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70% of US Public Opposes Military Attack on Venezuela as Trump Eyes 'Deadly New Phase'
"It should come as no surprise by now that the president who campaigned on keeping the US out of wars and then promptly bombed Iran has now found another conflict in which to embroil the country."
Nov 24, 2025
New survey results show that Americans strongly oppose US military action against Venezuela as the Trump administration privately weighs options for land strikes against the South American country—as well as possible covert action targeting the government of President Nicolás Maduro.
The CBS News/YouGov survey, published on Sunday, found that 70% of Americans—including 91% of Democrats and 42% of Republicans—are against the "US taking military action in Venezuela," and a majority don't believe a direct attack on Venezuela would even achieve the Trump administration's stated goal of reducing the flow of drugs to the United States.
The poll also found that a slim majority, 53%, support "using military force to attack boats suspected of bringing drugs into" the US, even as human rights groups and United Nations experts say such attacks—which have killed more than 80 people since early September—are grave violations of US and international law.
The survey data came amid reports that the Trump administration is set to launch "a potentially deadly new phase" of its campaign against Maduro's government, which has responded to the US president's threats and military buildup in the Caribbean with a large mobilization of troops and weaponry.
Citing two unnamed US officials, Reuters reported on Sunday that "covert operations would likely be the first part of the new action against Maduro." The outlet quoted one anonymous official as saying Trump is "prepared to use every element of American power" to achieve his stated goals in the region.
On Monday, as the New York Times reported, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff is set to visit "Puerto Rico and one of the several Navy warships dispatched to the Caribbean Sea to combat drug trafficking as the Trump administration weighs the possibility of a broader military campaign against Venezuela."
Gen. Dan Caine, the top US military officer, has "been a major architect of what the Pentagon calls Operation Southern Spear, the largest buildup of American naval forces in the Caribbean since the Cuban Missile Crisis and the blockade of Cuba in 1962," the Times added.
While polling data has consistently shown that the US public opposes military intervention in Venezuela by significant margins, Republicans in Congress have thus far blocked action to prevent the Trump administration from attacking the country and bombing vessels in international waters without lawmakers' approval.
Al Jazeera columnist Belén Fernández wrote Sunday that "it should come as no surprise by now that the president who campaigned on keeping the US out of wars and then promptly bombed Iran has now found another conflict in which to embroil the country."
"And as is par for the course in US imperial belligerence, the rationale for aggression against Venezuela doesn’t hold water," Fernández added. "For example, the Trump administration has strived to pin the blame for the fentanyl crisis in the US on Maduro. But there’s a slight problem—which is that Venezuela doesn’t even produce the synthetic opioid in question."
Late last week, a group of House Democrats led by Seth Moulton of Massachusetts announced a new legislative effort aimed at preventing the Trump administration from attacking Venezuela without congressional authorization.
The bill, titled the No Unauthorized Force in Venezuela Act, would bar the White House from spending federal funds on military action against Venezuela absent specific congressional approval.
"We owe our service members clarity, legality, and leadership—not threats, not chaos, and not another unnecessary conflict," said Moulton. "This legislation draws the line the president refuses to draw. It protects our troops, reasserts Congress' constitutional role, and ensures we do not sleepwalk into another ill-advised war."
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![People gathered for a traditional Somali wedding in the banquet room at the Safari Restaurant and Banquet Center at 4th Ave. and Lake Street, Minneapolis, Friday afternoon, July 29th, 2011.] Bruce Bisping/Star Tribune.](https://www.commondreams.org/media-library/people-gathered-for-a-traditional-somali-wedding-in-the-banquet-room-at-the-safari-restaurant-and-banquet-center-at-4th-ave-and.jpg?id=62230790&width=1245&height=700&quality=80&coordinates=0%2C175%2C0%2C176)
In 'Political Attack,' Trump Revokes Protected Status for Minnesota Somalis
"This decision, fueled by harmful misinformation campaigns that we believe have external political motives, will tear families apart and send individuals to a country they have not known for over 20 years," one campaigner said.
Nov 23, 2025
President Donald Trump's Friday announcement that he was ending Temporary Protected Status for Somali immigrants in Minnesota prompted outrage and fear from Minnesota Somalis and their allies over the weekend.
In a Truth Social Post, Trump said that he was terminating the TPS program for Somalis in Minnesota "effective immediately," citing concerns about money laundering and gang activity.
“We are deeply disappointed that the administration has chosen to end the Somali TPS program in Minnesota, a legal lifeline for families who have built their lives here for decades," Jaylani Hussein, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations-Minnesota, said in response. "This decision, fueled by harmful misinformation campaigns that we believe have external political motives, will tear families apart and send individuals to a country they have not known for over 20 years."
"This is not just a bureaucratic change; it is a political attack on the Somali and Muslim community driven by Islamophobic and hateful rhetoric. We strongly urge President Trump to reverse this misguided decision," Hussein continued.
"In a typical move, Donald Trump attacks our Somali community because he can’t think of anything else to do on a Friday night."
Minnesota has the nation's largest Somali population at over 26,000. Many have become citizens or are permanent residents, and only around 430 are in the Minnesota TPS program. Further, immigration law experts say that it would be difficult legally to revoke protections before they are already set to expire in March of next year.
"There is literally no legal means by which he can do this. It’s not a presidential power," wrote Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow with the American Immigration Council advocacy group, on social media. "TPS by law cannot be terminated early. Somali TPS is not set to expire until March 17, 2026."
He added that while the Department of Homeland Security "may make an attempt to do this... it would be immediately struck down."
Further, TPS would have to be revoked nationally, and not for a single state.
“There’s no legal mechanism that allows the president to terminate protected status for a particular community or state that he has beef with,” Heidi Altman, policy director at the National Immigrant Justice Center, told the Associated Press.
