their senators or representatives if they are not big campaign contributors or from big business. (See, The Incommunicados by Ralph Nader and Bruce Fein).
The solution is obvious. The people back home must organize Congress Watch Groups—call it a crucial civic hobby (See: The Day the Rats Vetoed Congress)—and establish a tradition of formally summoning their wayward lawmakers to the people’s Town Meetings with the people’s agendas on the table (See, Breaking Through Power: It’s Easier Than We Think, City Lights Books).
There are many overdue changes and reforms backed by large majorities of liberal and conservative voters to make Watchdog Groups a formidable force. One percent of the voters can change Congress, especially because the necessities of the People are widely and strongly supported by millions of voters.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular