Regime Change in Venezuela: Key to Global Advance of Democracy and Peace

Townhall 

Rarely can more than two birds be killed with one stone in foreign policy. That is, unless leadership can grasp multi-causality or multi-causal synchronicity and carry out bold and adept policy executions with finesse in different theaters. A unique part of President Donald Trump’s success in leadership is precisely this ability.

The surprise stealth operation in Venezuela in the dark of early morning January 3, 2026, resulted in the flawless capture of President Nicolás Maduro – one of the worst international criminals and enemies of the United States. What many underappreciate is that the Venezuela shaped by Maduro is the key to achieving peace in the Western hemisphere and beyond.

The capture and arrest of Maduro have resulted in the U.S. taking charge of Venezuela and controlling Venezuelan oil and the tankers that carry it, which means an oil embargo of Cuba. Without oil, the communist government of Cuba will collapse within weeks – a major achievement after 65 years of communist oppression. At the same time, Trump did not miss a beat in warning that the U.S. is "locked and loaded" to intervene and defend Iranian civilians should their Islamic government – the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism – crack down and kill civilians.

Venezuela and Iran have security agreements going back some 20 years. Iran has been taking uranium out of Venezuela for at least the last decade, sourced in both Venezuela and Bolivia. So, the embargo of shipping out of Venezuela is directed at more than just oil.

Like Cuba, the Iranian government may be only weeks away from total collapse. The mullah’s totalitarian, Sharia government is a theocratic system that empowers a small exclusive religious elite who command far-reaching totalitarian laws and political authority over a much larger majority, just as Cuba’s communist rulers Fidel and Raoul Castro exercised a different kind of totalitarian rule of absolute power that severely restricted the peoples’ civil rights and liberties, with no substantive countervailing democratic checks.

Trump’s actions have effectively signaled a hemispheric shift and opportunities to lead and help more than just Venezuelans, notably the people of Mexico, Colombia, and Brazil, to find their way to the light of freedom, human dignity, and self-rule.

Similarly, Trump’s actions send a clear message to CCP leader and PRC President Xi Jinping, that an invasion of Taiwan might not go well. The greatest threat to Xi Jinping’s continuing rule of the People's Republic of China and head of the CCP is a failed military invasion of Taiwan. Xi Jinping exhibited uncertainty and hesitation to move on Taiwan in the weak Biden years because of this perceived risk of failure, which would end his career and possibly his life.

Under Trump, the U.S. has just demonstrated extraordinary military success in complex action requiring unprecedented inter-agency coordination and effectiveness, something the Chinese PLA cannot do. America’s strength and advantage over the Chinese military was demonstrated by battle-hardened experience and the ability to adapt and coordinate. These qualities, combined with the power of the American war spirit to liberate rather than to conquer, give America a huge spiritual, psychological, and practical advantage over the Chinese.

Trump has effectively closed the window of opportunity for an easy PRC/PLA takeover of Taiwan that existed in the latter Biden years. Xi Jinping’s fear of failure, undoubtedly greater now, serves as an impediment to aggression against Taiwan.

But perhaps the most important potential benefit from Trump’s capture of Maduro is the prize of his detailed knowledge and intel about Venezuela’s role in originating and managing vote manipulation and fraud, which affected elections in not only the U.S. but also 71 other countries around the world. While the details about widespread election rigging in many disparate countries are not fully known, Smartmatic voting technology has played a key and recurring role. Additionally, it should be obvious that leaders of the globalist Deep State are major coordinators and protectors of vote fraud and election rigging because it is central and critical to their goal of creating a new world order.

Smartmatic was founded in April 2000 as a Delaware corporation by three Venezuelan engineers – Antonio Mugica, Alfredo Jose Anzola, and Roger Pinate – who had previously collaborated at Panagroup Corporation in Caracas, Venezuela. Since its founding, Smartmatic has gone through changes, such as acquiring in 2005 the U.S. company Sequoia Voting Systems, expanding Smartmatic’s footprint to 17 states where Sequoia systems were in place. Several years following Smartmatic’s  November 2007 divestment of Sequoia after scrutiny by the U.S. Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), Dominion Voting Systems acquired Sequoia and its residual and embedded Smartmatic source code. Dominion’s large global footprint helps explain the reach of the Smartmatic code to manipulate elections globally.

