“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.””
“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.”
“Since Rubio took over the NSC, he has shrunk its staff by more than half. It now has fewer than 100 people, according to a person familiar with the NSC process. Arguably more importantly, Rubio has imposed changes to what’s called “the interagency process” — a key function of the NSC that involves coordinating policy and messaging across government agencies and departments.
That process, two people told me, is now one in which important meetings aren’t held, career staffers are often in the dark about what’s expected of them and some people or their institutions try to take advantage of power vacuums. I granted many of those I spoke to anonymity to discuss internal administration dynamics.
Some U.S. diplomats and other national security professionals are worried that the current structure means small crises will explode into big ones because they don’t get early attention, and that key officials who deal with priority issues, such as Ukraine, are being iced out of important conversations.
One of the people familiar with the AUKUS situation said the broken process was already fueling turf fights, such as with Colby, a man known for challenging status quo thinking.
“It’s Game of Thrones politics over there,” the person said.”
“The secretary of state, Marco Rubio, has proposed a sweeping reorganisation of the US state department as part of what he called an effort to reform it amid criticism from the Trump White House over the execution of US diplomacy.
If approved, the reorganisation would cut more than 700 positions and eliminate 132 of 734 offices, according to state department officials. But those officials also stressed that the plan, which was suddenly announced on Tuesday, remained a proposal and would not lead to immediate layoffs or cuts.”
“In general, a foreign national is neither excludable nor deportable “because of the alien’s past, current, or expected beliefs, statements, or associations, if such beliefs, statements, or associations would be lawful within the United States.” But the INA makes an exception when “the Secretary of State personally determines that the alien’s admission would compromise a compelling United States foreign policy interest.” The only statutory requirement to invoke that exception is that the secretary of state “has reasonable ground to believe” that someone’s “presence or activities” would “have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.””
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“Giving “a single government official sweeping and nearly unchecked power to pick and choose individuals to deport based on beliefs alone, without alleging a single crime, crosses a line that should never be crossed in a free society,” Creeley said. “The only ‘crime’ the government has offered [is] that Mahmoud Khalil expressed a disfavored political opinion. If that’s a crime in America, every single one of us is guilty.””
“President Donald Trump says he is determined to deport “terrorist sympathizers,” including legal permanent residents as well as foreigners with student visas. Secretary of State Marco Rubio says the targets have a history of “tearing things up” on “our university campuses” by starting riots, taking over buildings, and harassing people.
While those descriptions seem accurate as applied to at least some of the foreign students whom Rubio wants to expel, they are less apt in other cases. Contrary to the way Trump and Rubio portray this initiative, neither rhetorical support for terrorism nor disruptive conduct is necessary to invoke the sweeping legal authority on which they are relying, which applies to any noncitizen whose “presence or activities” Rubio thinks could have “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences.”
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That gloss rings true as applied to an activist like Taal, who went beyond praising Hamas (which on its own would be constitutionally protected speech) by engaging in conduct that interfered with other people’s use of Cornell facilities, to the point that he was banned from campus. But Rubio’s description is more than a little misleading as applied to a student like Ozturk, who seems to have done nothing more than express views that offend Rubio.”
The Trump administration are not free speech extremists.
“Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Thursday that the State Department has revoked more than 300 student visas, as the Trump administration continues to detain and deport pro-Palestinian student activists at universities across the country.”
Lindsey Graham, along with many Republicans, have turned over all integrity and honesty for Trump. Trump’s power over the Republican Party, and over Republican Senators who used to have strong independent opinions, is amazing.