My warning to all Democratic candidates or possible candidates

 

I will vote for the Democratic candidate who pledges to charge, prosecute, and imprison Donald Trump, JD Vance, Stephen Miller, Kristi Noem, Pam Bondi, and Kash Patel on Day One of his/her presidency.  Then get the rest of the Nazis on Day Two.

Any Democrat who says “Let’s restore decency.” is what got us here and will not get my vote.

ICE recruits can’t read and write, many with felony convictions, gang tattoos

ICE shooting comes after bombshell probe finds new recruits ‘can barely read or write’

https://www.rawstory.com/ice-shooting-2674862836/

ICE shooting comes after bombshell probe finds new recruits ‘can barely read or write’

The explosive Daily Mail report found that the administration’s $50,000 signing bonus attracted droves of unqualified recruits — high school grads who can “barely read or write,” overweight candidates with doctor’s notes saying they’re unfit, and even applicants with pending criminal charges.

The report exposed how Immigration and Customs Enforcement took a blowtorch to hiring standards, with one Department of Homeland Security official blasting: “We have people failing open-book tests and we have folks that can barely read or write English.”

Officials sent recruits to a Georgia training center before drug test results came back, later discovering some tested positive.

At the academy, some recruits showed up with tattoos tied to gangs and white supremacists. One bailed for a court date on a gun charge, and another was arrested for exploding at a bus driver. To boot, sex harassment accusations emerged, with a source describing to the Daily Mail predatory behavior during training.

Say his name: The murderer is JONATHAN ROSS

DHS Secretary Noem doxxed him.

Hilarious that Kristi Noem is 100% responsible for providing the information necessary to reveal the identity of Jonathan Ross, the pig who murdered Renee Good.

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The little pissant who thinks he is Vice President tries to defend the Gestapo murderer.

 

Say her name: RENEE NICOLE GOOD

Who was Renee Nicole Good, the woman killed by ICE?

Renee Nicole Good

The woman shot dead by a federal immigration agent in Minneapolis has been identified as Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old mother of three who had just moved to the city.

She was a prize-winning poet and a hobby guitarist, who city leaders have said was there as a legal observer of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activities.

But the Trump administration has called her a “domestic terrorist”.

Good’s death has sparked protests across the country, with many people holding signs that read “Justice for Renee”.

Her mother, Donna Ganger, told the Minnesota Star Tribune that her daughter was “probably terrified” during the confrontation with officers that saw her fatally shot and that she was “one of the kindest people I’ve ever known”.

“She was extremely compassionate,” Ganger told the daily newspaper. “She’s taken care of people all her life. She was loving, forgiving and affectionate. She was an amazing human being.”

Her father, Tim Ganger, told the Washington Post that “she had a good life, but a hard life”.

A fundraiser for Good’s family, which was set up with a target of $50,000, raised more than $500,000 in 15 hours.

In what appears to be Good’s Instagram account, which has now been made private, Good described herself as a “poet and writer and wife and mom”, who was “experiencing Minneapolis”.

A US citizen, Good was originally from Colorado Springs and had moved to Minneapolis just last year from Kansas City.

The Minnesota Star Tribune reports that she used to host a podcast with her second husband, Tim Macklin, who died in 2023. They had a son together, who is now six years old, Macklin’s father told the newspaper.

She had two other children with her first husband, who spoke to US media on condition that his name was not used. He said that Good was not an activist and that she was a devoted Christian who went to Northern Ireland on youth missions when she was younger.

She had previously worked as a dental assistant and at a credit union, but had mainly been a stay-at-home mum in recent years, according to the Associated Press.

Good studied creative writing at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, and in 2020 she won an undergraduate prize from the Academy of American Poets for her piece entitled On Learning to Dissect Fetal Pigs.

“When she is not writing, reading, or talking about writing, she has movie marathons and makes messy art with her daughter and two sons,” her biography from the prize reads, as quoted in US media. It seems to have now been removed.

Good graduated the same year from the university’s College of Arts and Letters with a degree in English.

Its president said in a statement that her sudden death was “yet another clear example that fear and violence have sadly become commonplace in our nation”.

“May Renee’s life be a reminder of what unites us: freedom, love, and peace,” Old Dominion University president Brian Hemphill wrote.

