Trump’s war on the Caribbean is met with resistance from US Congress

As the administration of US President Donald Trump continues to carry out unilateral strikes against vessels off the Venezuelan and Colombian coasts, Democratic and Republican lawmakers have sought to reign in the aggression.

While Trump has sought to justify the attacks, which have resulted in a total of 57 deaths, by claiming the vessels were carrying drugs to the US, lawmakers have cast doubt on these claims. This morning, the US military also carried out strikes against alleged drug boats in the Pacific, killing 14 people in the deadliest maritime strike under Trump’s presidency as of yet.

“So far, they have alleged that these people are drug dealers. No one said their name. No one said what evidence. No one said whether they’re armed. And we’ve had no evidence presented,” said Senator Rand Paul, a Republican, in an interview on Fox News. “So, at this point, I would call them extrajudicial killings,” he said.

Senator Paul joined forces with Democratic Senators Tim Kaine and Adam Schiff this month to attempt to prevent military action against Venezuela without Congressional approval through invoking the War Powers Act – a federal law from 1973 intended to check the President’s ability to commit the US to an armed conflict. 

The Act was originally passed amid the Vietnam war in an attempt to check then-President Richard Nixon’s actions, when the US found itself embroiled in situations of intense conflict without a formal declaration of war. 

“I’m extremely troubled that the Trump Administration is considering launching illegal military strikes inside Venezuela without a specific authorization by Congress. Americans don’t want to send their sons and daughters into more wars – especially wars that carry a serious risk of significant destabilization and massive new waves of migration in our hemisphere,” said Kaine, a Senator from Virginia, in a statement.

Earlier this month, the Senate voted down a similar attempt to invoke the War Powers Act by a narrow majority of 51 versus 48. The vote was almost entirely along party lines, except for Paul and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska who voted in favor, and Democratic Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania who joined Republicans in voting against.

Congressional representative Adam Smith, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, called for a hearing last week on Trump’s strikes on boats in the Caribbean, claiming the Trump administration has “failed to demonstrate the legality of these strikes, provide transparency on the process used or even a list of cartels that have been designated as terrorist organizations.”

US carries out strikes with impunity amid a government shutdown

Some point out the fact that such aggressive military action continues amid a government shutdown, ongoing for nearly a month. 

“As the US threatens war against Venezuela and Colombia and spends likely billions of dollars deploying the world’s largest aircraft carrier, war ships, B-52 bombers, and thousands of military personnel to the Caribbean to threaten Venezuela, hundreds of thousands of people are at risk of losing their benefits because the Trump administration is hell bent on decreasing poor people’s access to healthcare,” says Zoe Alexandra, editor of Peoples Dispatch and of the book “Why Venezuela?: How the US Tries to Undermine Democracy and Sovereignty in Latin America”.

“This whole framing that the US airstrikes, in which over 50 people have been extrajudicially executed, are part some righteous ‘war on drugs’ to save the lives of American people is a slap in the face to working people in the United States whose lives are literally not being saved by the Trump administration that would rather help line the pockets of health insurance companies and continue giving tax cuts to the ultra-rich,” Alexandra continues, referencing the standoff over Republican cuts to public health insurance which initially led to the standoff that precipitated the shutdown.

Lebanese-American journalist Rania Khalek has tied the airstrikes in Venezuela to the past years of Israeli genocide in Gaza, writing in a post on X that “The live-streamed slaughter of Palestinians has raised the threshold of US aggression and cruelty.”

“It’s expanded what empire can get away with,” said Khalek. “The more the world lets Israel and the US destroy Palestine with impunity, the more that destruction spreads until it reaches your doorstep.”