So much for any hope that the cavalry might come to the rescue of the republic.
In November, New Hampshire’s Maggie Goodlander and five other Members of Congress, all with backgrounds in the military or national security, made a video in which they reminded active duty service members that they have a right and and a duty to refuse illegal orders.
They didn’t record the video on a whim. The Trump administration had been blowing up boats for months, killing scores of people. As yet, there has been no reckoning for anyone involved, from the trigger-pullers up to the very top of the chain of command. But, as recent trends have made all too clear, the fact that there have been no legal consequences doesn’t mean the law has not been broken.
With the executive branch out committing crimes, and the judicial branch washing its hands like Pilate, lawmakers are the only ones in authority left to raise objections.
Last Saturday, El Presidente Donald Trump* ordered the U.S. Army’s Delta Force into Venezuela. Though they are, perhaps, the world’s most highly-trained soldiers, they seem to have skipped law day.
Supported by the U.S. Air Force and twenty percent of the U.S. Navy’s currently deployed ships, they ignored Constitutional requirements, violated international law, bombed ten locations in and around Caracas, mowed down about thirty bodyguards, and kidnapped President Nicolás Maduro.
At a press conference, self-styled “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth gloated over Maduro’s capture, throwing in a little bad boy lingo to bolster his own ego: “He effed around, and he found out.”
If there were ever to be a tribunal on this matter, Hegseth would surely be in the dock. With justice in such short supply these days, though, that does not seem likely. Assuming the Secretary—what a curiously gender-fluid title for such a tough, tattooed he-man—is never tried for carrying out illegal orders, he’ll never “find out” himself. So sad. Fit, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life.
Although military forces carried out the attack, it’s been framed largely as a law enforcement action. Yet Attorney General Pam Bondi has been conspicuously absent. Perhaps she’s still busy scrubbing the Epstein files. But she’ll have to talk sooner or later, and she’s got some ’splaining to do.
Charlie Savage of the New York Times reported Wednesday that “a memo, dated Sept. 5, 2025…blessed as lawful Mr. Trump’s extrajudicial killings of people suspected of smuggling drugs in international waters.” That memo, Savage goes on to write, “accepts and relies upon Mr. Trump’s determination that the United States is in a formal state of armed conflict with a secret list of two dozen drug cartels and gangs he has deemed terrorists.”
What are we to make, then, of this lede, published Tuesday in People: “During the arraignment of deposed Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro on Monday, Jan. 5th, President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice quietly dropped a claim about Maduro’s alleged cartel involvement.”
But let us not fall into some Bannon-esque trap, here, and treat this as a matter of law. Instead, if we can stand it, let’s listen to Stephen Miller, Donald Trump’s Berater für Heimatschutz: “We live in a world (in the real world) that is governed by strength, force and power. These are the iron laws that exist since the beginning of time.”
OK, then. Let’s tell it like it is: we have a president with a criminal record whose every public appearance displays obvious signs of dementia. Like everything else that comes out of his mouth, his excuse for this latest transgression is liable to change at any moment, up to and including complete refutation.
What can’t be hidden is what he’s just done: grabbed a sovereign nation, not by the pussy, but by the largest proven reserve of oil on the planet. This is not just any old oil, either. Venezuela’s “vast reserves of extra-heavy crude are particularly dirty, and its other reserves are ‘also quite carbon- and methane-intensive,’ Paasha Mahdavi told Mother Jones.
Great—all the better to further destabilize the thin coating of air that has—up to now—made this rock habitable.
But let’s not lose our heads. Instead, let’s ask, qui bono? Oddly enough, the one most likely to benefit is a billionaire hedge fund manager. [Catcall from the cheap seats: “Duh! Of course!”]
Paul Singer is not just any old billionaire, though. He was involved in Fusion GPS, which funded the Steele dossier. Having seen the light opportunity, though, he has come around, investing contributing $8 milion to Trump’s campaign. And he’s lining up a deal to buy Chevron, the only U.S. oil outfit with assets in Venezuela.
As if this weren’t enough already, Secretary of State Marco Rubio says Cuba may be next.
On what grounds? Because the government there is run by old men who are “senile and incompetent.”
* Why should we not render his title in Spanish? He said the other day he would “run” Venezuela.