While Maduro is removed from Venezuela, the Trump Administration cannot afford any illusions about the swearing in of Delcy Rodriquez as the succeeding president and her brother Jorge Rodriquez as president of the Venezuelan National Assembly. Delci and Jorge Rodriquez are not only hostile Cuban-style communists. They also retain significant ownership of Smartmatic by way of a complex corporate reorganization in Curaçao, a Dutch-controlled island country off the coast of Venezuela. That reorganization was done as part of a broader "web" noted by the U.S. State Department, designed to hide Venezuelan control behind offshore entities.

Just when some domestic urban conditions hit new lows at the close of the year, 2026 started with an unexpected bang of success overseas – partially due to weakness of asymmetric enemy alliances and the circumstances of multi-causal synchronicity. When a nation’s cause is right, with enough of its citizens “turning from their wicked ways,” then, as 2 Chronicles 7:14 asserts, “[We] will hear from heaven.” We are living through a time where the need for American leadership is vital, and it seems providential that an unexpected non-politician outsider was raised up to serve as president – against all odds – at such a time as this. President Trump has executed with boldness and finesse, and done so in multiple theaters. The greatest challenges are still ahead. May we hope and pray for God’s protection and the continuing defeat of evil this year.

Podcast thread for Jan 13

 

Things are starting to feel clearer.

Democrat Insurrection Gains Steam

American Thinker 

The ability of the Democrat Machine to rewrite its code at a moment’s notice is terrifying.  What it supported yesterday, it will denounce tomorrow when politically expedient.  Right now we’re seeing a perfect example in the way prominent Democrats are reacting to federal agents enforcing immigration law.  

On January 6, congressional Democrats choreographed an almost religious ritual (including a candlelit ceremony) during which they framed the D.C. protest of election fraud five years ago as an “insurrection” that resulted in the “murder” of police officers (reminder: only Trump supporters were killed in or near the Capitol on January 6, 2021).  On January 7, those same Democrats called an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent a “murderer” for defending his life from a deranged attacker using an automobile as a lethal weapon.  On the 6th, Democrats proclaimed themselves the “guardians” of law enforcement officers everywhere and accused Trump supporters of being “terrorists.”  On the 7th, Democrats proclaimed law enforcement officers “terrorists” and defended a domestic terrorist as a “guardian” of “undocumented” (read: illegal) immigrants.

Politicians aren’t known for faithfully adhering to guiding principles, but Democrats change principles quickly enough to give an average observer political whiplash.  

On January 7, Nancy Pelosi wrote, “The killing of an unarmed woman by a masked federal agent in Minneapolis is a moral outrage and a betrayal of American values.  There has been no justification offered — only deception and deflection from those in charge.  Accountability for this killing is not optional.”  This is the same Nancy Pelosi who has spent the last five years defending U.S. Capitol Police Captain Michael Byrd after he shot and killed unarmed J6 protester Ashli Babbitt without any prior warning.  If pictures from the time are accurate, Byrd was even wearing a COVID mask when he took Air Force veteran Babbitt’s life.

The juxtaposition of the two incidents is jarring.  Pelosi has spent the last five years applauding Byrd as a hero, condemning unarmed Babbitt as an “insurrectionist,” and claiming that Trump supporters hate police.  Now she condemns a federal agent’s heroic actions as an “outrage,” defends a woman armed with a vehicle as being “unarmed,” and accuses federal law enforcement of “betrayal,” “deception,” and “deflection.”  In both cases the federal agent wore a mask, but Pelosi makes the ICE agent’s use of a mask sound nefarious.

Russia collusion hoaxer Adam Schiff similarly suffers from Pelosi’s cognitive dissonance.  He never misses an opportunity to accuse President Trump of having “attacked” the Capitol on January 6, 2021.  He always calls the Americans who protested electoral fraud that day “insurrectionists” and “murderers.”  Yet when news of a woman using her vehicle to threaten the life of a federal agent came out of Minnesota, Schiff immediately pushed the lie that she was just an everyday mom and protester who was “in the wrong place at the wrong time.”  A lot of Americans who calmly walked through the Capitol on January 6, 2021, surely felt the same way — that they had been “in the wrong place at the wrong time.”  But Schiff never gave them the benefit of the doubt.  He spent the last five years ludicrously calling grandparents and veterans “terrorists” who deserved to suffer years in prison for trying to “overthrow” the government.

