Trump’s National Security Agenda Puts 'We the People' in Its Crosshairs

As the Trump administration edges closer to a full-scale, unauthorized war on Venezuela, and amidst reports that President Donald Trump may invoke the Insurrection Act to wield the military against the American people, we must assert limits to Trump’s war powers.

On October 8, 2025, the Senate nearly passed a resolution to block the US from blowing up more boats in the Caribbean. The War Powers resolution, led by Sens. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Tim Kaine (D-Va.), failed by just three votes and follows revelations that the Trump administration secretly authorized covert CIA action in Venezuela. The administration still has not provided its legal justification or evidence supporting its repeated unlawful strikes on boats, which have killed at least 27 people so far. These startling developments are just the tip of the iceberg of Trump’s illegal abuses of wartime powers to enact his draconian agenda—in the process putting we, the people, in its crosshairs.

It’s almost impossible to list all of the ways in which the Trump administration has invoked “national security” as a means to achieve unilateral power and crush dissent. But there are a few standouts. In March this year, the Trump administration invoked an 18th-century wartime act in peacetime, targeting Venezuelan community members and disappearing them to a torture prison in El Salvador. It then defied court orders attempting to curb its unlawful actions. Simultaneously, the administration asserted that the wartime act allows it to search homes without a warrant and that it can deploy the military against certain civilians–we now know it’s delivered on the latter promise.

Meanwhile, Trump adviser Stephen Miller has said he wants to suspend habeas corpus—the right to challenge unlawful imprisonment—for all immigrants. Guantánamo Bay is warehousing immigrants as Trump attempts to expand a “global gulag” for mass deportations. The federal government has also exploited laws rooted in anti-Palestinian racism to designate Latin American and Haitian cartels as foreign terrorist organizations and wants to lock up anyone opposed to the Trump agenda as “domestic terrorists”—all of this so the administration can silence, strip rights from, and wield its massive police powers against whatever community it sees fit.

Most people view the Japanese internment and racist post-9/11 policing of Muslim communities as stains on our country’s history. The Trump administration’s latest racist power grabs are no different, and are already harming communities across the country.

This isn’t as unprecedented as it may feel, though the sheer magnitude is alarming. Racist laws and policies in the US have long drawn lines to dictate who has rights and who does not. Eighty years ago, President Franklin Roosevelt invoked the 1798 wartime act during World War II to enable the government to detain and expel people of Japanese, German, and Italian descent. Over 31,000 people were rounded up based on nationality and imprisoned in concentration camps, separating thousands of families. Raids, kidnapping, and incarceration of Japanese Americans soon followed–all justified in the name of national security.

Six decades later, the Bush administration used national security as cover for racist executive power grabs which defined the post-9/11 era. Congress passed laws and allocated billions to expand a national security apparatus that criminalized Muslim identity and political and religious expression. The Bush administration even attempted to suspend habeas corpus until the Supreme Court intervened.

Most people view the Japanese internment and racist post-9/11 policing of Muslim communities as stains on our country’s history. The Trump administration’s latest racist power grabs are no different, and are already harming communities across the country.

The administration has claimed power to deny fundamental rights to any community it decides is a threat—whether abroad, or at home. Already, residents of multiple cities are dealing with active military on their street corners. Adults and children are being snatched off the street in broad daylight, from the kidnappings of Mahmoud Khalil and Kilmar Abrego Garcia, to the disappearances of a dozen people to South Sudan, to the attempted abduction of hundreds of Guatemalan children. Last month, the Supreme Court caved to the administration and green-lit racial profiling against Latinos by masked, violent, and sometimes deadly federal officers. People in towns and neighborhoods across the country are terrified to take their kids to school, travel to work, or sleep in their own apartments, all because the administration is misusing war powers to surveil, detain, and disappear anyone it wants, foreign or domestic.

Congress must exercise its power to rein in this unchecked executive. The Senate is poised to bring a new, bipartisan War Powers resolution, offering senators another, critical chance to block the administration's unlawful military strikes on civilians. The House should likewise move Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) or Rep. Jason Crow's (D-Colo.) similar War Powers resolution. Congress must also demand answers from the administration on its deadly, illegal attacks; stop funding its raids, deportation, and disappearance machines; and restore fundamental rights by passing laws like the Neighbors Not Enemies Act, which diminishes the executive’s power to mass deport or surveil.

Increased military force, whether in the Caribbean or in Chicago, are interlocking pieces in a horrifying puzzle of presidential overreach. A runaway executive, emboldened by the courts, is subjecting communities of color—and anyone it labels a threat—to a different set of rules. We’ve seen this play out before, and we know what’s at stake for ourselves and our neighbors. We must speak out, resist, and demand our elected officials refuse to fund or sanction the Trump administration’s naked power grabs before it’s too late.