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Ilhan Omar Slams Latest Trump Attack on Venezuelan Boat as 'Egregious Violation'
"There is NO legal justification," the progressive congresswoman said. "It risks spiraling into the exact type of endless, pointless conflict that Trump supposedly opposes."
Sep 16, 2025
US Congresswoman Ilhan Omar on Tuesday condemned the Trump administration's attack the previous day on a second boat allegedly transporting drugs off the coast of Venezuela as blatantly illegal, highlighting her introduction last week of a war powers resolution in a bid to stop the aggression.
President Donald Trump announced Monday that the US destroyed what he said was a boat used by Venezuelan drug gangs, killing three people in what one Amnesty International campaigner called "an extrajudicial execution."
The strike followed a September 2 US attack on another alleged drug-running boat that killed 11 people, which Omar (D-Minn.) called a "lawless and reckless" action.
Responding to Monday's attack, Omar said on the social media site X that the Trump administration "is once again using the failed War on Drugs to justify their egregious violation of international law."
"There is NO legal justification," she said of the attack. "It risks spiraling into the exact type of endless, pointless conflict that Trump supposedly opposes. I have a war powers resolution to fight back."
Introduced last Thursday, the measure aims to stop the US attacks, which coincide with Trump's deployment of a small armada of warships off the Caribbean coast of Venezuela, a country that has endured to more than a century of US meddling in its affairs.
"All of us should agree that the separation of powers is crucial to our democracy, and that only Congress has the power to declare war," Omar said at the time.
The War Powers Act of 1973—enacted during the Nixon administration at the tail end of the US war on Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos—empowers Congress to check the president’s war-making authority. The law requires the president to report any military action to Congress within 48 hours and mandates that lawmakers must approve troop deployments after 60 days.
Also last week, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) led a letter signed by two dozen Democratic colleagues and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) asserting that the Trump administration offered “no legitimate justification” for the first boat strike.
Omar's condemnation of the US attacks followed Monday's announcement by US Reps. Nancy Mace (R-SC) and Buddy Carter (R-Ga.) of separate resolutions to strip Omar of her committee assignments and, in the case of Mace's measure, censure the congresswoman after she reportedly shared a video highlighting assassinated far-right firebrand Charlie Kirk's prolific bigotry.
Trump also attacked Omar on Monday, calling her a "disgraceful person," a "loser," and "disgusting."
Omar is no stranger to censure efforts, which critics say are largely fueled by Islamophobia—and haven't just come from Republicans. In 2019, she was falsely accused of antisemitism by leaders of her own party and was the subject of an anti-hate speech resolution passed by House lawmakers after she remarked about the indisputable financial ties the pro-Israel lobbying group American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and members of Congress.
In February 2023, Omar was ousted from the House Foreign Affairs Committee for years-old comments that allegedly referenced antisemitic tropes.
Last year, Congressman Don Bacon (R-Neb.) introduced a censure resolution after Omar said of Jewish students at Columbia University, "We should not have to tolerate antisemitism or bigotry for all Jewish students, whether they're pro-genocide or anti-genocide."
The measure failed to pass, as did another put forth earlier last year by Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) after she mistranslated remarks Omar made in Somali.
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GOP Investigation Pressures Wikipedia to Reveal Identities of Editors Accused of 'Bias' Against Israel
The effort furthers the goals of the Heritage Foundation, which has launched a plan to "identify and target Wikipedia editors" using a number of underhanded tactics.
Aug 28, 2025
A pair of House Republicans is moving forward with an investigation that will seek to reveal the identities of Wikipedia editors who have edited articles to include information that portrays Israel negatively.
On Wednesday, Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), chair of the House Oversight Committee, and Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), chair of the House Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Information Technology, and Government Innovation, sent a letter to the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that owns the free encyclopedia.
The representatives asked Wikimedia's CEO, Maryana Iskander, for "assistance in obtaining documents and communications regarding individuals (or specific accounts) serving as Wikipedia volunteer editors who violated Wikipedia platform policies as well as your own efforts to thwart intentional, organized efforts to inject bias into important and sensitive topics."
The letter requested information about "nation state actors" or "academic institutions" that may have been involved in efforts to "edit or influence content identified as possibly violating Wikipedia policies."