Then there is former Capitol Police officer Michael Fanone, who repeatedly testified through tears that he barely survived the “attack” on the Capitol on January 6, 2021.  Fanone became the Democrats’ favorite puppet.  He would put on his uniform for important interviews and tell the world that President Trump’s MAGA voters tried to kill him and his law enforcement friends.  Surely someone who has spent so much time on television defending the sacred honor of police officers from the wretched forces of out-of-control Americans would come to the defense of ICE agents under mob attack in Minneapolis, right?  Wrong.  

In defending mob attacks on law enforcement officers, Fanone argues, “This is not the first time we have seen ICE and CBP abuse their power.  It’s probably the millionth f**king time we’ve seen this happen….It’s time for the American people to organize and to utilize their Second Amendment right to protect themselves from what is clearly becoming an unaccountable and lawless agency that’s killing Americans.”  So the guy who made a career out of crying about unarmed MAGA grandparents threatening his life by strolling through the Capitol now wants mobs of Americans to arm up and militarily confront federal agents?  I guess he doesn’t actually care about blue lives after all.

Rank hypocrisy never seems to flummox Democrats.  The January 6, 2021, Capitol protest against election fraud lasted about three hours.  Most participants peacefully demonstrated their opposition to the 2020 election’s certification.  Most of those who walked into the Capitol were so orderly that they remained behind the velvet ropes set up for tourists.  Despite media and congressional lies, no law enforcement officers were killed.  Instead, four unarmed Trump supporters lost their lives — including one female veteran shot and another female beaten and trampled.  

Afterwards, Congress dedicated two years to a clown tribunal that attempted to falsely portray the events of January 6, 2021, as a deadly “insurrection” and attempt to “overthrow the federal government.”  To this day, corporate news media portray the event as something on par with the attack on Pearl Harbor or even the Civil War.  Democrat lawmakers and media personalities make these claims with straight faces, even though none of the J6 Capitol protesters were even armed.  They now conduct a somber daylong “religious” gathering on January 6 to “reflect” upon the “tragedy” of the three-hour “insurrection.” 

Yet this year, everyone who was busy crying fake tears and putting on a theatrical performance of ritualistic mourning on January 6 suddenly started screaming obscenities at federal agents and demonizing heroic law enforcement officers as “murderers” on January 7.  It’s just crazy, irrational behavior.  But “crazy and irrational” is very on-brand for Democrats this century.

This is the same political party that burned down cities across the country during the summer of 2020 and caused more property damage than any man-made disaster in American history.  Democrats euphemistically call that the “summer of love.”  This is the same political party that encourages supporters to “take to the streets” and “get in the faces” of political foes and then feigns surprise when assassins target President Trump and Charlie Kirk.  This is the same political party that encourages states to ignore federal immigration laws and then accuses federal law enforcement officers of “terrorism.”  Democrat officials have done everything they can to foment rebellion and destroy the Union.

The Democrat Party clearly wants another “George Floyd” spark to set off riots across the nation.  Minnesota’s governor says his state is “at war” with the federal government, and Minneapolis’s mayor seems desperate for riots in the streets.  Leftists are already publicly threatening the lives of ICE agents.  One shamelessly told a news outlet, “The time for peace is over!” and, “It’s time for the bullet box!”  In New York City, leftists are walking the streets while chanting, “Kristi Noem will hang,” and, “Save a life, kill ICE.”  Just as in 2020, Democrats appear eager to pour gasoline on American cities, strike the match of civil unrest, and watch everything burn.

When it happens, the same Democrat lawmakers and corporate news mouthpieces that have spent five years demonizing election integrity protesters who gathered together for three hours on January 6, 2021, will suddenly applaud leftist arsonists, looters, and murderers as “civil rights heroes” and “American patriots.”  Democrats will defend violence and mayhem and memorialize criminals as “victims.”  They will hold candlelight vigils for domestic terrorists and condemn police officers as “villains.”  And nobody in the news media will call out their despicable hypocrisy.  Because this is what Democrats do.

Why Are So Many Leftists Such Trash?

Townhall 

Have you ever “taken to the streets” over any issue? Marched in a protest? Chanted whatever some weirdo ordered you to repeat? Maybe, but probably not. The only protests or marches I’ve ever attended were one against war a friend wanted to go to and he didn’t want to drive to DC alone (plus, I’d never been to DC at that point), one I got extra credit for in college involving newspaper strike, and one that was an annual even to “protest” pot laws because we went to meet chicks and get stoned in a crowd – mostly the novelty of it (which is now common). 