Several state leaders have said that Good was at the scene of an ICE raid in the south of Minneapolis as a legal observer – a volunteer who monitors police and security forces at protests and operations. Their aim is to help maintain calm, deter misconduct and ensure legal rights are respected.

Good’s mother told the Minnesota Star Tribune that her daughter was “not part of anything” that involved challenging ICE agents.

 

 

AND NOW, HERE COME THE LIES AND BULLSHIT FROM TRUMP AND HIS GESTAPO

But White House officials, including the president, have said Good was not simply observing, but also interfering in the officers’ work.

US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Good had been “stalking and impeding their work” all day by “blocking them in” with her car and “shouting at them”.

Good “weaponised her vehicle”, Noem told reporters, and then tried to run over one of the officers “in an attempt to kill or cause bodily harm to agents, an act of domestic terrorism”.

The ICE agent feared for his life, Noem said, and “fired defensive shots”.

This story was backed up by Trump, who wrote on Truth Social that “the woman driving the car was very disorderly, obstructing and resisting”.  WTF does Trump know about the incident?

He called her a “professional agitator” who “violently, willfully, and viciously” ran over an ICE officer.

How to tell if Trump, Noem, or anyone else associated with Trump is lying:  IF THEIR LIPS ARE MOVING, THEY ARE LYING.

But the city’s mayor said the agent who shot Good had acted recklessly.

“Having seen the video myself, I want to tell everybody directly: that is bullshit,” Jacob Frey said. “This was an agent recklessly using power that resulted in somebody dying, getting killed.”

Good reportedly lived just a few blocks from where she was killed, and the scene is about one mile from where George Floyd was murdered in 2020 by a city police officer, sparking worldwide anti-racism protests.

 

 

SAY HER NAME:  RENEE NICOLE GOOD

 

ICE agent commits MURDER in Minneapolis

ICE claims — they lie — the lady they murdered in Minneapolis was trying to run over an ICE thug.  Check out the photo, taken from the video.

Notice the following:

  • Her wheels are turned AWAY from the agents — no way she was trying to run over them.
  • The agents are not in contact with the car — no way she struck them.
  • The agent in the front is clearly firing directly into her car.

THIS IS MURDER.


BE ON THE LOOKOUT.  THIS GUY MAY BE THE KILLER.

Reports were that the killer (or federal ICE agent, if he really was that) FLED THE SCENE in an unmarked car.

Police should be on the lookout for a Chevy Tahoe with MN plates, EVC-289. Some folks video-ed him strolling to his car, and driving off.

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Deadly Minneapolis Encounter Is the 9th ICE Shooting Since September

All those targeted in the shootings were fired on while in their vehicles.

An ICE agent shot and killed a woman in Minneapolis on Wednesday, the latest in a series of shootings by federal agents carrying out immigration enforcement operations in American cities.

In the last four months alone, immigration officers have fired on at least nine people in five states and Washington, D.C. All of the individuals targeted in those shootings were, like the woman killed on Wednesday, fired on while in their vehicles. In each case, officials have claimed that the agents fired in self-defense, fearing they would be struck by the vehicle.

At least one other person died as a result of those shootings.

In September, immigration officers pulled over a man driving a Subaru on a busy street outside of Chicago. The man, a Mexican immigrant named Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez, was shot and killed less than a minute later. Homeland security officials said that Mr. Villegas-Gonzalez had hit and dragged one of the officers with his car and that the officer who shot him was acting in self-defense. But a Times analysis of video calls into question key aspects of the government’s account.

The following month, a Mexican man living in Los Angeles was shot during a traffic stop where the man was targeted for immigration enforcement. Federal officials said the man, Carlitos Ricardo Parias, had tried to ram officers as he fled the scene, and homeland security officers fired shots, hitting the man in the elbow. A federal marshal was struck in the hand by a ricocheted bullet

We Democrats are getting our asses kicked by liars, freaks, and thugs

I’m surprised the Republican hate campaign against Tim Walz that forced him out of reelection as governor of Minnesota and takes out a plausible candidate for the Democratic nomination in 2028 hasn’t gotten more attention. It’s not that the welfare fraud in the Somali community in Minnesota isn’t a worthy story–it’s not great, for sure. A certain amount of fraud is inevitable whenever you have government doing anything, see the faking of benefits across the country during the Covid epidemic as just one of many examples. And maybe Walz’s administration should have paid more attention. But this could happen under any governor’s watch.