“This is Trump doing what he always does: demagoguing immigrants without justification or evidence and using that demagoguery in an attempt to take away important life-saving protections,” she said.
Despite this, the remarks sent many in the community into a "panic," local immigration attorney Abdiqani Jabane told the Minnesota Star Tribune.
People “are afraid that ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] agents may start rounding up Somalis. These are people who have lived and worked in the community for more than 20 years," Jabane said.
Somalis were first granted TPS status in the US in 1991 when civil war broke out following the removal of leader Said Barre. Since then, it has been renewed 27 times. Today, the militant group al-Shabab still controls parts of the country.
“Sending anyone back to Somalia today is unsafe because al-Shabab remains active, terrorist attacks continue, and the [Somali] government today is unable to protect anyone,” Jabane said.
Minnesota leaders took to social media to speak out against Trump's edict and stand up for the state's Somali community.
"It’s not surprising that the President has chosen to broadly target an entire community. This is what he does to change the subject, wrote Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.
Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.) wrote: "In a typical move, Donald Trump attacks our Somali community because he can’t think of anything else to do on a Friday night. That’s who he is, but it’s not who we are."
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), who is Somali herself, pushed back against people who used Trump's announcement to call for her deportation.
"I am a citizen and so are [a] majority of Somalis in America. Good luck celebrating a policy change that really doesn’t have much impact on the Somalis you love to hate. We are here to stay," she wrote.
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DOGE 'Doesn't Exist' Anymore, But the Damage It Did 'Will Be Felt for a Long Time'
"The little bit of spending DOGE cut has already killed hundreds of thousands and will eventually lead to millions of deaths," one expert said.
Nov 23, 2025
The Department of Government Efficiency—Elon Musk's much-heralded attempt to take a chainsaw to the federal bureaucracy—has quietly disbanded eight months before its official expiration date, Reuters reported on Sunday.
The news agency received confirmation of DOGE's demise from Office of Personnel Management Director Scott Kupor earlier this month.
"That doesn't exist," Kupor told Reuters, adding that it was "no longer a centralized agency."
Kupor also said that a government hiring freeze implemented by DOGE had ended.
" DOGE is fading away like bank robbery gangs fade away after the robberies are done."
When President Donald Trump first signed the executive order creating DOGE, he said that it would last until July 4, 2026. However, following a public feud with Musk in late spring, Trump and his team had indicated the department was no longer active, often speaking of DOGE in the past tense.
Musk originally set out to save $1 trillion in federal expenditures by cutting what he claimed to be waste. According to the DOGE website, the department has only saved $214 billion of that aim. However, even that number is in dispute, with one Senate report finding the agency wasted over $21 billion.
At the same time, DOGE sowed chaos in the federal government by mass firing workers, hobbling consumer watchdog agencies, and gutting the US Agency for International Development (USAID)—a move that could lead to more than 14 million deaths worldwide by 2030. At the same time, DOGE employees' attempts to gain access to sensitive government data have made the data of millions of Americans less secure. One whistleblower report said the department uploaded Social Security data to a cloud server at risk from hacking.
Several experts reacted to Reuters' report by reflecting on DOGE's destructive legacy.
"Difficult to overstate how profound a failure DOGE was," Bobby Kogan, the senior director of federal budget policy at the Center for American Progress, wrote on social media. "Spending in FY2025 was not only than in FY2024—but higher than it was projected to be when Trump first took office.* The little bit of spending DOGE cut has already killed hundreds of thousands and will eventually lead to millions of deaths."
Rachel Khan wrote for the New Republic:
DOGE’s legacy is both very stupid and very sad: It decimated the federal workforce, including Social Security personnel at local offices, and made it easier for hackers to access your data. The agency tore apart USAID, which resulted in hundreds of thousands of lives lost globally. And all this for projected savings—numbers which grew smaller and less ambitious every time Musk mentioned them.
While DOGE may fade away into a fever dream of Trump’s first 100 days, its effects—and the suffering it inflicted—will be felt for a long time.
Dean Baker, senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, joked, "DOGE seems to be out of business, I guess Elon put our $5k dividend checks in the mail," referring to a promise Musk had made to redistribute DOGE's savings to taxpayers.
However, other commenters argued that DOGE had not failed, but had rather succeeded at its unstated aims.
Georgia State University political scientist Jeff Lazarus wrote that Musk "donated $277 million to Trump so he could steal the federal government’s data, dismantle the nation’s infrastructure, and stop foreign aid from going to nonwhite people. It’s a quid pro quo breathtaking in scope, corruption, and damage, & completely unprecedented in American history."
Bluesky user En Buen Ora wrote: "DOGE did not fail in any way to accomplish its goals. Its goals were never efficiency or saving money. Its goals were to destroy as much of government as possible forever, and to steal data for the Space Nazi. DOGE is fading away like bank robbery gangs fade away after the robberies are done."
While DOGE as an entity may not longer be working, Reuters noted that several of its employees had moved on to other government positions:
- Airbnb cofounder Joe Gebbia now runs the Trump-created National Design Studio;
- former Acting DOGE Administrator Amy Gleason is an adviser at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS);
- DOGE team member Zachary Terrell is chief technology officer at HHS;
- Rachel Riley is chief of the Office of Naval Research; and
- Jeremy Lewin, who helped gut USAID, works for the State Department overseeing foreign assistance.
ProPublica has compiled a running list of every DOGE staffer it could verify, which now totals 114.
Author Tyler King wrote on social media that “‘DOGE doesn’t exist anymore' is a misleading premise because more than 100 former DOGErs have become deeply embedded in federal agencies to generally fuck around with our data and arbitrarily disrupt budgets."
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