Overwhelm The Public With Muzzle-Velocity Headlines: A Strategy Rooted In Racism And Authoritarianism

The seemingly unending barrage of stressful news is a strategy with ties to the past. zimmytws/iStock via Getty Images

BY ANGIE CHUANG

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF JOURNALISM,

UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO BOULDER

The headlines documenting President Donald Trump’s plan to send federal troops to San Francisco followed a familiar arc. “Trump claims ‘unquestioned power’ in vow to send troops to San Francisco,” The Guardian reported on Oct. 20, 2025. The next day, the San Francisco Chronicle blared: “S.F. threatens to sue if Trump brings in National Guard.” Then, on Oct. 23, “Trump reverses his decision to send troops to San Francisco,” as ABC News put it, after Trump posted that conversations with the city’s mayor and tech moguls had swayed him.

It was another example of how Trump’s shifting policy positions, racially inflammatory statements and threats frequently fuel a flurry of headlines, reflecting what some psychologists are calling “media saturation overload” or “Trump stress disorder.”

This barrage of information may seem like overcommunication from a hyperactive administration. But it is much more than that.

Scholars have found that the constant, often conflicting and at times false information coming out of the White House and shared via social media posts and the conventional news media causes members of the public to see truth and fact as relative and makes them more likely to dismiss those who disagree with them as untruthful. This leaves doubt about what’s real and what isn’t.

This citizen paralysis creates what philosopher Hannah Arendt described in “The Origins of Totalitarianism” as a general public “for whom the distinction between fact and fiction … no longer exist.” When lies are truth and truth is derided as lies, Arendt wrote, ordinary people lose their bearings and can be manipulated for totalitarian objectives.

Meanwhile, many journalists have openly acknowledged fatigue with the pace and nature of the Trump administrations’ news cycles, amid frequent newsroom layoffs, mergers and closures.

I am a longtime journalist and now scholar of journalism and race, trained to see the methods and aims behind political leaders’ press operations. And as I show in my forthcoming book, the Trump administration’s rhetorical strategies echo the playbooks of authoritarian and white supremacist organizations such as the Third Reich and some factions of the modern alt-right movement. They are intended to narrow the scope of who belongs as an American.

Headlines at ‘muzzle velocity’

The Trump administration’s rhetorical strategies include claiming victim status while often laying blame on immigrants or other scapegoats in ways that I believe betray racist intent. At the same time it has overwhelmed journalists and the public with breaking news.

This strategy was laid out by Steve Bannon, an influential Trump supporter and strategist in his first administration, during a 2019 PBS “Frontline” interview, when he described the media as “the opposition party.”

“They’re dumb and they’re lazy, they can only focus on one thing at a time,” he said. “All we have to do is flood the zone. … Bang, bang, bang. These guys will never – will never be able to recover. But we’ve got to start with muzzle velocity.”

Bannon has long been associated with the alt-right, a movement known for rhetorical tactics that minimize and obfuscate its true aims.

A strategy forged in Trump’s first term

As I detail in my book, “American Otherness in Journalism: News Media Representations of Identity and Belonging,” Trump and his key advisers have been developing, refining and ramping up their news media manipulation for a long time.

An early example of this is the way the administration used these tactics through Trump’s public responses to the fatal violence at the August 2017 Unite the Right protest in Charlottesville, Virginia.

The two-day rally was organized by a white nationalist blogger and attended by members of neo-Nazi, white supremacist and far-right militias protesting the removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee from a Charlottesville park. They marched with tiki torches, flew Confederate and Nazi flags and chanted antisemitic and racist slogans.

Amid violent clashes with counterprotesters on the second day, a neo-Nazi sympathizer drove into a crowd, killing a 32-year-old woman and injuring many others.

My study of television news coverage of Unite the Right found that the majority of news reports focused on the contradictory and inflammatory statements that Trump made about the antisemitic and racist protesters. Trump’s Aug. 15, 2017, press conference remark about blame on both sides after what happened garnered the most news media attention: “I think there is blame on both sides,” he said. “You had some very bad people in that group. You also had some very fine people on both sides.”

Exploiting chaos

The uncertainty surrounding what he meant created a cycle of news stories implying and denying that he sympathizes with white supremacists.

This is-he-or-isn’t-he intrigue spurred a surge of what fits the description of Bannon’s “muzzle-velocity” news headlines: “Trump declares ‘racism is evil’ amid pressure over Charlottesville” followed closely by “Trump defends White-nationalist protesters” and “Why Trump can’t get his story straight on Charlottesville.”

With the focus on Trump’s comments and what he might have really meant, the news media ultimately missed covering at the time the long-term threat posed by these white supremacist and other extremist groups.

Echoing a playbook from the past

Scholars have identified the fascist roots of these “post-truth” strategies: strongmen leaders uninterested in establishing leadership through honesty and transparency.

A recent scholarly analysis of Trump’s leadership concludes that the second-term president is overwhelming the public into “organized despair” by pitting races against each other while targeting minority groups as scapegoats, a tactic that hearkens back to 1930s Germany.

A 2019 analysis of Trump’s narrative style describes how he presents himself as a “strongman” fighting invisible forces of censorship and suppression. It also points out that this was part of the appeal of fascist leaders such as Mussolini and Hitler.

Researchers of Nazi propaganda identified key tactics in the German press such as name-calling and lumping together groups seen as opposition – communists, liberals and Jews – until public understanding of those groups blur into phrases like “enemies of Germany.” The messaging was constant and immersive, carried in local and national newspapers, radio, film and posters.