In other words, I don’t protest; I’d rather “do.” Protesting is stupid and a waste of time. Nothing has ever happened because a group of morons chanted and drum circled. 

But marching, chanting and screaming at anyone who isn’t them is pretty much all Democrats do. Well, that and lie. 

How many people’s minds have been changed by blocking traffic? Zero. How many political victories have been racked up by screaming at police? Zero. How many votes have been switched by smashing windows and looting? Zero.

Yet, Democrats do all of these things – not only regularly, but as a default position. The call goes out, the signs are printed (who paid for those?) and the drone army shows up. Many of them have no idea what they’re there to protest or how to pronounce the name of the person they’re instructed to declare having been the subject or perpetrator of the “injustice” that brought them there.

It's often the generic police or white people, a lot of times it’s Jews. It is never, ever the murder of a police officer, a white person or a Jew, no matter how horrific and unjust the circumstance of their deaths were. Not one Democrat marched for justice for Laken Riley or Iryna Zarutska because they were white and the people who murdered them were non-white, or “people of color,” as they like to proclaim like it matters. 

Well, it does matter to Democrats. “Justice,” according to them, is more about skin color than actions and consequences for it. It’s about what happened centuries ago and how that somehow impacts today. 

But it’s really only about some – a very small part – of what happened hundreds of years ago and only to certain people. Slavery was horrible, but it was not unique to black people. It was perpetrated by black people as much as it was ever by white people. The whole slave trade in Africa was invented and run by black people, and every configuration of human beings were both victims and perps over history. 

But facts don’t matter to the left, only power does. As these mutants get more and more desperate – and by mutant I mean both the street-level Brownshirt and the suit wearing elected Brownshirts – the rhetoric is heating up even more.

Have you ever noticed how Democrats profess to fear “right-wing violence,” but don’t ever seem to let it change anything about how they live their lives? No one shows up at their houses, they aren’t chased out of restaurants or public spaces – they’re either hermits or they know they’re safe.

They are safe because political violence is the domain of the left; it is progressive currency. 

Conservatives are the one who will have their families attacked, their neighborhoods invaded, their lives threatened and taken. To the extent that Democrats live in fear it is of the prospect of their militants deeming them insufficiently pure of thought and action and turning on them. That’s about the only threats they face.

Which is why they are ramping up their attacks and lies again now. And many people are taking them up on the offer. 

There is a new trend of Democrat activists explicitly calling for the killing of ICE agents and civil war. These people are at the second to last step in the process of political violence – calling on someone, or some group of people, to do something. They don’t really do it themselves, they want someone else to be the martyr or the prisoner (or both). 

But soon, sadly, Democrats will reach the final step: more and more people taking them up on the offer.

Have you noticed how not one single Democrat has called for calm or could even admit that the officer who Good hit with the car was actually hit by the car? The evidence is literally there for all to see, but it’s amazing how blind people can be when the truth does them no favors. 

If the Democrat Party is devoid of decent people, or even just adults willing to tell the mob to calm down, if they are completely marinated all the way through progressive trash, well, there will be blood and it will be all over their hands. Actually, I should say “more blood,” but considering their hands now, how would anyone even be able to tell? 

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Democrat? Republican? Almost Half of American Voters Want Nothing to Do With Either Party

RedState 

For many people, getting to know someone better often involves asking the question, “Are you Democrat or Republican?” It might not be the first thing you learn about someone, but the more you get to know them, the more likely their political views will come up.

For almost half the American voters, the answer nowadays is “neither”:

Americans are increasingly rejecting the two major political parties, according to new polling.

Just under half, 45%, of U.S. adults now identify as independents, a new Gallup survey found.

That's a substantial shift from 20 years ago, when closer to one-third of Americans said they didn't identify with the Democrats or Republicans.

The 45 percent number represents an all-time high. Meanwhile, among voters who do not identify as independent, 27 percent identify as Republicans, while 27 percent call themselves Democrats — an even split. 

Who says our country isn’t divided? The upcoming midterms will be nothing if not interesting.

Gallup notes that they’ve been conducting telephone polls since 1988, and although independents have always comprised the largest group, the number has been increasing dramatically in the last 15 years or so.

