“U.S. troops entered Syria to fight the Islamic State group, which lost its last territory in 2018. They stayed to counter Iranian forces, who were in Syria at the invitation of former leader Bashar al-Assad and were kicked out during the December 2024 revolution by the new Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa. The possibility of a Turkish invasion of Syria scuttled Trump’s first withdrawal attempt in October 2019, but that is unlikely now that Kurdish factions are negotiating peace with the Syrian and Turkish governments.
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the Trump administration has been expanding rather than shrinking America’s military involvement in Syria. It recently began talks to build a new U.S. base right outside Damascus, the Syrian capital, ostensibly for peacekeeping between Syria and Israel.
Sharaa, eager to stay in Washington’s good graces, visited the White House in November 2025 and announced that he would be joining the U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State group. Americans were suddenly patrolling alongside Syrian forces in areas they had never patrolled before, such as Palmyra, which Trump described on social media as “a very dangerous part of Syria, that is not fully controlled by them.”
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Cooperation with the new Syrian government may have looked like a relatively cost-free way to keep a U.S. foothold in Syria, but the incident in Palmyra shows that there is, in fact, a greater risk to American troops than the White House realized. Yet the administration is doubling down, arguing that the attack is actually a reason to stay in Syria.”
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We’re told that American troops are in Syria to prevent “another costly, large-scale war,” but every time someone attacks those troops, we’re told the U.S. has to double down on its commitment to avoid humiliation—which will create more opportunities to attack Americans. And the Palmyra shooter is not the only Syrian who has a problem with the new government or its American backers.”
The Trump administration wants to keep Venezuela orderly and get oil flowing. Machado, the democratic activist behind the person that beat Maduro in an election that Maduro stole, has been bending over backward to please Trump, but she has not maintained alliances with people in power in Venezuela. Trump wants someone within the current power structure who can bend to his will and maintain support of the powers in the country. That’s why he went with Maduro’s vice president over the more democratically popular figure.
“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.
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Trump’s violation of the rule of law on Saturday morning is not without precedent. That creates some awkward considerations. Trump’s critics often want to frame him as a radical and unique threat to democracy. But, as is often the case, Trump is merely pulling levers of power that already existed. Congress shrugged off the elder Bush’s attack on Panama, which paved the way for its sequel.”
“The U.S. Constitution gives Congress the power to declare war. Bombing a foreign country’s capital and arresting its president are plainly acts of war that received no authorization from Congress. The Trump administration clearly seems to have violated the Constitution.
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If Vance were correct, all any president would need to do to start a war is have his Justice Department file charges against a foreign leader. That’s hardly compatible with Congress controlling the power to initiate hostilities.
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The most direct historical parallel to the Maduro operation would be the U.S. ouster of Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega in 1989 after he stole an election and was indicted on drug smuggling charges.
But as Ilya Somin points out, there are some important legal differences. Panamanian forces had killed a U.S. Marine in the Panama Canal Zone and captured other U.S. citizens. Also, the Panamanian government declared war on the United States.”
“As the Senate considered a resolution that would have blocked the Trump administration from using military force against Venezuela, Secretary of State Marco Rubio reportedly gave a classified briefing to key members of Congress.
In that November briefing, Rubio “indicated that the administration is not currently preparing to target Venezuela directly and didn’t have a proper legal argument for doing so,” The Washington Post reported at the time. Similarly, CNN reported that administration officials told lawmakers that “the US is not currently planning to launch strikes inside Venezuela and doesn’t have a legal justification that would support attacks against any land targets,” and that the legal justification offered for strikes against suspected drug boats traveling near Venezuela “does not extend to land targets.”
In the early hours of Saturday morning, however, American forces did attack a land target in Venezuela: Fort Tiuna, the military compound where Venezuelan leader Nicholas Marudo was holed up. According to the BBC, at least four more targets in and around Caracas were hit during the operation.
On Sunday, reporters asked Rubio about the obvious gap between what he (and other officials) told lawmakers in November and what had just unfolded in Caracas.
Rubio told the Post that the administration would need congressional approval only if it “was going to conduct military strikes for military purposes.” And this, he insisted, was not a military strike but “a law enforcement operation.”
That claim seems to contradict the description offered by President Donald Trump at his press conference on Saturday morning. Trump described Maduro’s capture as an “extraordinary military operation” unlike anything since World War II. The administration also trotted out Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and General Dan Caine to describe in detail how U.S. forces had breeched Venezuelan defenses and successfully captured Maduro in an operation that lasted more than two hours and involved more than 200 troops.
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The Trump administration did not need Congress to sign off on specific operational choices: the time, location, forces involved, and so on. What the Constitution and relevant statutes require is that Congress authorizes the use of the military. That could have been done without jeopardizing any specific mission.
Think about Iraq. Congress approved the use of military force in October 2002. Congress did not need to approve the operational details of the invasion in March 2023. That’s the purview of the executive branch, but only after getting permission from Congress.”
“Congress is supposed to declare wars under the U.S. Constitution, and we have laws that are supposed to constrain unilateral military deployments without congressional consultation. The Trump administration has blown through both of those domestic legal prohibitions, either because it could not be bothered to get consent from Congress or it did not think it would get the votes.”