A key part of Trump’s rhetorical strategy is using race without directly referring to it. For example, Trump has described cities with large nonwhite populations such as Washington, D.C., and Chicago as “out of control” or “dirty,” contrary to actual crime statistics. He’s also questioned Kamala Harris’ racial identity, suggesting she “happened to turn Black.” And referring to Black football players who had been protesting systemic racism by kneeling during the national anthem, Trump said, “Get that son of a bitch off the field right now,” which many observers interpreted as racist because he was insulting people of color for the act of protesting racism.

This racial coding has been used by white supremacist groups to mask their true intent. They also use less overt labels such as “alt-right” or “pro-white” as a “rhetorical bridge” to the mainstream public.

In the case of the NFL protesters, the plausible deniability became an actual denial. Trump perfected this move when, during a 2020 debate with Joe Biden, he said, “Proud Boys – stand back and stand by,” referencing another group accused of thinly veiled racism.

Drowning in headlines

I believe that the endgame for this strategy is authoritarian power that greatly narrows the scope of who truly belongs and has rights in this country as an American.

This media saturation – drowning the public with a thousand Trump-generated headlines – allows his administration to keep dominating and controlling national attention.

But the media-consuming public can use the tools they have to encourage news outlets to better inform the public by identifying the media saturation strategy and reporting on why leaders are using it.

Otherwise, if news consumers let the headline overload do what it’s intended to do, and become overwhelmed and paralyzed, they become pawns in what I consider a ploy to make America less egalitarian and less democratic.

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A Brief History Of Congressional Oversight, From Revolutionary War Financing To Pam Bondi

U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota speaks at an oversight hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Oct. 7, 2025. AP Photo/Allison Robbert

BY GIBBS KNOTTS

PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL SCIENCE,

COASTAL CAROLINA UNIVERSITY

Routine congressional oversight hearings usually don’t make headlines. Historically, these often low-key events have been the sorts of things you catch only on C-SPAN – procedural, polite and largely ignored outside the Beltway.

But their tone has shifted dramatically during the second Trump administration.

When Attorney General Pam Bondi appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Oct. 7, 2025, what took place was a contentious, highly partisan, made-for-TV-and-social-media confrontation.

The hearing occurred on the heels of the indictment of former FBI Director James Comey, which many legal experts view as an example of a president targeting his political enemies. Bondi came ready to fight. She refused to answer many questions from Democrats, instead launching personal attacks against these members of the U.S. Senate.

When Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, a Democrat, asked about the deployment of National Guard troops in Chicago, Bondi retorted, “I wish you loved Chicago as much as you hate President Trump.” The clip went viral, as Bondi likely intended.

From our perspective as political scientists who study the U.S. Congress, congressional oversight has played an important role in American democracy. Here’s a brief history.

Inquisitory powers

In simple terms, oversight is the ability of Congress to ensure that the laws it passes are faithfully executed. This generally means asking questions, demanding information, convening hearings and holding the executive branch accountable for its actions.

Oversight isn’t specifically mentioned in the Constitution. Article 1, Section 8, which lists the powers of Congress, includes the power “to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper,” without identifying an oversight role. Once laws are enacted, Article 2, Section 3, states that the president “shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.”

However, the framers viewed congressional oversight as a key component of legislative authority. They wanted presidents to take Congress seriously and structured the Constitution to ensure that the executive would be accountable to the legislature. As James Madison urged in Federalist 51, the separate branches of government should have the power to keep each other from becoming too powerful. “Ambition must be made to counteract ambition,” Madison wrote.

The framers drew from the examples of the British Parliament and Colonial legislatures. In 1621, Sir Francis Bacon was charged with corruption and impeached as Lord High Chancellor after an investigation by a committee of the British Parliament. And in 1768, the Massachusetts Assembly conducted an investigation of Gov. Francis Bernard that led to a formal request to the King of England for his removal.

At the Federal Convention in 1787 that produced the Constitution, Delegate George Mason noted that members of Congress possessed “inquisitory powers” and “must meet frequently to inspect the Conduct of public officials.” Even though this idea was never written down, it was a habit of self-government that early Congresses put into practice.

Early oversight hearings

Congressional oversight began almost as soon as the first Congress met. In 1790, Robert Morris, the superintendent of finances during the Continental Congress and a financier of the American Revolution, asked Congress to investigate his handling of the country’s finances and was exonerated of any wrongdoing.

During this period, congressional investigations were often referred to select committees – bodies created to perform special functions. These panels had the power to issue subpoenas and hold individuals in contempt. Since there was no official record of debates and proceedings, the public relied on newspaper accounts to learn about what had happened.

In March 1792, congressional oversight exposed businessman William Duer, who signed contracts with the War Department but failed to furnish the needed military supplies. This shortfall contributed to a stunning U.S. military defeat against a confederation of Native American tribes in the Northwest Territory.

Congress eventually removed the quartermaster general from his role for mismanaging the contracts. Duer was simultaneously involved in perhaps the first American economic bubble, which burst at the same time as Congress’ hearings. He ended up in a debtor’s prison, where he died in 1799.

Throughout the 19th century, Congress continued to quietly exercise this power. The work was often invisible to the public, but the issues were important. Hearings from December 1861 to May 1865 on the conduct of the U.S. Civil War produced a detailed record of the war, exposed military wrongdoing and condemned slavery. In 1871, the Senate created a select committee to investigate Ku Klux Klan violence during Reconstruction.

Investigating corruption and criminal acts

Congress started to use its oversight power more aggressively in the 1920s with the Senate Committee on Public Land and Surveys’ high-profile investigations into the Teapot Dome scandal.

Hearings revealed that Interior Secretary Albert Bacon Fall had secretly leased federal oil reserves in Wyoming to two private corporations and had received personal loans and gifts from the companies in return.

The investigation found clear evidence of corruption. Fall was indicted and became the first U.S. Cabinet member to be convicted of a felony.

