U.S. Captures Venezuela's Maduro After "Large-Scale Strike"

[eddiememphis]

The legal explanations for this are hogwash.

This guy agrees.

https://reason.com/2026/01/03/trump-...7023-587953795

The Trump administration claims Maduro was violating the law, but the U.S. loses its moral high ground by acting illegally to remove him.

The U.S. Constitution gives Congress the sole authority to approve military strikes against foreign countries. Federal laws, like the War Powers Resolution, allow for unilateral executive action only in response to an imminent threat against Americans or U.S. troops. That separation of powers is fundamental to American democracy—not an optional arrangement for presidents to discard when it is politically or logistically inconvenient.

Vice President J.D. Vance tried a different line of argument earlier on Saturday, when he claimed on X that Trump did not need congressional authorization for the attack on Venezuela because "Maduro has multiple indictments in the United States for narcoterrorism. You don't get to avoid justice for drug trafficking in the United States because you live in a palace in Caracas."

So all any President would need to remove any foreign leader from power would be an inditement from a sympathetic court, regardless of the "imminent threat".