The traction the story got was a perfect example of what Democrats completely fail to do – marshal media resources and a propaganda pipeline that creates pressure on the opposite party and sometimes knocks the head off someone. In fact, everything about this story and the destruction of Walz shows how Democrats have learned precisely nothing from the entire world of the Republican machine. Since the election, there has been absolutely nothing done to rethink media approaches, promote alternative media, ratfuck Republicans, and engage in the dirty tricks that matter. “When they go low, we go high” in some serious bullshit, fuck that! That’s loser politics. But it isn’t just Chuck and Hakeem’s terrible approach to these issues, it’s the everyday liberal voter. We don’t do that is such a common thing among liberals. Yeah, it’s why Democrats  lose.

Well, Walz is gone and the story as it developed is just wildly, incredibly overblown. Amanda Marcotte has a good perspective on this, looking at one of the far-right lunatics behind it:

Nick Shirley really wants the world to know that he’s never had sex. The YouTuber who moved from “prank” videos to the more lucrative world of creating MAGA disinformation apparently believes that sexual inexperience is an armor against accusations that he’s a liar. “I’m a virgin. I don’t have sex with random girls. You’re not gonna catch me on those sexual allegation charges,” he rambled on “PBD Podcast,” insisting that he is “religious” and doesn’t “have any vices.”

It was an odd rant, and not just because he conflated consensual hook-ups with rape. Shirley was responding to well-supported allegations that he’s perpetuating a racist hoax to terrorize Somali American day care workers in Minnesota. On the day after Christmas, the 23-year-old posted videos falsely accusing various day care centers of not having any real children as their charges, and then billing the federal government for fake work.

A simple viewing of the videos shows they are nonsense. Upon visiting the day cares, Shirley and his middle-aged male partner, David, discover the centers have locked their doors and won’t let them in to gawk at the children. This isn’t proof there are no children. Ideally, not answering the door is how any responsible caregiver would respond to strange, yelling men demanding to come in and film kids. But conservative audiences, ever eager to hear Black people are committing crimes, ignored that logic and spread the video rapidly online.

A deeper dig shows even more how ridiculous this situation is. Shirley has a history of dishonesty, which includes paying immigrant laborers to hold pro-Biden signs, clearly hoping voters would think they were self-motivated. In another video, he claimed Portland had “fallen” and “antifa” had taken “control of the city,” an unvarnished lie.

CNN verified that children were being dropped off at a day care center Shirley had targeted. The Minnesota Star Tribune visited the day cares in question and found, when they were allowed access, children playing and napping peacefully. CBS News reviewed security footage showing kids being dropped off at one targeted center. Others were indeed empty; they had gone out of business before Shirley filmed outside the buildings.

Shirley stands accused of lying for racist reasons, so his “but I’m a virgin” defense is irrational — at least on the surface. But it makes more sense, in a psychosexual way, in light of the right’s long-standing fear and loathing of day cares. After all, the scandal Shirley is exploiting isn’t really about day cares. It’s about a larger case in Minnesota of Feeding Our Future, a fraudulent food pantry that was run by Aimee Bock, a white woman who was convicted in March of cheating taxpayers out of nearly $250 million of pandemic funds. While Bock was the mastermind, other defendants in the case are Somali American. On Dec. 30, a federal judge cleared the way for the government to seize $5.2 million in assets from Bock.

If Shirley was only interested in building his hoax on that existing and very real case, he could have targeted anti-hunger charities for his fake sting. Instead, he went after day cares, which are only tangentially related insofar as they are — along with churches, mosques, schools and community centers — sites that were supposed to get assistance from the fraudsters but never received it.

These businesses were picked almost certainly because Shirley and his colleagues have tapped into the long-standing tendency of paranoid reactionaries to make day cares the subject of conspiracy theories. Along with birth control and abortion — whose providers are also smeared constantly with right-wing lies — day care is loathed on the right for allowing women to work instead of being financially dependent on a husband. In the 1980s, day care workers were accused of being Satanists. Now, during the MAGA era, the scapegoat for men’s fears of female independence has shifted from imaginary devil-worshippers to real immigrants. White women are implicitly accused of using immigrant labor as a cheat to avoid their god-given duty to quit work to stay home and raise babies. Vice President JD Vance has been especially loud with his belief that day care is pushing women away from their supposedly inherent desire to be housewives.