Gallup broke down the numbers:

The recent increase in independent identification is partly attributable to younger generations of Americans (millennials and Generation X) continuing to identify as independents at relatively high rates as they have gotten older. In contrast, older generations of Americans have been less likely to identify as independents over time. Generation Z, like previous generations before them when they were young, identify disproportionately as political independents.

In 2025, majorities of Gen Z adults and millennials identified as political independents, as did more than four in 10 Gen X adults. One-third or less of baby boomers and Silent Generation adults were politically independent.

The word on the street is that more of the independents “lean” left than lean right, so many observers are claiming these results are a “win” for the Democrats.

I’m not so sure, however. Based on what I’m seeing “out in the field,” there are a whole lot of Democrats and left-leaning independents who are deeply unhappy with the direction of the party. How do I know this? I live in Los Angeles, and many of my friends and family are of the leftward bent. It’s fun to watch them squirm when they try to defend what the leftists are up to these days, with their protests over virtually everything, their psychotic devotion to “woke” and extreme gender politics, and their total lack of vision for trying to better the country. Even funnier is when they almost choke saying that there are some good things that Trump is doing. You can see it physically hurts them to admit it.

What’s clear, however, is that whichever party prevails in the midterms, they’re going to have to attract a whole lot of independents — and young people — to emerge victorious. 

Things could certainly go either way, but as it stands, I like the GOP's chances.

Jack Smith Deposition Shows His Get-Trump Lawfare Was Also A War On Free Speech

Jack Smith’s deposition testimony betrayed his utter disdain for the fundamental right to freedom of speech enshrined in the First Amendment. 

The Federalist

In the last few months, we have gained valuable insights into former Special Counsel Jack Smith’s unprecedented effort to criminally prosecute President Donald Trump, at the time a former president and leading contender for the presidency.

In Injustice, Washington Post reporters Carol Leonnig and Aaron Davis, appearing to rely heavily on accounts from Smith’s top deputies, paint a picture of a prosecutor doggedly focused on one objective: prosecuting Trump. On New Year’s Eve, however, the House Judiciary Committee released the transcript of Smith’s closed-door deposition. While a prosecutor’s crusade to imprison a presidential candidate is troubling in itself, Smith’s deposition testimony was alarming, as it betrayed Smith’s utter disdain for the fundamental right to freedom of speech enshrined in the First Amendment. 

Smith’s so-called “election interference” case in Washington, D.C., has long raised a fundamental question: What was the crime? In his deposition, Smith claimed Trump’s statements that the 2020 election was “rife with fraud” were “absolutely not” protected by the First Amendment and, indeed, formed the basis for his prosecution. Smith went on to claim that Trump would reject information that Smith believed he should have credited and reached out to individuals whom Smith deemed uncredible. 

Whether you are the president of the United States or an anonymous poster on X, the First Amendment protects your right to speak about elections. The First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech is a critical check on the power of the government, as it prevents the government from punishing those who speak out against it. Punishing speech regarding an election is especially insidious: American history is replete with instances in which litigation has changed the results of elections, and election fraud has been proven.

For example, in Hawaii, a court-ordered recount changed the outcome of the presidential contest in that state. And it was only because President John F. Kennedy sent a slate of alternate electors to Washington that Kennedy’s victory in Hawaii was counted. Criminalizing the questioning of elections is an invitation for election fraud and, regardless, tramples on the right we all enjoy to criticize our government. 

Smith’s disdain for the First Amendment did not end with his attempt to prosecute Trump for speaking about the 2020 election. Speaking about the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol, Smith stated unequivocally that Trump “caused it.” The Department of Justice (before and after Smith’s appointment as special counsel) and the Jan. 6 Committee each spent years (and millions of dollars of taxpayer money) investigating the Capitol demonstration, and neither uncovered a shred of evidence that Trump had any role in planning the riot. Indeed, Smith never sought an indictment against Trump for inciting a riot, which would have been the obvious charge if Smith had uncovered such evidence. Yet Smith tried to justify his extraordinary claim that Trump caused the riot by saying Trump’s statements about the 2020 election “created a certain level of distrust.”

If an American — president or otherwise — could be criminally responsible for what others do in response to political speech, the possibilities for prosecution would be limitless. In the lead-up to the 2024 election, Trump survived two assassination attempts. The would-be assassins were surely radicalized by someone, likely media figures or other politicians who spent years falsely deriding Trump as a dictator or puppet of Vladimir Putin.