The U.S. Supreme Court helped to shape the legal foundation of congressional oversight. In McGrain v. Daugherty, decided in 1927, the court held that congressional committees could issue subpoenas, force witnesses to testify and hold them in contempt if they fail to appear. Two years later, in Sinclair v. United States, the court ruled that witnesses who lied to Congress could be charged with perjury.

These cases granted the judicial branch’s sanction to what had long been an implied legislative power, cementing the constitutionality of congressional oversight.

Oversight highs and lows

The modern era of congressional oversight has produced some very important reforms – and some truly regrettable spectacles.

The most important example of bipartisan congressional oversight came in response to reporting by The Washington Post’s Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward. The two journalists wrote about the 1972 burgling of Democratic National Committee offices in Washington, D.C.’s Watergate Hotel and subsequent cover-up efforts by the Nixon administration.

On Feb. 7, 1973, the U.S. Senate voted 77-0 to establish a Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities, which brought together Democrats and Republicans to investigate what came to be known as the “Watergate scandal.” The committee’s work spurred action in Congress to impeach President Richard Nixon, leading to Nixon’s resignation in 1974 and to the enactment of legal reforms to provide an institutional check on presidential power.

Another high point for congressional oversight came after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001. Seeking to learn how the deadliest terrorist strike on American soil had occurred, Democratic Sen. Bob Graham and Republican Rep. Porter Goss, who chaired the Senate and House Intelligence committees, formed a joint committee to investigate intelligence failures before and after the attacks.

This inquiry produced several important recommendations that were ultimately adopted, including the creation of a director of national intelligence and a Department of Homeland Security, as well as better information sharing among law enforcement agencies.

Congress’ oversight can extend beyond the executive branch when the actions of private actors raise questions about existing laws or spur the need for new ones. As examples, investigations into medical device safety and Enron’s 2001 collapse examined malfeasance in the private sphere that existing regulations failed to prevent.

However, the power to expose corruption can also be used as a tool to score partisan points and generate outrage, rather than holding the executive branch accountable for actual malfeasance. Notably, in the 1950s, Wisconsin Sen. Joseph McCarthy turned oversight into inquisition and used the power of media to amplify his accusations of communist influence within the federal government.

Democracy needs oversight

Congressional oversight has strengthened the democratic system at many points. But hearings like Bondi’s recent session before the Senate Judiciary Committee aren’t the first, and likely won’t be the last, to substitute sound bites for substance.

As we see it, the problem with allowing oversight to become political theater is that it distracts Congress from quieter and more meaningful oversight work. Slow, procedural work isn’t likely to go viral, but it helps keep government accountable. The task of a deliberate legislative body is to reconcile those very different impulses.

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Dick Cheney’s Expansive Vision Of Presidential Power Lives On In Trump’s Agenda

Vice President Dick Cheney appears at a Washington D.C., event in 2007. AP Photo/Charles Dharapak

BY GRAHAM G. DOBBS

PROFESSOR OF POLITICSL SCIENCE,

CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY

Former Vice President Dick Cheney will be remembered for many things. He was arguably the most powerful vice president in American history. He was a paragon of conservatism. He was the architect of many of the more extreme measures in President George W. Bush’s “war on terror.”

But Cheney’s legacy, after his death on Nov. 4, 2025, will also include a crucial development that dates back a half-century, when he served as President Gerald Ford’s chief of staff. Based on his experience in the Ford administration, Cheney felt that Congress had overreacted in its efforts to rein in the presidency after the abuses of President Richard Nixon. He thought that the assertive Congress of the 1970s had gone too far and had emasculated the presidency, making it nearly impossible for the president to get things done.

As Cheney told an interviewer in 2005: “I do have the view that over the years there had been an erosion of presidential power and authority, that it’s reflected in a number of developments – the War Powers Act. … I am one of those who believe that was an infringement upon the authority of the President. … A lot of the things around Watergate and Vietnam, both, in the ’70s served to erode the authority, I think, the President needs to be effective especially in a national security area.”

Cheney’s experience in the Ford years set in place a decades-long effort to enhance presidential power, to reinvigorate an office that he believed Congress had wrongly diminished. When Bush surprisingly picked Cheney to be his vice president in July 2000, Cheney finally had a chance to right that perceived wrong.

Bush was happy to expand his own power, and the Bush administration made bold assertions of presidential power in a variety of areas. In many instances, Bush and others sought to justify his actions by invoking the unitary executive theory, a conservative thesis that calls for total presidential control over the entire executive branch.

Now, nearly two decades later, President Donald Trump is using this theory to push his agenda. He set the tone for his second term by issuing 26 executive orders, four proclamations and 12 memorandums on his first day back in office. The barrage of unilateral presidential actions has not yet let up.

These have included Trump’s efforts to remove thousands of government workers and fire several prominent officials, such as members of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the chair of the Commission on Civil Rights. He has also attempted to shut down entire agencies, such as the Department of Education and the U.S. Agency for International Development.

For some scholars, these actions appear rooted in the psychology of an unrestrained politician with an overdeveloped ego.

But it’s more than that.

As a political science scholar who studies presidential power, I believe Trump’s recent actions mark the culmination of the unitary executive theory, which is perhaps the most contentious and consequential constitutional theory of the past several decades.

A prescription for a potent presidency

In 2017, Trump complained that the scope of his power as president was limited: “You know, the saddest thing is that because I’m the president of the United States, I am not supposed to be involved with the Justice Department. I am not supposed to be involved with the FBI, I’m not supposed to be doing the kind of things that I would love to be doing. And I’m very frustrated by it.”

The unitary executive theory suggests that such limits wrongly curtail the powers of the chief executive.

Formed by conservative legal theorists in the 1980s to help President Ronald Reagan roll back liberal policies, the unitary executive theory promises to radically expand presidential power.