A spokesperson for the Wikimedia Foundation told The Hill that they were reviewing the request.
"We welcome the opportunity to respond to the committee's questions and to discuss the importance of safeguarding the integrity of information on our platform," the spokesperson said.
The GOP investigation coincides with a long-standing objective of the far-right Heritage Foundation, which has accused Wikipedia of anti-conservative bias and promoting content that portrays Israel in a negative light, and sought to unmask the identities of the internet users who run it.
The letter sent by Comer and Mace requests that Wikimedia provide Congress with "records showing identifying and unique characteristics of accounts (such as names, IP addresses, registration dates, user activity logs) for editors" who have been "subject to actions" by Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee, which resolves internal disputes between editors.
It was, in essence, a request by Congress for Wikipedia to "dox" many of its editors.
"In the culture of Wikipedia editing, it is common for individuals to use pseudonyms to protect their privacy and avoid personal threats," wrote tech writer and Wikipedia expert Stephen Harrison for Slate in February. "Revealing an editor's personal information without their consent, a practice known as doxing, is a form of harassment that can result in a user's being permanently banned from the site."
Of chief concern to the legislators is investigating Wikipedia's handling of content related to Israel. They cited a report from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a pro-Israel lobbying group, which the legislators said "raised troubling questions about potentially systematic efforts to advance antisemitic and anti-Israel information in Wikipedia articles related to conflicts with the state of Israel."
The ADL report makes the allegation that 30 "bad-faith" Wikipedia editors, whose identities are not public, were collaborating to edit pages about the Israel-Palestine conflict by "spotlighting criticism of Israel and downplaying Palestinian terrorist violence and antisemitism," and in the process violating Wikipedia's commitment to neutrality.
That report, however, has been heavily criticized, including by some of the academics it cited. In a piece for The Forward, Shira Klein, whose research on Wikipedia's documentation of the Holocaust appears in the report, said the ADL "inaccurately" used her work, and the work of others, as part of its "ramped-up efforts to police public discourse about Israel," and quoted other researchers who felt the same.
Klein described the study's interpretation of the facts as "very skewed" and said it was reliant "on a faulty premise: that criticism of Israel or Zionism is inherently antisemitic."
"To establish foul play, the ADL would need to demonstrate that Wikipedia content about Israel and Zionism regularly expresses as fact ideas that diverge from broadly held scholarly opinions on the matters in question," Klein said. "But where is the evidence of editors repeatedly misrepresenting or contradicting peer-reviewed literature? There is none. The report simply wants us to take the ADL's word for it."
The ADL's report, as well as a similar report from the Atlantic Council alleging that Wikipedia editors had conspired to spread pro-Kremlin propaganda, are the sole pieces of evidence cited by Comer and Mace in their request for identifying information on Wikipedia's editors.
However, right-wing efforts to undermine Wikipedia's independence and attack the privacy of its editors go back much further.
In January, documents obtained by The Forward's Arno Rosenfeld revealed a secret plan by Heritage, the think tank behind the authoritarian Project 2025 playbook, to "identify and target Wikipedia editors" who the organization said were "abusing their position."
Among the methodologies it directed Heritage employees to use include "analyzing text patterns, usernames, and technical data through data breach analysis, fingerprinting, [human intelligence], and technical targeting."
The targeting methods also included "creating fake Wikipedia user accounts to try to trick editors into identifying themselves by sharing personal information or clicking on malicious tracking links that can identify people who click on them."
According to Rosenfeld, "The Heritage Foundation sent the pitch deck outlining the Wikipedia initiative to Jewish foundations and other prospective supporters of Project Esther, its roadmap for fighting antisemitism and anti-Zionism."
Jewish Voice for Peace has described Project Esther as Heritage's "blueprint for using the federal government and private institutions to dismantle the Palestine solidarity movement and broader US civil society, under the guise of 'fighting antisemitism.'"
"Even if you take issue with how the site is currently framing the conflict, that doesn't justify Heritage's plan," Harrison wrote. "Targeting Wikipedia editors personally, instead of debating their edits on the platform, marks a dangerous escalation."
Coming amid the Trump administration's crackdowns against campus protests and efforts to deport immigrants over pro-Palestine speech, critics have described the House Republican investigation as the latest GOP attempt to censor criticism and the spread of unflattering information about Israel.
