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constitutional crisis
Unchecked Waters: The Constitutional Crisis of Trump’s Venezuela Oil Blockade
A naval blockade—regardless of whether it is met with armed resistance—qualifies under both domestic and international law as a use of force.
Dec 20, 2025
On 16 December, 2025, President Donald Trump announced what he called a “total and complete blockade” of oil tankers entering or leaving Venezuela. Delivered via his personal media platform, the statement was sweeping in its implications. Trump declared that Venezuela was “completely surrounded by the largest Armada ever assembled in the History of South America,” and he made clear this would not end until all Venezuelan “oil, land, and other assets” were returned to the United States. But beneath the dramatic language lies a far more dangerous truth: this action marks a breach of US constitutional limits, a perilous expansion of executive authority, and a break with both legal precedent and historical norms of dispute resolution.
At its core, this naval blockade—undeclared, unauthorized, and now operational—poses a direct challenge to the War Powers Resolution, a congressional statute designed specifically to prevent precisely this kind of unilateral military escalation. While prior administrations have used sanctions, diplomatic pressure, and limited enforcement actions to manage foreign resource disputes, President Trump’s move replaces law with coercion, and diplomacy with force.
The Constitutional Line That Has Been Crossed
Under Article I of the US Constitution, the power to declare war, or to authorize acts tantamount to war, lies exclusively with Congress. While Article II grants the President authority as Commander-in-Chief, it does not permit sustained, coercive military operations absent legislative consent. The War Powers Resolution of 1973 was enacted to enforce this distinction, requiring the President to seek congressional authorization for any use of armed forces likely to involve hostilities or imminent risk thereof.
The blockade announced by President Trump is not merely a foreign policy maneuver; it is a constitutional violation in motion.
A naval blockade—regardless of whether it is met with armed resistance—qualifies under both domestic and international law as a use of force. It is, by nature, confrontational, involving the assertion of control over international waters and the denial of access to maritime commerce by a sovereign state. As such, the blockade announced by President Trump is not merely a foreign policy maneuver; it is a constitutional violation in motion.
The Fallacy of “Stolen Oil”: A Historical and Legal Fiction
Trump’s central justification for the blockade—that Venezuela “stole” American oil—is not supported by historical fact or legal doctrine. Venezuela’s oil sector was nationalized in 1976, with the creation of the state company Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA). Over the years, foreign firms—including US giants like ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips—were permitted to operate under negotiated terms. In the early 2000s, Venezuela reasserted control over key assets, converting foreign-controlled projects into joint ventures in which the state held majority ownership.
These actions were not acts of piracy, but sovereign decisions—ones that fall well within Venezuela’s rights under international law. The resulting disputes were not settled by force, but through arbitration and negotiation. Indeed, many of the affected companies sought recourse through investor-state arbitration mechanisms, challenging compensation levels or contract terms—not the fundamental legality of nationalization itself.
Even as tensions grew, the United States relied on sanctions, licensing restrictions, and diplomatic tools. Not once, in decades of resource disputes throughout Latin America—including in Mexico, Bolivia, and El Salvador—did the US resort to blockades or military coercion to assert commercial claims. The shift to force in the Venezuelan context is therefore not only unprecedented but also deeply destabilizing to the established order.
Sanctions Are Not a Blank Check
The distinction between sanctions enforcement and military action is not academic. Sanctions, as administered by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), regulate economic conduct—typically prohibiting certain transactions by US persons. They do not authorize armed interdiction of foreign-flagged vessels on the high seas. While isolated tanker seizures have been justified through civil forfeiture statutes—sometimes involving alleged ties to terrorism or sanctions evasion—the transition to a systematic maritime blockade is an escalation into armed coercion.
This is not simply a technical legal issue. It is a constitutional crisis in real time.
Under the War Powers Resolution and the 1980 Office of Legal Counsel opinion, even emergency military deployments must terminate within 60 days without congressional approval. The blockade’s indefinite duration, announced expansion, and linkage to political demands—such as the return of assets—place it well outside the legal bounds of executive discretion.
This is not simply a technical legal issue. It is a constitutional crisis in real time.
A Dangerous Precedent
If a President can declare and execute a naval blockade without congressional approval—based on economic grievances, political claims, or allegations of foreign misconduct—then the separation of powers itself is under siege. Today, it is Venezuela. Tomorrow, it could be any other state or region where American commercial or political interests are challenged.
Even more alarming is the potential precedent this sets for private claims to become triggers for military action. By framing a dispute over oil contracts as a matter of theft, the administration recasts a regulatory disagreement as grounds for warlike engagement. This upends international norms, threatens global maritime order, and encourages future executives to substitute force for law in matters of foreign commerce.