There is no widely agreed upon definition of the theory. And even its proponents disagree about what it says and what it might justify. But in its most basic version, the unitary executive theory claims that whatever the federal government does that is executive in nature – from implementing and enforcing laws to managing most of what the federal government does – the president alone should personally control it.

This means the president should have total control over the executive branch, with its dozens of major governmental institutions and millions of employees. Put simply, the theory says the president should be able to issue orders to subordinates and to fire them at will.

The president could boss around the FBI or order the U.S. attorney general to investigate his political opponents, as Trump has done. The president could issue signing statements – a written pronouncement – that reinterpret or ignore parts of the laws, like George W. Bush did in 2006 to circumvent a ban on torture. The president could control independent agencies such as the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Consumer Product Safety Commission. The president might be able to force the Federal Reserve to change interest rates, as Trump has suggested. And the president might possess inherent power to wage war as he sees fit without a formal authorization from Congress, as officials argued during Bush’s presidency.

A constitutionally questionable doctrine

A theory is one thing. But if it gains the official endorsement of the Supreme Court, it can become governing orthodoxy. It appears to many observers and scholars that Trump’s actions have intentionally invited court cases by which he hopes the judiciary will embrace the theory and thus permit him to do even more. And the current Supreme Court appears ready to grant that wish.

Until recently, the judiciary tended to indirectly address the claims that now appear more formally as the unitary executive theory.

During the country’s first two centuries, courts touched on aspects of the theory in cases such as Kendall v. U.S. in 1838, which limited presidential control of the postmaster general, and Myers v. U.S. in 1926, which held that the president could remove a postmaster in Oregon.

In 1935, in Humphrey’s Executor v. U.S., the high court unanimously held that Congress could limit the president’s ability to fire a commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission. And in Morrison v. Olson the court in 1988 upheld the ability of Congress to limit the president’s ability to fire an independent counsel.

Some of those decisions aligned with some unitary executive claims, but others directly repudiated them.

Warming up to a unitary executive

In a series of cases over the past 15 years, the Supreme Court has moved in an unambiguously unitarian, pro-presidential direction. In these cases, the court has struck down statutory limits on the president’s ability to remove federal officials, enabling much greater presidential control.

These decisions clearly suggest that long-standing, anti-unitarian landmark decisions such as Humphrey’s are on increasingly thin ice. In fact, in Justice Clarence Thomas’ 2019 concurring opinion in Seila Law LLC v. CFPB, where the court ruled the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s leadership structure was unconstitutional, he articulated his desire to “repudiate” the “erroneous precedent” of Humphrey’s.

Several cases from the court’s emergency docket, or shadow docket, in recent months indicate that other justices share that desire. Such cases do not require full arguments but can indicate where the court is headed.

In Trump v. Wilcox, Trump v. Boyle and Trump v. Slaughter, all from 2025, the court upheld Trump’s firing of officials from the National Labor Relations Board, the Merit Systems Protection Board, the Consumer Product Safety Commission and the Federal Trade Commission.

Previously, these officials had appeared to be protected from political interference.

Total control

Remarks by conservative justices in those cases indicated that the court will soon reassess anti-unitary precedents.

In Trump v. Boyle, Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote, “whether this Court will narrow or overrule a precedent … there is at least a fair prospect (not certainty, but at least a reasonable prospect) that we will do so.” And in her dissent in Trump v. Slaughter, Justice Elena Kagan said the conservative majority was “raring” to overturn Humphrey’s and finally officially embrace the unitary executive.

In short, the writing is on the wall, and Humphrey’s may soon go the way of Roe v. Wade and other landmark decisions that had guided American life for decades.

As for what judicial endorsement of the unitary executive theory could mean in practice, Trump seems to hope it will mean total control and hence the ability to eradicate the so-called “deep state.” Other conservatives hope it will diminish the government’s regulatory role.

Kagan recently warned it could mean the end of administrative governance – the ways that the federal government provides services, oversees businesses and enforces the law – as we know it:

“Humphrey’s undergirds a significant feature of American governance: bipartisan administrative bodies carrying out expertise-based functions with a measure of independence from presidential control. Congress created them … out of one basic vision. It thought that in certain spheres of government, a group of knowledgeable people from both parties – none of whom a President could remove without cause – would make decisions likely to advance the long-term public good.”

If the Supreme Court officially makes the chief executive a unitary executive, the advancement of the public good may depend on little more than the whims of the president, a state of affairs normally more characteristic of dictatorship than democracy.

Judicial approval of the unitary executive theory might well have pleased Cheney by enshrining a significant means of enhancing presidential power. But ironically, the former vice president would be displeased for such power to be accessible to the current president, whom Cheney criticized, calling Trump a “threat to our republic.”

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All Government Shutdowns Disrupt Science − In 2025, The Consequences Extend Far Beyond A Lapse In Funding

The government shutdown will continue until Congress can pass a bill reopening it. Samuel Corum/AFP via Getty Images

BY KENNETH M. EVANS

FELLOW IN SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, 

AND INNOVATION POLICY, BAKER

INSTITUTE FOR PUBLIC POLICY,

RICE UNIVERSITY

U.S. science always suffers during government shutdowns. Funding lapses send government scientists home without pay. Federal agencies suspend new grant opportunities, place expert review panels on hold, and stop collecting and analyzing critical public datasets that tell us about the economy, the environment and public health.

In 2025, the stakes are higher than in past shutdowns.

This shutdown arrives at a time of massive upheaval to American science and innovation driven by President Donald Trump’s ongoing attempts to extend executive power and assert political control of scientific institutions.

With the shutdown entering its fifth week, and with no end in sight, the Trump administration’s rapid and contentious changes to federal research policy are rewriting the social contract between the U.S. government and research universities – where the government provides funding and autonomy in exchange for the promise of downstream public benefits.