These people are freaks. And these are the people kicking our ass.

Trump, Miller and the Gospel of American Control

Because with Donald Trump the stupidest explanation is almost invariably the best, I think future historians will conclude after examining the evidence that Trump invaded Venezuela as part of a sustained tantrum over not getting the Nobel Peace Prize. I also believe that the odds are non-negligible that sometime in the next few weeks, Maria Corina Machado goes to Washington, and hands over her Nobel medal to Donald Trump at some deeply inspiring public ceremony, at which she acknowledges with tears in her eyes that he was the real winner because nobody has ever deserved the Nobel Peace Prize as much as Donald Trump. At which point she will be installed as Venezuela’s new president with the full backing of the US government and military.

And if you think this is an impossible scenario, you haven’t been paying attention for the last ten and a half years now.

I mean after all:

Stephen Miller, a top aide to President Trump, asserted on Monday that Greenland rightfully belonged to the United States and that the Trump administration could seize the semiautonomous Danish territory if it wanted.

“Nobody’s going to fight the United States militarily over the future of Greenland,” Mr. Miller told Jake Tapper, the CNN host, after being asked repeatedly whether he would rule out using military force.

The remarks were part of a vocal push by Mr. Miller, long a powerful behind-the-scenes player in Trump administration policy, to justify American imperialism and a vision for a new world order in which the United States could freely overthrow national governments and take foreign territory and resources so long as it was in the national interest.

“We live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power,” he said. “These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.”

Mr. Miller made his comments after his wife posted an image on social media over the weekend suggesting that the United States would soon take control of Greenland, and as Mr. Trump has renewed his own push for the island. Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen of Denmark urged Mr. Trump on Sunday to “stop the threats” to annex Greenland, in effect attacking a NATO ally.

The United States’ taking Greenland by force would rip apart the central agreement that underpins the NATO military alliance, of which Denmark and the United States are both founding members. Under that treaty, an attack on any member is treated as an attack on all members. Mr. Trump has previously said he would not rule out using the military to take Greenland.

Mr. Miller also echoed Mr. Trump’s intent to rule Venezuela and exploit its vast oil reserves after a U.S. raid seized President Nicolás Maduro and his wife from Caracas. Even some of America’s staunchest allies have criticized the raid, and the U.N. secretary general, António Guterres, said the raid had violated the U.N. charter.

“The United States of America is running Venezuela,” Mr. Miller said, dismissing international treaties enshrining a nation’s right to independence and sovereignty as “international niceties.” (What exactly is meant by “running” Venezuela is a matter of some dispute; Secretary of State Marco Rubio has shied away from the descriptor — even as Trump insists that the United States is very much “in charge” of Venezuela — and Speaker Mike Johnson, who has vigorously defended the military operation, has maintained that the United States is not engaged in military hostilities or an occupation.)

Mr. Miller’s language echoed a dark history of the United States’ governing weaker, smaller states in Latin America by flexing its military might. Mr. Miller asserted that a U.S. military blockade of the South American country of 28 million people would give the United States control of Venezuela.

“We set the terms and conditions,” Mr. Miller said. “We have a complete embargo on all of their oil and their ability to do commerce. So for them to do commerce, they need our permission. For them to be able to run an economy, they need our permission. So the United States is in charge. The United States is running the country.”

Miller tells anyone who will listen that his animus against people with brown skin dates back to his days in high school in Santi Monica CA, where he claims Hispanic students “were mean” to him.  Whoever gave Miller a wedgie in high school has much to answer for.


Meanwhile, Miller’s wife posted this map of Greenland on her social media site with the caption:  SOON.

 

Katie Miller posts about the U.S. plans for Greenland on X.

Senator Mark Kelley (D, AZ), also Captain USNavy (Retired) is a hero; Pete Hegseth is a big ZERO

BACKGROUND.

A few weeks ago Sen Kelly and five other members of Congress —  all of whom are former or retired military — made a video reminding military personnel that they are not required to obey illegal orders.

Pete Hegseth, who is the most unqualified person to ever hold a senior government position, got his panties in a wad and threatened to punish Kelly.  Why he focused on Kelly is a mystery but it doesn’t matter because Hegseth is an ignorant, dumb as dirt, cowardly piece of shit.

