Lawless Strikes off Venezuela Threaten Justice at Home

The “double-tap” attacks on Caribbean vessels paired with the pardon of a top-level convicted Honduran trafficker reveal a disturbing drift, where presidential will determines justice, not the rule of law. Precedents like these are already influencing domestic law enforcement, from Immigration and Custom Enforcement raids to threats against members of Congress.

The killing of helpless injured people in the Caribbean is horrifying. US forces reportedly launched a second missile at survivors clinging to debris—after the first strike destroyed their vessel. This incident should prompt congressional hearings and investigations, military resignations, and a national debate about who we are as a country.

We should all be troubled by how easily our government now resorts to violence without law—and how familiar that pattern has become. This is not just a series of isolated decisions. It indicates a major shift in the American system of justice. We are drifting from a system based on legal principles to one in which the will of a single leader determines who is guilty and who is innocent, and who lives and who dies. When justice no longer comes from the rule of law but instead from the laws of one ruler, the republic itself is at risk.

A Pattern of Violence Without Accountability

The strikes on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and Pacific—including the alleged “double-tap” attack in September—are justified by the administration as part of an expanded war on narcotics. But at the same time President Donald Trump orders executions at sea based solely on suspicion, he pardons an actual, convicted narcotrafficker: former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who was found guilty in a US court. That contradiction tells us everything we need to know. These policies are not about drugs. They are about unrestrained executive power.

We have seen this pattern before. In March, the administration launched unauthorized strikes in Yemen on “terrorists” based on reasoning that no one outside a small inner circle had reviewed, except of course for the journalist accidentally added to a secret chat—the incident now known as “Signalgate.” In November, the White House welcomed the new president of Syria: a man once wanted by the US government for leading both al-Qaeda and ISIS factions during the Syrian civil war. If a president can target one alleged wrongdoer with missiles while inviting another to the Oval Office, then “justice” is no longer about law. It’s about convenience.

Despite Threats, Lawmakers and Military Leaders Dissent

The erosion of constitutional principle is no longer limited to distant battlefields. It is now being directed at members of Congress themselves. When Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) and several colleagues reminded US service members that they are legally obligated to refuse unlawful orders—quoting the Uniform Code of Military Justice—the president did not argue the law or dispute their interpretation. He threatened them with prosecution for sedition, going so far as to post “HANG THEM,” (his caps).

A government that decides the law abroad by whim will eventually do the same within its own borders.

Think about that. A president threatening to criminalize lawmakers for telling the truth about the rule of law to the troops they oversee. In any healthy republic, that would be a red line. In a system sliding toward executive supremacy, it becomes one more headline in a relentless procession.

Admiral Alvin Holsey, the former leader of the US Southern Command responsible for the Caribbean, resigned his post abruptly after questioning the legality of US strikes. Official statements insist the resignation was routine. But recent reporting from The Hill found the Secretary of War Pete Hegseth essentially fired the admiral for expressing doubts, saying, “You’re either on the team or you’re not,” and, “When you get an order, you move out fast and don’t ask questions.”

What Happens Abroad Eventually Comes Home

If we accept these absurdities and atrocities overseas, we should expect them to follow us home. Because they already have. The same disregard for due process that allowed missiles to fall on survivors in the Caribbean is visible in ICE’s warrantless raids, forced disappearances into detention centers, and the aggressive machinery of mass deportation. Agents show up without judicial warrants, seize people without probable cause, and remove them from their communities with no meaningful legal review. A government that decides the law abroad by whim will eventually do the same within its own borders.

The common thread is an executive branch increasingly operating without constitutional constraint. Whether it’s a missile strike justified by secret intelligence, a deportation justified by an agent’s suspicion, or a threat against a senator for quoting military law, the message is the same: The president decides what is legal.

Congress Must Reassert Its Constitutional Role

But that is not how a republic works. In our constitutional order, justice flows not from an individual but from the law, and the law is made not by one branch but by three. The framers designed the separation of powers to prevent exactly this concentration of authority: a president who wages war without authorization, punishes enemies without trial, and rewrites criminal law through selective pardons.

If Congress does not reassert its authority—through war-powers enforcement, oversight, and actual legislation that binds the executive—then we will slowly, quietly, and perhaps irrevocably transition into a different system altogether. One where the president’s will, not the public’s law, defines justice.

A democratic republic cannot survive that transformation. It is time to confront, clearly and honestly, the danger of normalizing violence without law and power without limit. The stakes are not only the victims of strikes abroad or raids at home. The stakes are the Constitution itself. And whether we still intend to live under it.