As a physicist and policy scholar, I both study and have a vested interest in the state of U.S. science funding as a recipient of federal grants. I write about the history and governance of American science policy, including the nation’s investments in research and development.

In the context of broader policy reforms to federal grantmaking, student and high-skilled immigration, and scientific integrity, this shutdown has both known and unknown consequences for the future of U.S. science.

Funding freezes, data gaps and unpaid workers

Over the past two decades, the story of government shutdowns has become all too familiar. Shutdowns occur when Congress fails to pass an appropriations bill before the start of the new fiscal year on Oct. 1, and, paraphrasing Article 1, Section 9 of the U.S. Constitution, the government can no longer spend money.

This funding gap affects all but essential government operations, such as the work of postal workers, air traffic controllers and satellite operators. Nonessential employees, including tens of thousands of government scientists, are barred from working and stop receiving paychecks.

With scientists and program officers at home, activities at the nearly two dozen federal agencies participating in research and development, such as the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, come to a halt. New grant opportunities and review panels are postponed or canceled, researchers at government laboratories stop collecting and analyzing data, and university projects reliant on federal funding are put at risk.

Extended shutdowns accelerate the damage. They leave bigger gaps in government data, throw federal employees into debt or lead them to dip into their savings, and force academic institutions to lay off staff paid through government grants and contracts.

Funding, public services and the rule of law

Even for shutdowns lasting a few days, it can take science agencies months to catch up on the backlog of paperwork, paychecks and peer review panels before they return to regular operations.

This year, the government faces mounting challenges to overcome once the shutdown ends: Trump and the director of the White House budget office, Russell Vought, are using the shutdown as an opportunity to “shutter the bureaucracy” and pressure universities to bend to the administration’s ideological positions on topics such as campus speech, gender identity and admission standards.

As the budget standoff nears the record for the longest shutdown ever, agency furloughs, reductions in force, canceled grants and jeopardized infrastructure projects document the devastating and immediate damage to the government’s ability to serve the public.

However, the full impact of the shutdown and the Trump administration’s broader assaults on science to U.S. international competitiveness, economic security and electoral politics could take years to materialize.

In parallel, the dramatic drop in international student enrollment, the financial squeeze facing research institutions, and research security measures to curb foreign interference spell an uncertain future for American higher education.

With neither the White House nor Congress showing signs of reaching a budget deal, Trump continues to test the limits of executive authority, reinterpreting the law – or simply ignoring it.

Earlier in October, Trump redirected unspent research funding to pay furloughed service members before they missed their Oct. 15 paycheck. Changing appropriated funds directly challenges the power vested in Congress – not the president – to control federal spending.

The White House’s promise to fire an additional 10,000 civil servants during the shutdown, its threat to withhold back pay from furloughed workers and its push to end any programs with lapsed funding “not consistent with the President’s priorities” similarly move to broaden presidential power.

Here, the damage to science could snowball. If Trump and Vought chip enough authority away from Congress by making funding decisions or shuttering statutory agencies, the next three years will see an untold amount of impounded, rescinded or repurposed research funds.

Science, democracy and global competition

While technology has long served as a core pillar of national and economic security, science has only recently reemerged as a key driver of greater geopolitical and cultural change.

China’s extraordinary rise in science over the past three decades and its arrival as the United States’ chief technological competitor has upended conventional wisdom that innovation can thrive only in liberal democracies.

The White House’s efforts to centralize federal grantmaking, restrict free speech, erase public data and expand surveillance mirror China’s successful playbook for building scientific capacity while suppressing dissent.

As the shape of the Trump administration’s vision for American science has come into focus, what remains unclear is whether, after the shutdown, it can outcompete China by following its lead.

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Prince Andrew Stripped Of All Titles After Virginia Giuffre’s Memoir. Her Family Declares ‘Victory’

BY KATE CANTRELL

SENIOR LECTURER, WRITING, EDITING

AND PUBLISHING, UNIVERSITY OF 

SOUTHERN QUEENSLAND

Content warning: this article includes graphic details about sexual assault some readers may find distressing.

Prince Andrew will be stripped of his royal titles, including prince, and will move out of his home, Royal Lodge, to a private residence. Buckingham Palace issued a statement today that King Charles has initiated a formal process to remove the “style, titles and honours of Prince Andrew”, who “will now be known as Andrew Mountbatten Windsor”.

The decision comes in the wake of Virginia Giuffre’s posthumous memoir Nobody’s Girl, published this fortnight. The memoir includes an inside account of the two years Giuffre spent as a “sex slave” working for Jeffrey Epstein and co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell. Giuffre died by suicide in April this year, aged 41, on her farm in Western Australia.

Three weeks before she died, she emailed her co-author, journalist Amy Wallace, and longtime publicist Dini von Mueffling: “In the event of my passing, I would like to ensure that Nobody’s Girl is still released.”

“Today,” Giuffre’s family said, “she declares a victory. She has brought down a British prince with her truth and extraordinary courage”.

British historian and author Andrew Lownie (author of a book about Andrew and his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson, called Entitled), told Sky News earlier this month, “the only way the story will go away is if [Andrew] leaves Royal Lodge, goes into exile abroad with his ex-wife, and is basically stripped of all his honours, including Prince Andrew”. Sarah Ferguson will also move out of Royal Lodge.

As a trauma memoir, Nobody’s Girl forces us to bear witness to an uncomfortable truth: Giuffre’s abuse was hidden in plain sight.

“Don’t be fooled by those in Epstein’s circle who say they didn’t know what Epstein was doing,” she writes. “Anyone who spent any significant amount of time with Epstein saw him touching girls.” She continues: “They can say they didn’t know he was raping children. But they were not blind.”

Four days before the memoir was published, Prince Andrew announced he would no longer use the titles conferred upon him, including Duke of York. Three days later, leaked emails from 2011 suggested he gave Giuffre’s date of birth and social security number to one of his protection officers, hours before the infamous photograph of him with her was published.

