Something that’s possibly not getting enough coverage:
On September 4, President Donald Trump sent a letter to Congress in accordance with the War Powers Resolution to report on the September 2 military strike on a vessel in the Caribbean Sea, targeting and killing 11 individuals allegedly engaged in illicit drug trafficking. Since then, the U.S. military has carried out at least 13 additional attacks on vessels in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific, killing more than 60 people that the administration asserts were trafficking drugs into the United States. We focus here on one slice of the domestic legal issues these strikes raise: the statutory requirement that the Executive Branch cease any use of military force without Congressional authorization past Monday, when the War Powers Resolution’s “60-day clock” runs out.
The clock does not authorize force; it is an additional statutory constraint along with the reporting requirements built into the War Powers Resolution. In other words, even when a president is acting under his or her constitutional authority to use force, the statute requires that the operations terminate after 60 days if Congress has not yet approved of the operations.
So time runs out tomorrow. But the Administration has decided that the War Powers Act doesn’t apply to whatever our military is doing in the Caribbean Sea. Trump, or whoever is directing this, intends to keep bombing random boats.
The Justice Department told Congress this week that President Trump could lawfully continue his lethal military strikes on people suspected of smuggling drugs at sea, notwithstanding a time limit for congressionally unauthorized deployments of armed forces into “hostilities.”
In a briefing, the official who leads the department’s Office of Legal Counsel, T. Elliot Gaiser, said the administration did not think the operation rose to the kind of “hostilities” covered by the 60-day limit, a key part of a 1973 law called the War Powers Resolution, according to several people familiar with the matter.
In a statement provided by the White House, an unnamed senior administration official said that American service members were not in danger because the boats suspected of smuggling drugs were mostly being struck by drones far from naval ships carrying U.S. forces.
Going back to the first article linked above, at Just Security, which explains the War Powers Act —
In addition to its well-known 48-hour reporting requirements, the War Powers Resolution includes a provision known as the “60-day clock.” In short, within 60 calendar days after a 48-hour report is submitted (or was required to have been submitted) on the introduction of U.S. armed forces into hostilities or imminent hostilities, the President shall terminate any such use of the armed forces unless Congress (1) has declared war or enacted a specific authorization for such use of force; (2) has extended by law the 60-day period; or (3) is physically unable to meet as a result of an armed attack on the United States. None of these things have happened here.
The War Powers Resolution allows the President to extend the 60-day period by an additional 30 days if the President determines and certifies to Congress that “unavoidable military necessity respecting the safety of United States Armed Forces requires the continued use of such armed forces in the course of bringing about a prompt removal of such forces.” Unsurprisingly given the prompt removal requirement, the President has not made this certification. This means that, by operation of law, the administration must terminate the use of U.S. armed forces in hostilities against suspected narcotraffickers in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific by Monday, 60 days after the September 4 report was submitted.
We do not expect the President to terminate this use of force per this requirement. He and Secretary Pete Hegseth have made very clear these strikes will continue. But we would expect that Executive Branch lawyers advising the President and other senior policy officials would have informed them about the clock, likely when the decision was made to submit a War Powers Report in early September. (We should note that, to our knowledge, no additional 48-hour reports have been submitted since September 4. At least one notice under section 1230 of the FY 2024 NDAA was subsequently submitted, and it is possible that additional reports under section 1230, or under other reporting requirements like 10 U.S.C. 130f, have been submitted to Congress that have not been made public).
Also,
While past administrations of both parties have contributed to the expansion of the President’s claims to unilateral war-making authority and have often found ways to circumvent the requirements in the War Powers Resolution, this administration’s action – in both substance and messaging – represents an unprecedented expansion of Executive Branch authority over the use of force.
Now see Reuters, How the US is preparing a military staging ground near Venezuela. In brief, the U.S. is upgrading a long-abandoned naval base in Puerto Rico. Also, too,
The U.S. military buildup in the Caribbean began in August with the arrival of warships, a nuclear-powered submarine, fighter jets and spy planes.
The Ford aircraft carrier strike group, with roughly 10,000 troops and dozens of aircraft and weapons systems, is on its way from the Adriatic Sea. One of the Ford’s destroyers cleared Gibraltar on October 29, according to satellite imagery and ship tracking data.
Trump is going to attack Venezuela, if he doesn’t have a stroke first.
Going OT: In Trump's highly edited 60 Minutes interview, he does not know anything about the obvious corruption in the pardon he signed for the Crypto king who pleaded guilty to money laundering. Trump says he did not know.