Adam Johnson, a co-host for the political podcast Citations Needed, described it in a post on X as "House Republicans working with the ADL and Atlantic Council to discipline Wikipedia into parroting the Israeli and NATO line."
Johnson noted that this push was coming as the clear majority of Americans, including an overwhelming number of Democrats, now oppose US support for Israel, with many now believing the country is committing a genocide.
"Rather than end the genocide," Johnson said, "the response instead is to continue firing, doxing, smearing, and attempting to censor inconvenient narratives."
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'Profiles in Cowardice' Award Seeks to Identify Leaders Enabling Rise of Fascist Trump
The nominees "took an oath to 'support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic,'" said retired Maj. Gen. Dennis Laich. "Through their actions, or inaction, they are violating that oath."
Jul 09, 2025
A network of former intelligence, military, and national security officials on Tuesday launched the Profiles in Cowardice Award and urged the public to vote for nominees who are "silent in the face of the country's descent into fascism," a march led by U.S. President Donald Trump.
"We are in a constitutional crisis," says the Eisenhower Media Network's (EMN) website for the award. "Trump is amassing power in the executive branch, ignoring Congress and the courts. Meanwhile, leaders who have sworn an oath to support and defend the Constitution are sitting on their hands."
The new honor is the inverse of the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award, created by the late president's family "to recognize and celebrate the quality of political courage that he admired most." This year's recipient is Trump's former vice president, Mike Pence, "for putting his life and career on the line to ensure the constitutional transfer of presidential power on January 6, 2021," when Trump incited an insurrection and his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol.
"We, the American people, are here to remind them of who they serve, and that it's time to do their constitutional duty by standing up to this administration and its authoritarian bent."
Nominees for the inaugural Profiles in Cowardice Award are former President George W. Bush, former Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), retired Gens. David Petraeus and Mark Milley, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Republican members of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
"The 'Profiles in Cowardice' Award was created to call out those weak souls who are failing to engage in efforts to keep our country from sleepwalking into fascism," said EMN's director, retired Maj. Gen. (ret.) Dennis Laich, in a statement.
"These leaders, both past and present, took an oath to 'support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic,'" he noted. "Through their actions, or inaction, they are violating that oath. We, the American people, are here to remind them of who they serve, and that it's time to do their constitutional duty by standing up to this administration and its authoritarian bent."
The public can vote at ProfilesInCowardice.org until August 1, after which the award will be presented to the winner "at the most inconvenient time possible," according to the website.
The site lays out why people were nominated as "cowards." For example, "Bush has a long and storied history of cowardice" and "is solidifying his legacy" by retreating rather than serving as a leader in the Republican Party and standing up to Trump.
In Congress, "Mace is a one-woman culture war content machine—exactly how the military-industrial complex and mainstream media like it," the site continues. Reed, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, "has chosen to push through Trump's agenda of unfettered militarism and confirm unqualified MAGA loyalists like Pete Hegseth," the defense secretary. Republicans on that committee also "rubber-stamped Pete Hegseth to cater to Trump and his blindly loyal MAGA cronies."
Among former military leaders, the site says, "Milley attempted to make a principled stand after the January 6th insurrection—but cowardice won out in the end," and Petraeus said at a conference that "the world was in for 'exciting times' under Trump."
"The Joint Chiefs of Staff are tasked with defending the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic," the site notes. "But as reckless U.S. military actions push the world closer to nuclear catastrophe, they've chosen silence over service. No resignations. No public warnings."
As for Blinken, who served under former President Joe Biden, "he ignored a flood of real-time reports detailing Israeli human rights violations—and now we know his public claims of 'working overtime' on cease-fires were outright lies," the site adds. "With American diplomacy in free fall, Blinken chose complicity and cover stories over truth and action."
Christian Sorenson, EMN's associate director, said that "it takes courage to do the right thing... It takes even more courage to do the right thing when the system itself fosters militarism and war profiteering."
"Targeting 'leaders' in the nation's capital, Profiles in Cowardice highlights the craven and the pushovers, as well as those who eagerly abet authoritarianism and nonstop war for personal and professional gain," Sorenson added. "Virtue and public service will arrive in D.C. one way or another. Profiles in Cowardice is part of that broader effort."
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