Maxwell’s brother, Ian Maxwell, published an article in the Spectator today, headlined “Don’t take Virginia Giuffre’s memoir at face value”. The memoir keeps his sister, who was convicted of charges including sex trafficking of a minor, in world headlines – at a time Donald Trump has said he will “take a look” at pardoning her. Earlier this year, Maxwell was moved to a lower security prison to continue her 20-year sentence.

Allegations of parental abuse

Giuffre writes that her father began molesting her at the age of seven. He “strenuously” denies this. While the memoir makes this public for the first time, Giuffre’s older brother Danny Wilson told ABC’s 7.30 he first heard the allegations years before the memoir was published – and confronted his father about it.

Giuffre regularly wet her pants at school – earning her the cruel nickname “Pee Girl”. She recalls: “I began to get painful urinary tract infections. My infections were so severe, I couldn’t hold my urine.”

After one (of several) medical examinations, a doctor told her mother her primary school aged daughter’s hymen was broken. Giuffre writes of this moment:

My mother didn’t hesitate. ‘Oh, she rides horses bareback,’ she explained. That was the end of that. I didn’t even know what a hymen was.

Later, she recalls her mother raising suspicions about her involvement with Epstein and “apex predator” Maxwell, questioning “what this older couple wanted with a teenage girl who had no credentials”.

Giuffre writes: “I guess I was glad she cared enough to have suspicions, but at the same time, wasn’t it a little late for that? I knew she couldn’t save me; she’d never saved me before.”

Around the time of her doctor’s visit, the memoir alleges, Giuffre’s father began “trading” his daughter to a friend – a tall, muscular man with “a military bearing” who was also abusing his own stepdaughter. In 2000, the man was convicted of molesting another girl in North Carolina. He spent 14 months in prison and a decade as a registered sex offender.

Giuffre writes that she was abused by these men for five years, from ages seven to eleven; it only stopped when she began menstruating.

Heartbreakingly, Giuffre discloses that at one point she imagined Maxwell (or “G-Max” as she wanted to be known) as her mother: “While I was hardly equipped to judge, it often seemed to me that Epstein and Maxwell behaved like actual parents.” Among other things, the pair gave Giuffre her first cell phone, whitened her teeth, and taught her how to hold a knife and fork “just so”.

‘The younger, the better’

Giuffre’s memoir is a courageous and clear-eyed account of what trauma takes – and what recovery demands.

Told in four chronological parts – “Daughter”, “Prisoner”, “Survivor” and “Warrior” – the memoir meticulously records the “sexual assaulting, battering, exploiting, and abusing” Giuffre endured throughout her life, most notably at the hands of Epstein and Maxwell.

The result is a devastating exposé of the fetishisation and abuse of girls – “the younger, the better”, Epstein said – and society’s failure to protect the most vulnerable.

It is also a damning indictment of everyone who knew and looked away.

‘Please don’t stop reading’

Giuffre was 16 and working as a locker-room attendant at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort when Ghislaine Maxwell recruited her to “service Epstein”, under the pretence of training as a masseuse. (In October 2007, Trump – who is portrayed favourably in the memoir – reportedly banned Epstein from his resort after Epstein hit on the teenage daughter of another member.)

Over the next two years, and roughly 350 pages, Giuffre tells how she was trafficked to “a multitude of powerful men”, including Prince Andrew, French modelling agent Jean-Luc Brunel, a prominent psychology professor and a respected United States senator.

Giuffre’s original memoir manuscript was titled “The Billionaire’s Playboy Club”.

In one of the most distressing scenes, Giuffre describes how she was trafficked to “a former minister”, who raped her so “savagely” she was left “bleeding from [her] mouth, vagina, and anus”. When Virginia told Epstein about the brutal attack, which made it hurt to breathe and swallow, he said, “You’ll get that sometimes.”

Eight weeks later, he returned Giuffre to the politician, who this time abused her on one of Epstein’s private jets. In the US version of the memoir, the politician is described not as a “former minister”, but as “a former Prime Minister”.

“I know this is a lot to take in,” Giuffre writes. “The violence. The neglect. The bad decisions. The self-harm. But please don’t stop reading.”

One of the most devastating revelations comes toward the end of the memoir. Giuffre – now in her forties – receives a phone call from a confidant claiming to have evidence that Epstein paid off her father when she was a girl. In 2000, when Epstein and Maxwell started abusing the teenager at El Brillo Way, it is alleged that her father accepted “a sum of money” from the paedophile.

According to Giuffre, when she confronted her father, there was “a brief silence” before “he started yelling at [her] for being an ungrateful daughter”.

Of all the betrayals she endured, this one stands alone: “I will never get over it”.
Girls no one cared about

“When a molester shows his face,” Giuffre writes, “many people tend to look the other way.”

In chapter 11, Giuffre describes how Epstein’s personal chef, the celebrity cook Adam Perry Lang, made her her favourite food – pizza. This, apparently, became something of a tradition – Lang feeding Giuffre, but never “ogl[ing]”, “even if I was standing naked in front of him, which was not unusual”. She wrote: “When I’d finished attending to Epstein or one of the other guests, Lang would have a cheesy hot pie waiting.”

In 2019, Lang issued a statement about working for Epstein: “My role was limited to meal preparation. I was unaware of the depraved behavior and have great sympathy and admiration for the brave women who have come forward.”

In another scene, Giuffre reveals that Epstein “never wore a condom”. After falling pregnant at the age of 17, she suffered an ectopic pregnancy.

On this day, Giuffre recalls how Epstein and Maxwell (“two halves of a wicked whole”) – with the help of Epstein’s New York butler – drove her to hospital after she woke in “a pool of blood”. Epstein lied to the doctor about her age, Giuffre alleges, and the two men seemed to enter “a gentlemen’s agreement” in which “whatever was going on between this middle-aged man and his teenage acquaintance […] would be kept quiet”.

