“The legislation addresses various issues tied to last year’s fatal Washington air disaster, including advanced location-tracking technology on aircraft. But the ROTOR Act has met stiff resistance from the chair of the House Transportation Committee.
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The Senate passed the bill, S. 2503, from Cruz and Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), via unanimous consent in December.
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Transportation Chair Sam Graves (R-Mo.) has objected to the bill, saying he wants big changes to it.
In a series of recent interviews, Graves has cited concerns over impacts to general aviation, the small-scale flights that range from recreational trips on single-engine planes to crop dusting.
On Tuesday, the top Democrat on the House transportation panel, Rep. Rick Larsen of Washington, said in an interview he was mulling two options: either adjusting the ROTOR Act or crafting new legislation after the National Transportation Safety Board last week issued 50 recommendations related to the catastrophe, which killed 67 people.
In a separate interview Tuesday, Graves said his committee will have a bipartisan response to the midair collision.
Victims’ families and the chair of the NTSB have backed the ROTOR Act.
One of the NTSB’s recommendations mirrors a key component of the Senate bill: a mandate of an advanced location-receiving technology — called Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast In, or ADS-B In — on planes and helicopters flying in busy airspace.
Graves, an avid pilot and longtime general aviation booster, doesn’t support the ROTOR Act’s ADS-B In requirement, as written.”
The guy who attacked Ilham Omar had a sad life of divorces, estrangement from family members, 10 DUIs, and limited money. He supported Trump and followed right wing podcasts. He posted racist stuff online. It’s possible that he blamed his crappy life on the left and blacks, and that motivated his attack.
“A ballooning Immigration and Customs Enforcement budget. Hiring bonuses of $50,000. Swelling ranks of ICE officers, to 22,000, in an expanding national force bigger than most police departments in America.
President Donald Trump promised the largest mass deportation operation in U.S. history, but achieving his goal wouldn’t have been possible without funding from the big tax and spending cuts bill passed by Republicans in Congress, and it’s fueling unprecedented immigration enforcement actions in cities like Minneapolis and beyond.”
The attack on Venezuela seems to have used a cyber attack to take out the city’s electricity and over 150 aircraft. The US suppressed Venezuelan anti-air capability by suppressing and destroying them. Many military targets were struck, most by relatively small and targeted weapons, and most anti-air assets. There wasn’t an attempt to more broadly destroy Venezuela’s military capabilities. The US may have used new one-way attack drones that are cheaper than missiles.
This US operation represents what is possible, but also required luck. Shoulder fired anti-air rockets were launched, and one helicopter was hit in the leg three time and still managed to land the helicopter on the attack. If those hits hit the helicopter or person a little differently, the operation may have gone differently. The US may have had to send more waves, giving Venezuela more time to respond. Success was not inevitable.
The Maduro regime is not gone. The US took the leader, but the rest of the regime stayed in place.
The attack was not authorized by Congress, and therefore unconstitutional.
“Hours after the Senate voted to advance the war powers resolution rebuking the White House’s current and future actions in Venezuela, President Donald Trump placed “angry” calls to each of the five Republicans who crossed the aisle, according to people with knowledge of the calls.
Sens. Josh Hawley, R-Mo.; Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska; Rand Paul, R-Ky.; Susan Collins, R-Maine; and Todd Young, R-Ind., voted with Democrats to require the administration to get congressional approval for future military action in Venezuela.
Thursday’s vote was a procedural motion, and it advances the legislation to a full Senate vote that will require a simple majority.
Soon after the vote, Trump threatened each senator with primary challenges, vowing to unseat them, the people said.”
The first action in Venezuela already required Congressional authorization and was unconstitutional!
“As senators woke up Saturday with questions on President Donald Trump’s audacious decision to order the capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, one of their old colleagues was ready with answers.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio worked the phones in the wee hours of the morning and, in the days since, has played an outsize role in not only formulating the administration’s strategy in Venezuela but explaining it to skeptical lawmakers wary of a protracted military commitment.
That outreach has been to his former Republican colleagues as well as Democrats, including those who see him as a rare Trump official with whom they can maintain a trusted and respectful relationship amid profound policy disputes.
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“Marco has been evangelical on Latin America for a long time, for a long time — I mean, he’s, you know, a pretty classic neocon who believes that America will generally be greeted as liberators,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), another former Foreign Relations colleague. “I didn’t vote for him because I thought he was going to suddenly agree with me on the importance of military restraint overseas.”
Added Kaine, “At the end of the day, he’s going to do what Trump tells him to do.””
“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.”
“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.”
By letting the Covid-era boost to ACA subsidies end, Republicans are making health insurance for 24 million people much much more expensive. These are people who: don’t get subsidized health insurance at work, make too much for Medicaid, but also too much for regular ACA subsidies. Many are small business owners.
Mike Johnson used to push for limiting the president’s power over tariffs. Now, he is Trump’s little bitch and actively prevents such bills from even reaching the floor.