Politicians’ reckless rhetoric in the wake of George Floyd’s death led to massive riots in multiple American cities, causing the destruction of many small businesses. But the notion of a special counsel seeking an indictment of an MSNBC personality for the Trump assassination attempts or a Democrat member of Congress for the Black Lives Matter riots is downright farcical (as it should be).

Smith’s deposition testimony confirmed what has been implicit for years: It was the position of the Department of Justice that Trump was somehow culpable for actions others took of their own volition on Jan. 6 simply because they may have been influenced by Trump’s speech about the election. Centuries of First Amendment jurisprudence say otherwise: Aside from true threats and incitement to violence (neither of which was charged in the indictment), political speech is protected by the First Amendment, regardless of what people may do in response to it.

Smith’s prosecutions never made it to a jury because the American people delivered a far more powerful verdict than any jury could deliver. It is nonetheless critical that no prosecutor ever bring charges against anyone like those Smith tried to bring against Trump in D.C. The Constitution ultimately vests sovereignty not in any one branch of government but in the citizenry of the United States.

If prosecutors like Jack Smith have the power to say what political speech is allowed and what political speech is felonious, We the People would lose one of our most cherished rights.   

Corporate Media’s 7 Most Brazenly Fake Claims About The Anti-ICE Car-Ramming

The more details emerge, the fewer of the corporate media’s claims about the Minneapolis car-ramming of an ICE agent turn out to be true.

The Federalist

If you’ve only paid attention to the legacy media over the past few days, you probably know more about Renee Good’s poetry than you do about the actions that led to her tragic death last Wednesday. After refusing federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers’ commands to get out of her car, which she had used to impede agents’ access to a neighborhood road, Good was caught on video accelerating her SUV toward one agent with another hanging on her door. The agent in front of her vehicle fatally shot her as the car appeared to hit him.

The corporate press, with help from the Democrats to whom they run for comment, portrayed Good as a victim of spontaneous violence, a “woman [who] drops her kid off at school, not involved in protest activity or anything, [but] seems to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.” The more details emerged, the fewer of those claims turned out to be true.

1. Good Was Just Driving ‘Past’ Agents

A narrative quickly formed insisting that Good’s vehicle wasn’t pointed at the ICE agents at all but was directed away from them.

Someone at Axios Twin Cities approved a headline on Wednesday that said “ICE shoots, kills person in Minneapolis in vehicle that drove past agents.” The story’s lede was even worse: it claimed the ICE agent “shot and killed a 37-year-old woman who was in a vehicle that drove close to federal agents” (emphasis added).

In similar fashion, The Washington Post ran a headline at the top of its online front page Thursday morning that claimed the agent “was not in the vehicle’s path” when he fired his handgun. After criticism, the Post changed the headline to say the agent “fired at driver as vehicle veered past him,” without a correction notice. (The same article frames Good’s acceleration toward the agent as navigating “in the correct direction of traffic on the one-way street.”)

But regardless of whether Good intended to hit the officer, it’s obvious from video footage that from the officer’s visual perspective, her car was aimed directly at him. Multiple videos appear to show her vehicle actually hitting him — which would make the Post’s claim that he was “not in the vehicle’s path” something of an impossibility.

2. Agent Was ‘Knocked Backward But Not Hit’

PBS had perhaps the most baffling description, saying the agent “appears to be knocked backward but not hit.”

A local ABC affiliate said there were “several feet of separation between the SUV and the ICE agent” and “No ICE agents appeared to be hit.”

But multiple videos of the event — including one filmed by the agent himself — appear to show the vehicle come into contact with the officer. The agent’s father also confirmed to media that his son had been hit by Good’s vehicle.

3. Good’s Car Was in Reverse

Multiple news outlets used deceptive phrasing to imply that Good was backing away from the officers, rather than accelerating toward them, when she was shot. The Washington Post falsely stated that the agent was “shooting … as the driver reverses and pulls away.” (That bit of reporting came under the headline: “Woman killed by ICE in Minneapolis was a mother of 3 and a poet.”)

The Economist pulled a similar stunt, claiming Good “reversed, and tried to drive away” when she was shot. Video footage clearly shows she was rapidly accelerating toward agents when she was killed.