The Legal and Diplomatic Path Forward
It is not too late to reverse course. The solutions are neither exotic nor novel. They are grounded in law, history, and precedent:
Congress must reassert its constitutional role. Whether through resolutions like House Concurrent Resolution 64 or emergency oversight hearings, the legislative branch must enforce the War Powers Resolution and prohibit unauthorized hostilities.
The Executive must return to lawful enforcement mechanisms. This includes relying on civil forfeiture, targeted sanctions, and international arbitration—not coercive naval operations.
When the President crosses a constitutional red line and no one pushes back, it is not just a policy failure—it is a signal that the balance of powers has tilted dangerously toward autocracy.
Diplomatic engagement must be restored as the core modality. Disputes over Venezuela’s resource management must be addressed through negotiation, licensing frameworks, and international claims processes—not unilateral blockade.
For decades, the United States has held itself as a champion of a rule-based international order. That order cannot be maintained abroad if it is being subverted at home.
The High Cost of Erosion
The blockade of Venezuelan oil tankers may appear to some as a show of strength or a necessary escalation. But in truth, it is a dangerous erosion—of law, of precedent, and of constitutional governance. It represents not the defense of American interests, but the abandonment of the constitutional boundaries that define the Republic.
When the President crosses a constitutional red line and no one pushes back, it is not just a policy failure—it is a signal that the balance of powers has tilted dangerously toward autocracy. Congress must act, the courts must scrutinize, and the public must demand that power be wielded not in anger or impulse, but in accordance with the law.
Because once the executive can blockade without approval, the Constitution becomes not a safeguard, but a suggestion.
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Trump's Power Grab Proves That the US Was Never Immune From Authoritarianism
His ascent has exposed the inherent weaknesses, loopholes, and limitations that have always existed in the imperfect system created by the venerated Founding Fathers.
Oct 29, 2025
President Donald Trump’s demolition of the East Wing of the White House isn’t just an architectural abomination; it’s symbolic of the wrecking ball he’s taken to the Constitution. Driven by his unbounded megalomania and supported by the high-tech oligarchy and a Cabinet of fawning sycophants, the 79-year-old president has precipitated a constitutional crisis and set the nation on the road to authoritarianism and democratic collapse.
Since resuming his seat behind the Resolute Desk, Trump has issued more than 360 executive orders, presidential memoranda, and presidential proclamations, effectively replacing the system of checks and balances and separation of powers that forms the backbone of the Constitution with strongman-style rule. Among his most notorious decrees are those that:
- End federal diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs;
- Roll back environmental protections, encourage energy exploration and production on federal lands and waters, and eliminate electric vehicle mandates;
- Impose sanctions on liberal law firms and elite universities;
- Would restrict mail-in voting and impose national voter ID requirements;
- Empower the Department of Government Efficiency to reduce the size of the federal workforce and dismantle the administrative state;
- Authorize mass deportations and expedite removal proceedings to secure the borders and protect the nation from a claimed “invasion;”
- Seek to end birthright citizenship by reinterpreting the citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment'
- Designate antifa as a domestic terrorism organization;
- Create a “Joint National Terrorism Task Force” to “investigate, prosecute, and disrupt” the work of “entities and individuals” who sponsor, fund, or “otherwise aid and abet” acts of “political violence,” including alleged attacks on Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities and “anti-police and ‘criminal justice’ riots;”
- Federalize the National Guard and dispatch troops to American cities;
- Impound congressionally authorized funds for foreign aid and medical research;
- Levy tariffs on imported goods without congressional approval; and
- Authorize Trump to fire members of independent federal agencies without cause under the auspices of the “unitary executive theory,” which posits that all executive power is concentrated in the person of the president.
Trump has also openly teased about running for a third term in contravention of the 22nd Amendment; secured three indictments and counting against his political critics; launched a lethal air campaign against alleged drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific without congressional authorization and in arguable violation of international law; and demanded that the Justice Department hand him $230 million to compensate for the federal investigations into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election and for prosecuting him in the Mar-a-Lago documents case.
Confronted with this wreckage, most legal scholars now believe we have crossed the Rubicon. “We are in the midst of a constitutional crisis right now,” Berkeley Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinsky told the New York Times last February after Trump’s initial spate of executive orders. “There have been so many unconstitutional and illegal actions in the first 18 days of the Trump presidency. We never have seen anything like this.”
Although there is no universally accepted definition of a constitutional crisis, Princeton University professor of politics Keith Whittington has written that constitutional crises fall into two general categories: operational crises, which occur when vital political disputes can’t be resolved within the existing constitutional framework; and crises of fidelity, which happen when a major political actor no longer feels bound by constitutional norms.
The United States is beset by both calamities at once. As Harvard Law School professor Noah Feldman explained on the eve of Trump’s first impeachment, Trump’s abiding lawlessness means that “we no longer have just a crisis of the presidency. We also have a breakdown in the fundamental structure of government under the Constitution. That counts as a constitutional crisis.”