BUT, Trump is making the legal argument that Biden did not know about who he pardoned, and that it was Biden's underlings who did the 11th-hour pardons for the figures Trump had announced he was going to use DOJ to get.
So if Trump does not know about a pardon he signs, it's still a valid pardon. If Trump claims Biden was not competent enough to understand the pardons he signed, they are invalid.
"Trump says he did not know" That is diaper don's standard retort for anyone who is even the slightest bit controversial "I don't know them". If Barron got is trouble I'd wager he would say the same fucking thing!
Today Stump is going on and on about how if Mamdani gets elected he's going to "find it hard to send any money to New York". I've seen many responses to this mindless dribble from democrats including Mamdani himself who said: "New York is owed that money". I didn't hear one person say the most obvious thing and that is that the money came from and belongs to the fucking taxpayers, it's not diaper don's god damn money? When are people going start talking to Stump the way he talks to them, let that old fucking gas bag have for christ sake!
Fearless leader gave the US oil barons what amounted to a blank check for their political support last election, and I guess they decided on oil rich Venezuela. Another oil war in the making. We go to war when it is in the interests of the country, economists tell me, then pretend it is for moral reasons the 'moral reasons' the bought and paid for 'religious leaders', make up. It is all in that gospel of greed that I did not get in any of my extensive religious indoctrination.
If a country had oil, you would think the citizens would all benefit from the common- wealth of the country. Not so by in large. The oil barons will trickle down as little as they can get away with to the citizens if they survive the war.
I can't wait for the fiction to begin. This should make the domino theory and body counts of the Viet Nam era look weak in comparison. They might even get AI to write and illustrate it. Put on your hip waders, as they always say when the BS is coming in tidal wave fashion. It will be like the good old days of weapons of mass destruction but bigger and better of course. What is not in this era of superlatives.
Talk about quenching your thirst from an empty cup. That looks like the non-fiction version of this saga that may come out later. It should be quite a bit lighter on the superlatives if and when we get it.
I don't think there's any doubt that this administration is itching to get a shooting war going, and preferably against a fictional enemy nation state that's nearby (but a real nation if you get my meaning). I think someone noticed that in the early part of BeeBee's current PM term, he tried to kneecap the judicial branch in his country because they caught him being corrupt. Now, there are some observers in that region of the world who think that it's a little smelly that militants in Gaza were able to pull off an astoundingly brutal invasion on Oct. 7, (some smell a rat; how could those primitive terrorists pull off such a feat against the vaunted military power of their neighbor?? The intelligence services didn't see it coming?). I'm going to discount that because I'm not aware of any evidence of hanky panky.
One can observe that in the aftermath of Oct. 7, the world accepted that some level of payback was justifiable. But then months went by, "objectives" were not yet achieved, reports of actual events were possibly muddied by both sides, not necessarily to similar degrees; solutions difficult; and two years later the corruption charges have still not been pressed. Surely someone high in the repugnant party hierarchy noticed. Is it possible that being at war effectively delays accountability?
Would it matter if a war was really far more similar to a WWE Smackdown show than to any real world conflict?
I think BeeBee got parliamentary approval (maybe a little hinky, but he got it). But in some places, when a war is just another "business" action of creating content for the inter-tubes, (renegade Big Brother show, Survivor, pick your infotainment), does a "leader" really need legislative approval"? C'mon, it's just show biz.
Just me asking questions, snarkily.
"The Ford aircraft carrier strike group, with roughly 10,000 troops and dozens of aircraft and weapons systems, is on its way from the Adriatic Sea. "
If the US puts troops on the ground, it will be a political mistake with MAGA. I'm not suggesting they will abandon Trump in hordes but the Republican Middle East adventures aren't popular. Venezuala is an obvious grab for oil, which didn't work for US oil companies after spilling blood and treasure in Iraq. (Thanks, Dick.)
Trump is probably being told that before the midterms, he can flood the US market with oil from Venezuela and bring the cost down to under $2 per gallon. It can't happen because US oil producers will go out of business. (We were there in Trump's first term when Russia and SA were flooding the global market. Trump begged them to cut back production to bring UP the price.)
Big Oil wants access to that oil on their terms. I think they gave spread money around in the WH to convice Trump underlings to talk him into conducting a coup. But nobody in the WH has the political sophistication of Bush/Cheney and they failed to secure oil for US companies in Iraq. I'm not sure how much of a risk China and Russia are willing to take in Venezuela to embarrass Trump.
I hope Trump chickens out. I'm no fan of the government that exists in V, but I'm even less in favor of anything the US would replace it with.