“We were girls who no one cared about, and Epstein pretended to care,” Giuffre writes. “At times I think he even believed he cared.” She describes how Epstein “threw what looked like a lifeline to girls who were drowning, girls who had nothing, girls who wished to be and do better.” As a self-described “pleaser” who “survived by acquiescing”, Giuffre writes that Epstein and Maxwell “knew just how to tap into that same crooked vein” her childhood abusers had: abuse cloaked in “a fake mantle of ‘love’.”

Sex as birthright

In March 2001, at Maxwell’s upscale townhouse in London’s Belgravia – where Prince Andrew was famously pictured with his arm around the teenager – Giuffre recalls how Maxwell invited Andrew to guess her age. When the prince correctly guessed 17, he reportedly told her, “My daughters are just a little younger than you.”

Later that night, she writes, Prince Andrew bought the teenager cocktails at Tramp – an exclusive London nightclub – where she and the prince danced awkwardly and the prince “sweated profusely”. In the car, on the way home, Maxwell instructed Giuffre “to do for [Andy] what you do for Jeffrey”.

In November 2019, in his calamitous interview with BBC’s Newsnight, Prince Andrew denied any wrongdoing, claiming he had “no recollection of ever meeting this lady”. He told presenter Emily Maitlis he could not have danced sweatily at Tramp because he had “a peculiar medical condition” that prevented perspiration, caused by what he described as “an overdose of adrenaline” in the Falklands War.

In that interview, Andrew admitted his decision to stay at Epstein’s New York home in December 2010 – months after Epstein was released from jail for soliciting and procuring minors for prostitution – was “the wrong thing to do”. However, the prince claimed his decision was “probably coloured by [his] tendency to be too honourable”.

In her memoir, Giuffre describes Andrew as “friendly enough but entitled” – “as if he believed having sex with [her] was his birthright.” She alleges she had sex with the prince on two more occasions.

The last word

Publishing a book posthumously can be an ethical minefield. Critics often question whether posthumous publication is what the author would have wanted. They point to the author’s right to protect their work and their literary reputation – a right that cannot survive them.

However, Giuffre left no space for speculation. In the email she sent her co-author and publicist before her death, she made her wishes clear:

It is my heartfelt wish that this work be published, regardless of my circumstances at the time. The content of this book is crucial, as it aims to shed light on the systemic failures that allow the trafficking of vulnerable individuals.

As the memoir progresses, Giuffre’s health spirals. The physical, emotional and mental toll of trauma closes in on her. Epstein is dead. Maxwell is in prison. But Giuffre is still “trapped in an invisible cage”.

“From the start,” she says, “I was groomed to be complicit in my own devastation. Of all the terrible wounds they inflicted, that forced complicity was the most destructive.”

Before she died, Giuffre made a promise to her husband and children that she would try with “all her might” to believe her life mattered. Her final goal was to prevent “the emotional time-bomb” inside her from detonating.

While Giuffre may at last be beyond harm, the truth remains. She – like the hundreds of girls abused by Epstein and his associates – was wronged.

Her fight, like theirs, transcends death: release the Epstein files; hold abusers and their enablers accountable; expose the systems that protect predators; abolish statutes of limitations for the sexual abuse of minors. Ensure no other child suffers. This is what Giuffre wanted.

By publishing her memoir, she ensured the fight would survive her. She made certain her voice would outlast her pain.

In this way, she got the last word.

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Rediscovery Of African American Burial Grounds Provides Long-Overdue Opportunities For Collective Healing

Community members and faith leaders gather for a reinterment ceremony of 36 African ancestors in Charleston, S.C., on May 4, 2019. Contact The Conversation for photo rights

BY JOANNA GILM ORE

ADJUNCT PROFESSOR OF MUSEUM

STUDIES AND BIOARCHAEOLOGY,

COLLEGE OF CHARLESTON

In the course of construction work in 2013, the remains of 36 individuals of African descent were uncovered in the heart of downtown Charleston, South Carolina. They had lain hidden for some 200 years in an unmarked 18th-century burial ground.

For more than two centuries, such burial grounds, especially those in the former American slave states, have often been erased or obscured – paved over by parking lots, built upon by highways or private development, or simply left unknown and untended. In recent years, descendant communities in places such as Bethesda, Maryland, Richmond, Virginia, St. Petersburg, Florida, and Sugarland, Texas, have called for greater recognition and respect for these long-neglected sites.

As a public archaeologist and educator who has spent over a decade working in Charleston, South Carolina, I co-direct the Anson Street African Burial Ground project – the community-led effort to honor and respectfully lay to rest the 36 African ancestors whose remains were uncovered in 2013.

This Charleston project reflects a growing recognition of African American burial grounds as important historical memory sites and unique sources of genealogical information. Yet there is still limited public understanding about how engaging with these places of sacred rest can promote collective healing, reconciliation and cross-cultural understanding.
Cemeteries obscured by history

Since the British colonial period, racist laws and customs across America prevented enslaved and free people of African descent from using white burial grounds to bury their dead. On plantations, enslavers controlled where and how the enslaved were buried and whether burials could be marked or visited. In cities from Charleston to New York, segregated burial grounds, many now forgotten, were established by local authorities for indigent Black and white people.

Pushed to the margins, people of African descent maintained burial traditions and used impermanent or specific grave markers such as shells, bottles, clocks or ceramics – items that were culturally meaningful but often invisible or unimportant to white observers. As a result, many of these sites were neither recorded in historical documents nor officially recognized as burial grounds.