Now, Hegseth announced that the Dept of Defense will reduce the amount of pension the Kelly receives as a retired Navy Captain (O-6).  Here is Kelly’s statement.


Sen. Mark Kelly: “Nothing more un-American”

Senator Mark Kelly @SenMarkKelly
Over twenty-five years in the U.S. Navy, thirty-nine combat missions, and four missions to space, I risked my life for this country and to defend our Constitution – including the First Amendment rights of every American to speak out. I never expected that the President of the United States and the Secretary of Defense would attack me for doing exactly that.

My rank and retirement are things that I earned through my service and sacrifice for this country. I got shot at. I missed holidays and birthdays. I commanded a space shuttle mission while my wife Gabby recovered from a gunshot wound to the head– all while proudly wearing the American flag on my shoulder. Generations of servicemembers have made these same patriotic sacrifices for this country, earning the respect, appreciation, and rank they deserve.

Pete Hegseth wants to send the message to every single retired servicemember that if they say something he or Donald Trump doesn’t like, they will come after them the same way. It’s outrageous and it is wrong. There is nothing more un-American than that.

If Pete Hegseth, the most unqualified Secretary of Defense in our country’s history, thinks he can intimidate me with a censure or threats to demote me or prosecute me, he still doesn’t get it. I will fight this with everything I’ve got — not for myself, but to send a message back that Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump don’t get to decide what Americans in this country get to say about their government.

11:33 AM · Jan 5, 2026


Meanwhile, there’s this:

 

 

Rubio — another of Trump’s lapdogs — lies about Venezuela and US plans for our hemisphere

Secretary of State Marco Rubio took the administration’s message about its strikes on Venezuela to the Sunday talk shows this morning. It did not go well.

Asked by George Stephanopoulos of ABC’s This Week under what legal authority the U.S. is going to run Venezuela, as President Donald J. Trump vowed to do, Rubio served up a lot of words but ultimately fell back on the idea that the U.S. has economic leverage over Venezuela because it can seize sanctioned oil tankers. Seizing ships will give the U.S. power to force the Venezuelan government to do as the U.S. wants, Rubio suggested. This is a very different message than Trump delivered yesterday when he claimed that the people standing behind him on the stage—including Rubio—would be running Venezuela.

When Stephanopoulos asked Rubio if he was, indeed, running Venezuela, Rubio again suggested that the U.S. was only pressuring the Venezuelan government by seizing sanctioned oil tankers, and said he was involved in those policies. When Kristen Welker of NBC’s Meet the Press also asked if Rubio was running Venezuela, Rubio seemed frustrated that “People [are] fixating on that. Here’s the bottom line on it is we expect to see changes in Venezuela.” Historian Kevin Kruse commented: “Yeah, people are fixating on a Cabinet Secretary being given a sovereign country to run because the president waged war without congressional approval and kidnapped the old leader. Weird that they’d get hung up on that.”

When Stephanopoulos asked why the administration thought it didn’t need congressional authorization for the strikes, Rubio said they didn’t need congressional approval because the U.S. did not invade or occupy another country. The attack, he said, was simply a law enforcement operation to arrest Maduro. Rubio said something similar yesterday, but Trump immediately undercut that argument by saying the U.S. intended to take over Venezuela’s oil fields and run the country.

Indeed, if the strikes were a law enforcement operation, officials will need to explain how officers managed to kill so many civilians, as well as members of security forces. Mariana Martinez of the New York Times reported today that the number of those killed in the operation has risen to 80.

Rubio highlighted again that the Trump administration wants to control the Western Hemisphere, and he went on to threaten Cuba. Simon Rosenberg of The Hopium Chronicles articulated the extraordinary smallness of the Trump administration’s vision when he wrote: “We must also marvel at the titanic idiocy of our new ‘Donroe Doctrine’ for it turns America from a global power into a regional one by choice. I still can’t really believe they are going through with this for it is so batsh*t f-ing crazy, and does so much lasting harm to our interests.”

Shortly after Trump told reporters yesterday that Venezuela’s former vice president, now president, Delcy Rodríguez is “essentially willing to do what we think is necessary to make Venezuela great again,” Rodríguez demanded Maduro’s return and said Venezuela would “never again be a colony of any empire, whatever its nature.” Indeed, U.S. extraction of Maduro and threats to “run” Venezuela are more likely to boost the Maduro government than weaken it.