4. She Just Happened to Be There After School Dropoff

People Magazine claimed Good “Had Just Dropped 6-Year-Old Off at School When She Encountered ICE,” as if she had accidentally ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time. The Guardian said she “was driving home with her partner when they encountered a group of ICE agents on a snowy street,” citing an AP interview with Good’s ex-husband. The ex-husband also told the AP she was “no activist,” a claim that was quickly repeated.

But reporting by the New York Post on Thursday indicated Good was part of an activist group dubbed “ICE Watch,” which the Post described as “dedicated to disrupting ICE raids” in Minneapolis. A mother from the school where Good’s child attends told the Post that Good “was trained against these ICE agents — what to do, what not to do, it’s a very thorough training.”

Another video showed Good’s vehicle blocking the street minutes before the altercation, further disproving the claim that she did not intend to obstruct ICE operations.

5. Good Simply ‘Panicked’

It’s impossible to read minds, but that didn’t stop members of the media from speculating that Good lurched her vehicle forward in a state of innocent panic.

“She will not get the chance to tell her story. Whatever it was: I was trying to turn the car, I was panicked. I’m not a professional. If somebody outside my vehicle had a gun, I would be freaking out,” panelist Noel King said Friday on CNN This Morning.

Former DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson told Morning Joe on Friday that Good “was approached by several ICE officers, agents armed in a very menacing, aggressive fashion. Looks like she panicked and tried to veer off to the right, flee the situation, and she was shot lethally three times in the course of trying to flee.”

But video from the agent’s phone calls that narrative into doubt. It shows Good talking indignantly to the agent as he walks around her car, and then appears to show her looking directly at the agent before hitting the gas, contradicting the narrative that she didn’t know what she was doing.

6. The Agent Shot Through the Driver Side Window

Initial eyewitness reports claimed Good had been shot three times through the driver’s side window, which undermined the claim that the agent was in front of her car. But even after photos were released showing a bullet — presumably the first one — struck the front windshield, The Washington Post still claimed the agent was “shooting toward the driver’s-side window.”

7. Good Was ‘Unarmed’

Vehicles have been used as weapons countless times, including in deadly terror attacks and in more than 100 attacks on ICE agents this year. But that didn’t stop the San Francisco Chronicle from describing Good as an “unarmed Minnesota motorist.”

Former Obama speechwriter and “Pod Save America” host Jon Favreau repeated the same falsehood, calling Good an “unarmed citizen.”

History Supports Trump’s Operation To Take Down Maduro

History shows that President Trump is on firm ground when he orders troops into combat – even without congressional approval.

The Federalist

Last week, the Senate passed by a vote of 52-47 a provisional war powers resolution that would stop President Donald Trump from deploying the U.S. armed forces into hostilities within or against Venezuela unless authorized by Congress. The resolution would still need to be passed by the Republican-led House, and Trump has already signaled he would not sign it, but it shows some unease among legislators after the U.S. military seized Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro in a nighttime raid. Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., a sponsor of the measure, stated that it was “long past time for Congress to reassert its critical constitutional role in matters of war, peace, diplomacy and trade.”

Trump isn’t the first president to unilaterally order U.S. forces abroad to overthrow a regime he didn’t like. And once again, as repeatedly in American history, we are seeing a constitutional battle between Congress and the president over the power to order U.S. armed forces into hostilities. The long history of this contest suggests that Trump is on firm ground when he orders troops into combat — even without congressional approval.

The first time a president sent armed forces abroad without advance approval by Congress was in 1800, barely a decade after the adoption of the Constitution. President John Adams ordered the Navy to aid Toussaint L’Ouverture’s rebellion against France in Santo Domingo. Our forces blockaded and bombarded the port of Jacmel, controlled by Toussaint’s rival. Two years earlier, Congress had authorized the seizure of French vessels in the so-called Quasi War with France, but it did not sanction attacks on French possessions such as Santo Domingo.

In 1801, Congress was not even in session when President Thomas Jefferson dispatched a fleet of warships to the Mediterranean. He ordered the fleet to meet with force hostility from the Barbary nations of North Africa to “best protect our commerce and chastise their insolence — by sinking, burning or destroying their ships and Vessels wherever you shall find them.” Although fighting did not take place on this occasion, the American ships blockaded two Tripolitan vessels anchored at Gibraltar, an act of war.

