<\/p>\n
Nothing speaks more eloquently of the disempowering of the US Congress under Donald Trump\u2019s second presidency than the brazenly audacious arrest of Venezuela\u2019s leader, Nicol\u00e1s Maduro<\/a> and his wife, Cilia.<\/p>\n Far from recognizing it, Trump did not even acknowledge Congress\u2019s right to know \u2013 keeping senior members in the dark until the operation to seize the strongman was under way.<\/p>\n Only after the operation to detain Maduro had begun did the administration bother to tell members of the congressional \u201cgang of eight\u201d: the top Republican and Democratic leaders of the Senate and House of Representatives, plus the chairs and ranking members of the intelligence committees of the two chambers.<\/p>\n That marks a conspicuous break with convention, even as previously observed by Trump himself. When Qassem Suleimani, the commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard\u2019s Quds force was killed in a targeted strike<\/a> during Trump\u2019s first presidency in January 2020, the gang was punctiliously consulted, people involved in that operation have said.<\/p>\n In one fell swoop, the capture appeared to render the 1973 War Powers Resolution obsolete, if not an outright work of fiction.<\/p>\n The 1973 act \u2013 passed in the wake of the Vietnam war amid widespread anxieties about an incipient \u201cimperial presidency\u201d \u2013 requires a president to notify Congress within 48 hours of deploying troops into hostilities and withdraw them after 60 days, unless Congress authorizes the action or declares war.<\/p>\n It was a reaction to Lyndon Johnson\u2019s perceived abuse of the notorious Tonkin Gulf Resolution of 1964, an ostensibly narrow measure that Johnson ultimately exploited to pursue unlimited war in Vietnam.<\/p>\n Yet long before the operation to seize Maduro, Trump had in effect communicated that he considered such congressional limits null and void by offering up a raft of alternative legal justifications \u2013 including executive orders declaring the Venezuelan leader and his henchmen \u201cnarco-terrorists\u201d and thus potentially subject to similar precepts that governed the post-2001 \u201cwar on terror\u201d.<\/p>\n Its effectiveness in constraining presidents from acts of war has long been shown to be limited, as the prolonged wars in Iraq<\/a> and Afghanistan<\/a> attest \u2013 although George W Bush received congressional authorization in both cases.<\/p>\n The 1989 invasion of Panama \u2013 carried out under the administration of George HW Bush to unseat the central American country\u2019s dictatorial ruler, Manuel Noriega \u2013 was conducted without a former declaration of war or specific congressional approval. Bush, however, had taken care to garner bipartisan support on Capitol Hill beforehand.<\/p>\n Nor did Barack Obama seek specific prior congressional approval before the operation to kill Osama bin Laden in Pakistan in 2011, but instead acted under the authority of the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), passed by Congress after the 11 September 2001 al-Qaida terror attacks on New York and Washington.<\/p>\n Under Trump 2.0, no approval was sought for the mass military build-up off Venezuela\u2019s shores or the estimated 35 lethal strikes on alleged drug-trafficking boats<\/a> that have killed at least 115 people since last September. Similarly, the deployment of a vast military force off Venezuela, including the largest US aircraft carrier, was carried out without seeking authorization.<\/p>\n The disdain implicit in the explanations from Trump and Marco Rubio as to why information on the Maduro raid was withheld even from senior congressional figures \u2013 that they cannot be trusted because they might leak \u2013 is unmistakable.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s just simply not the kind of mission you can call people and say: \u2018Hey, we may do this at some point in the next 15 days,\u2019\u201d Rubio told reporters.<\/p>\n Stung by this haughty disregard, congressional Democrats hit out ferociously on Saturday, with insistent demands to be briefed on future actions.<\/p>\n \u201cPresident Trump has made no secret of his intentions to effectively abolish the Congress, and that pattern continues today with his flagrant disregard for the Article 1 war powers of Congress, which is essential to our constitutional system of checks and balances,\u201d said Nancy Pelosi, the former House speaker.<\/p>\n Mark Warner, the Democrat\u2019s ranking member on the Senate\u2019s intelligence select committee and a member of the gang of eight, said: \u201cOur constitution places the gravest decisions about the use of military force in the hands of Congress for a reason. Using military force to enact regime change demands the closest scrutiny, precisely because the consequences do not end with the initial strike.\u201d<\/p>\n And, Tim Kaine, a Democratic senator for Virginia who last month tabled a war powers resolution seeking to rein in the administration\u2019s actions in Venezuela, said: \u201cIt is long past time for Congress to reassert its critical constitutional role in matters of war, peace, diplomacy and trade.\u201d<\/p>\n He added: \u201cWhere will this go next? Will the president deploy our troops to protect Iranian protesters? To enforce the fragile ceasefire in Gaza? To battle terrorists in Nigeria? To seize Greenland or the Panama canal? To suppress Americans peacefully assembling to protest his policies?\u201d<\/p>\n Yet it is hard not to detect an air of impotent futility in the Democrats\u2019 chorus of indignation.<\/p>\n With the exception of a few known Republican rebel figures such as Thomas Massie, a representative from Kentucky, Republican criticism was muted, whatever private misgivings some might have about Trump\u2019s extravagant assumption of presidential powers at their expense.<\/p>\n Matt Duss, a former foreign policy adviser to Bernie Sanders, the leftwing Vermont senator, cited Mike Lee, a Republican senator from Utah, as an example of how far the party\u2019s members in Congress have ceded ground to the president.<\/p>\n Having initially voiced reservations about the lack of authorization from Congress, Lee sharply changed tack<\/a> \u2013 apparently after speaking to Rubio – saying that Maduro\u2019s arrest was within \u201cthe president\u2019s inherent authority under Article II of the Constitution to protect US personnel from an actual or imminent attack\u201d.<\/p>\n Duss contrasted Lee\u2019s supine stance with his previous actions, when he jointed Sanders to support a war powers resolution aimed at restricting US support for Saudi Arabia\u2019s military intervention in Yemen<\/a> during Trump\u2019s first term.<\/p>\n \u201cSenator Lee spoke very eloquently about the constitutional principles at stake, and that was just when the United States was only supporting the Saudi emirati war in Yemen,\u201d said Duss. \u201cSo for him to come out now and say the president has inherent authority to invade a country and kidnap a foreign leader without any authorization from Congress, is just wild.<\/p>\n