In a phone call today with Michael Scherer of The Atlantic, Trump threatened Rodríguez, saying that “if she doesn’t do what’s right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro.” Tonight on Air Force One, Trump told reporters that the U.S., not Rodríguez, is in charge of Venezuela.

Trump also told Scherer that he does indeed intend to continue to assert U.S. control in the Western Hemisphere, telling Scherer that “we do need Greenland, absolutely. We need it for defense.” Greenland is part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), meaning it is already part of U.S. national defense.

Although he ran for office on the idea of getting the U.S. out of the business of foreign intervention, Trump embraced the idea of regime change in Venezuela, telling Scherer: “You know, rebuilding there and regime change, anything you want to call it, is better than what you have right now. Can’t get any worse.” He continued: “Rebuilding is not a bad thing in Venezuela’s case. The country’s gone to hell. It’s a failed country. It’s a totally failed country. It’s a country that’s a disaster in every way.”

At Strength in Numbers, G. Elliott Morris noted that military intervention in Venezuela is even more unpopular with the American people “than Trump’s tariffs and health care cuts.” In September, only 16% of Americans wanted a “U.S. invasion of Venezuela,” with 62% against it. A December poll showed that 60% of likely voters opposed “sending American troops into Venezuela to remove President Maduro from power.” Only 33% approved. Even support for strikes against the small boats in the Caribbean could not get majority support: 53% opposed them while only 42% approved.

“By the time American forces touched Venezuelan soil early Saturday morning,” Morris writes, “Trump had already lost the public.”

But officials in the administration no longer appear to care what the American people want, instead simply gathering power into their own hands for the benefit of themselves and their cronies, trusting that Republican politicians will go along and the American people will not object enough to force the issue. The refusal of the Department of Justice to obey the clear direction of the Epstein Files Transparency Act seems to have been a test of Congress’s resolve, and so far, it is a gamble the administration appears to be winning.

Morris notes that a December CBS poll showed that 75% of Americans, including 58% of Republicans, correctly believed a president must get approval from Congress before taking military action against Venezuela. The president did not get that approval. By law, the president must inform the Gang of Eight before engaging in military strikes, but if an emergency situation prevents that notification, then the president must inform the Gang of Eight within 48 hours. The Gang of Eight is made up of the top leaders of both parties in both chambers of Congress, as well as the top leaders from both parties on the House and Senate Intelligence Committees.

Representative Jim Himes (D-CT) who as ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee is a member of the Gang of Eight, told CBS’s Margaret Brennan this morning that neither he nor House minority leader and fellow Gang of Eight member Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) had been briefed on the strikes. Himes said: “I was delighted to hear that Tom Cotton, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has been in regular contact with the administration. I’ve had zero outreach, and no Democrat that I’m aware of has had any outreach whatsoever. So apparently we’re now in a world where the legal obligation to keep the Congress informed only applies to your party, which is really something.”

Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY)—also a member of the Gang of Eight—told reporters that he hadn’t been briefed either and that the administration had deliberately misled Congress in three classified briefings before the strikes. In those briefings, officials assured lawmakers that the administration was not planning to take military action in Venezuela and was not pursuing regime change. “They’ve kept everyone in the total dark,” he said.

Nonetheless, Himes told Brennan that he thought Trump’s Venezuelan adventure would not go well: “We’re in the euphoria period of…acknowledging across the board that Maduro was a bad guy and that our military is absolutely incredible. This is exactly the euphoria we felt in 2002 when our military took down the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2003, when our military took out Saddam Hussein, and in 2011, when we helped remove Muammar Gaddafi from power in Libya. These were very, very bad people, by the way, much, much worse than Maduro and Venezuela, which was never a significant national security threat to the United States. But we’re in that euphoria phase. And what we learned the day after the euphoria phase is that it’s an awful lot easier to break a country than it is to actually do what the president promised to do, which is to run it…. [L]et’s let my Republican colleagues enjoy their day of euphoria, but they’re going to wake up tomorrow morning knowing what? My God, there is no plan here any more than there was in Afghanistan, Iraq, or in Libya.”

Representative Ted Lieu (D-CA) was more direct: “The U.S. attack on Venezuela is illegal,” he posted. “Congress never authorized this use of military force. I will vote to stop it. This is insane. Health care costs and food prices are surging. Trump’s response is we’re going to run another country. Batsh*t crazy.”