There have been scores of such presidentially ordered military engagements throughout American history. Recent examples include President Ronald Reagan’s actions in Lebanon in 1982 and Grenada in 1983; President George H. W. Bush’s Panama engagement in 1989; 29 military actions ordered by President Bill Clinton, including the bombing of Kosovo; and the dispatch of troops to Libya by President Barack Obama in 2011.

The President’s and Congress’s Roles

Opposition political parties, inveighing against unilateral presidential military action, repeatedly invoke Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, which empowers Congress “to declare War.” Presidents reply by quoting Article II, Section 2, which states that “The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States.” Scores of military engagements throughout American history, only a minority of which have been authorized by Congress beforehand, would seem to make a mockery of congressional authority. But we have never had an authoritative U.S. Supreme Court ruling on the issue, and since we’re unlikely to get one, the contest for power between presidents and Congress will almost certainly continue indefinitely.

If, as legal scholar Alexander Bickel once said, “we are dealing in an area where the Constitution is the Constitution of practice,” then it is clear that under certain circumstances the president may order the use of military force on his own authority. But what are the justifying conditions?

Having studied nearly all of these types of events over the course of American history, I conclude that they each (the Korean War serving as a major exception) were relatively minor military engagements, not necessarily minor in terms of their effects, but in terms of the size of the force used and the length of time in combat. In other words, the word “war” as used in Article I of the Constitution has, through practice, come to refer to relatively long-term conflict by a sizeable military force. Under this “magnitude test” any hostilities short of war are within the president’s authority to order without congressional approval. But any major military conflict would have to be approved by the legislative branch, either beforehand or during the event. Nor does congressional approval require a formal declaration of war; Congress can authorize a war (as it did with Vietnam) without such a declaration.

Congress’s Authority to Terminate War

If, through practice, presidents have acquired the authority to begin hostilities without congressional approval, does Congress have the authority to terminate them? Congress has asserted this power, most notably with the War Powers Resolution of 1973, a product of the intense dissension over the Vietnam War. But this legislation is deeply flawed and itself of dubious constitutionality.

Congress nevertheless has a potent weapon in this contest: the power of the purse. Starting in 1969, it relied on its constitutional authority to control expenditures to end the Vietnam War. On Jan. 23, 1973, President Richard Nixon announced that an agreement had been reached between the United States and North Vietnam to end the war. However, fighting between North and South Vietnam continued, as did United States air strikes in Cambodia. In August 1973, Congress took its most far-reaching funds cut-off action ever, halting the use of appropriated funds “to support directly or indirectly combat activities in, over or from off the shores of Cambodia.” For the first time in United States history, Congress terminated all funding for an ongoing major military conflict. In a negotiated compromise with the White House, President Nixon signed the legislation into law.

War Powers Resolution Passed

Emboldened, Congress now sought to assert its authority to control future presidential military engagements. In November 1973, it passed the War Powers Resolution over President Nixon’s veto. This law stated that the president “shall consult” with Congress before introducing armed forces into hostilities and submit a report to congressional leaders within 48 hours if the hostilities were not already authorized by the legislature. More controversially, section 5(b) of the resolution states that “the President shall terminate any use of the Armed Forces” within 60 days of the report or events that required such a report. In addition, section 5(c) declares that Congress may terminate the hostilities by a concurrent resolution, which amounts to a congressional veto since such an enactment does not go to the president for approval.

The resolution has not been a success. Since 1973, presidents have filed at least 168 reports to Congress reporting hostilities abroad, but only once was the War Powers law referenced (by President Gerald Ford in regard to the SS Mayaguez incident of 1975). Moreover, though honored more in the breach, the resolution seems to encroach on the president’s authority.

What if there are imminent threats to or actual attacks on United States forces or nationals abroad? Surely, the president would have the authority as commander-in-chief to direct the military to respond with force without congressional approval. And if military conflict ensued, could he legally be required to withdraw U.S. forces after an arbitrary 60-day deadline if he thought withdrawal at that time inappropriate? Equally dubious would be a concurrent resolution to force the president to withdraw forces against his better judgment. Moreover, a concurrent resolution on a major public policy issue countermands the requirement of Article I, Section 7, of the Constitution that “Every Bill … shall, before it becomes a Law, be presented to the President of the United States.”

Whatever the wisdom of President Trump’s military action in Venezuela or the bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities, and whatever the legality of the arrest of Maduro under international law, when it comes to U.S. constitutional law, history clearly supports his authority.