Winning the fight against Trumpism requires building a new progressive politics guided by energetic leaders like Zohran Mamdani, who can articulate a small “d” democratic vision for the future.
In Trump 2.0, the dangers have multiplied, extending from the executive branch to the supine Republican majority in Congress and the Supreme Court. The Republican Party has been completely captured by Trump and the MAGA movement, both at the state and national levels.
The Supreme Court has similarly surrendered the last vestiges of actual judicial independence. All claims to the contrary evaporated last July with the court’s 6-3 decision on presidential immunity (Trump v. United States), authored by Chief Justice John Roberts. The decision not only killed special counsel Jack Smith’s election subversion case against Trump, but it also altered the landscape of constitutional law, endowing presidents with absolute immunity from prosecution for actions taken pursuant to their enumerated constitutional powers, such as pardoning federal offenses, and presumptive immunity for all other “official acts” undertaken within the “outer perimeter” of their official duties.
In a scathing dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor blasted her Republican colleagues for inventing “an atextual, ahistorical, and unjustifiable” concept of immunity. “The Constitution’s text contains no provision for immunity from criminal prosecution for former Presidents,” she wrote, citing the famous Watergate tapes decision of United States v. Nixon. She concluded in a sad and angry lament, “The relationship between the President and the people he serves has shifted irrevocably. In every use of official power, the President is now a king above the law.”
Trump’s ascent has exposed the inherent weaknesses, loopholes, and limitations that have always existed in the imperfect system created by the venerated Founding Fathers, who for all of their failings (slaveholding chief among them), tried to erect formal structures to protect the republican form of government they established. Many realized the frailties of the project they undertook. Alexander Hamilton, perhaps the most prescient of the Founders, all but prophesied the rise of a Trump-like demagogue, warning in a letter to George Washington written during of the financial panic of 1792:
When a man unprincipled in private life, desperate in his fortune, bold in his temper… is seen to mount the hobby horse of popularity, he may "ride the storm and direct the whirlwind."
Hamilton’s warning isn’t just a curiosity for professional historians to ponder. It’s an announcement of a five-alarm fire in 2025.
The all-important question is how we fight back. The first step, plainly, is to realize the gravity of the moment. American exceptionalism—the idea that this country is immune from authoritarianism—is a myth.
The second step is to realize that Trumpism is not just another form of partisan politics. It cannot be countered by lethargic appeals by establishment Democrats to re-embrace the political center.
Winning the fight against Trumpism requires building a new progressive politics guided by energetic leaders like Zohran Mamdani, who can articulate a small “d” democratic vision for the future. And it will require a commitment from each of us to engage for the long haul, and never forget that together we have power, and that alone we have none.
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DOJ Targets Federal Judge for Warning Trump Could Spark 'Constitutional Crisis'
Judge James Boasberg reportedly raised concerns that the Trump administration "would disregard rulings of federal courts," something the White House has done repeatedly.
Jul 29, 2025
The Trump Justice Department on Monday filed a misconduct complaint against a federal judge for warning in early March that the president could spark a "constitutional crisis" by defying court orders—a concern that was swiftly validated.
The complaint against James Boasberg, chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, was announced by Attorney General Pam Bondi, who alleged on social media that Boasberg made "improper public comments" about President Donald Trump and his administration.
During a March gathering of the Judicial Conference—the federal judiciary's policymaking body—Boasberg reportedly raised colleagues' fears that "the administration would disregard rulings of federal courts leading to a constitutional crisis."
John Roberts, the chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, "expressed hope that would not happen and in turn no constitutional crisis would materialize," according to a memo obtained by The Federalist, a right-wing publication.
Days after the Judicial Conference gathering, the Trump administration ignored Boasberg's order to turn around deportation flights, prompting an ACLU attorney to warn, "I think we're getting very close" to a constitutional crisis.
Boasberg, an Obama appointee, later said there was probable cause to hold the Trump administration in contempt of court, concluding that the evidence demonstrated "a willful disregard" for the judge's order.
Boasberg's rulings against the Trump administration in the high-profile deportation case stemming from the president's invocation of the Alien Enemies Act have made the judge a target of the White House and its allies. Trump and some congressional Republicans have demanded that Boasberg be impeached.
Politico reported Monday that the Justice Department's complaint against Boasberg was signed by Chad Mizelle, Bondi's chief of staff.
"Mizelle argued that Boasberg's views expressed at the conference violated the 'presumption of regularity' that courts typically afford to the executive branch," Politico noted. "And the Bondi aide said that the administration has followed all court orders, though several lower courts have found that the administration defied their commands."
A Washington Post analysis published last week estimated that Trump officials have been accused of violating court orders in "a third of the more than 160 lawsuits against the administration."
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