From the 1770s, African American churches, benevolent societies and funeral homes sought to establish cemeteries where Black communities could honor the dead with dignity. What began regionally – especially in Charleston and Philadelphia – quickly spread nationally during the 19th century across the American South and North.

In the decades after Reconstruction, and especially during the Jim Crow era, nearly 6 million African Americans moved north and west to escape racial violence and seek better opportunities – an event known as the Great Migration. This movement often severed ties between families and ancestral burial grounds in the South. As churches and burial societies lost members, many cemeteries fell into disrepair and were officially labeled “abandoned” by local authorities or developers.

In both rural and urban areas, Black burial grounds were often located on less valuable lands, sites that today are increasingly threatened by gentrification, development and the effects of climate change.

The Gullah Geechee, who descend from enslaved Africans from West Africa and still preserve unique cultural traditions in the southeastern U.S., argue these burial sites were never abandoned and that ancestors are still present. This perspective views the dead as actively connected to the living. For them, lacking formally designated cemetery space doesn’t make the sites any less sacred.
A tradition of sacred spaces

For many African Americans, especially in the South, death during slavery was seen as not merely an ending but a spiritual return — a “homegoing.”

Rooted in West African spiritual worldviews and carried through other traditions in America, the act of burial was often viewed as a release from bondage, a return to the ancestors and a step toward wholeness.

The Gullah Geechee traditions of coastal South Carolina emphasize ancestral presence, spiritual continuity and the sanctity of the land. In that worldview, with a porous boundary between the living and the dead, proper burial and remembrance are not only cultural imperatives but necessary for community well-being.

It was not until the early 1990s that recognition of rights over ancestral remains and sacred burial grounds began to find a wider audience.

Inspired by the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act that recognized Indigenous rights over ancestral remains, African American communities increasingly asserted their own rights to ethical research, respectful handling and meaningful memorialization, especially during the 1991 New York African Burial Ground project, which reshaped public memory and archaeological ethics.

Discovered during construction in lower Manhattan, the 18th-century burial ground contained the remains of more than 400 enslaved and free Africans. Community advocacy led to the site’s protection, descendant-led research, ceremonial reburial and the establishment of a national memorial in 2006.

Since this time, across the U.S. and the Atlantic world, descendant-led ceremonies from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, to Key West, Florida, have restored dignity to ancestral remains.

Meanwhile, efforts to preserve African American burial grounds, including by national scholar organizations and federal lawmakers, continue amid political debates over how history should be remembered and taught.
What made the Anson Street project unique

In Charleston, the Anson Street African Burial Ground project stands out for the way Gullah Geechee traditions and descendant collaboration shaped every stage of the process — from scientific study to reinterment.

Launched as a community-led initiative in 2017, the team began by listening. Through regular gatherings, they invited questions about the ancestors’ lives and identities, and about their hopes for the reburial, centering Black community voices at every stage. The team combined scientific investigations of ancestry and health while also creating space for spiritual guidance, ceremony and descendant leadership. In doing so, the project became more than a study of the past; it became a communal act of repair and remembrance, reconnecting Charleston’s present communities with the ancestors whose stories had long been buried.

Over the next two years, the team wove this commitment into every aspect of its work: youth art programs, a college course on memorial design, public exhibitions, and school partnerships. One of the most moving moments came from conversations with schoolchildren, who decided that the ancestors should be given names before they were reburied.

That naming ceremony took place in April 2019. The names were conferred by Natalie Washington-Weik, a Yorùbá-Orisa Ọ̀ṣun priestess, a spiritual leader in a West African tradition and an African historian. She described the ritual as an “important step forward in reclaiming the humanity of the deceased people who were most likely forced to travel across the Atlantic Ocean under the terror of other humans – who saw them merely as animals.”

The ancestors were finally reinterred in a powerful public ceremony that reflected their ancestries and West-Central African spiritual traditions.
When pain is acknowledged, healing can occur

The 2019 naming and reinterment ceremonies were not simply commemorations; they were rituals of remembrance and healing.

Construction for a permanent memorial at the Anson Street site, designed by artist Stephen L. Hayes Jr., has now begun. At its center is a basin fabricated with sacred soil collected from 36 African-descended burial grounds across the Charleston region. From the basin, 36 bronze hands will rise – cast from living community members whose profiles reflect those of the ancestors. Raised in gestures of prayer, resistance and reverence, these hands link past to present.

Throughout the memorialization process, community members reflected on what it meant to participate in such a project. Many spoke of feeling pride, reverence, joy, sadness and peace. “This conversation makes me feel complete,” one participant said.

As Charleston demonstrates, these projects are not only about preserving the past – they are acts of recognition, respect and reconciliation, helping communities nationwide confront and honor the histories long denied to African-descended peoples.

Trump’s Anti-Venezuela Actions Lack Strategy, Justifiable Targets And Legal Authorization

The U.S. deployed its largest warship, the USS Gerald R. Ford, to the Caribbean, north of Venezuela, following multiple strikes on vessels allegedly involved in drug trafficking. Omar Zaghloul/Anadolu via Getty Images

BY JEFFREY FIELDS

PROFESSOR OF THE PRACTICE 

OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS,

USC DORNSIFE COLLEGE OF,

ARTS AND SCIENCES

“I think we’re just going to kill people that are bringing drugs into our country. OK? We’re going to kill them. You know, they’re going to be, like, dead,” President Donald Trump said in late October 2025 of U.S. military strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea north of Venezuela.

The Trump administration asserted without providing any evidence that the boats were carrying illegal drugs. Fourteen boats that the administration alleged were being operated by drug traffickers have been struck, killing 43 people.

On Oct. 24, the administration began a substantial military buildup in the region. The Pentagon moved the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford and some of its strike group, along with several other naval ships, to the Caribbean and moved F-35 fighter jets to Puerto Rico. This is the largest U.S. naval deployment in the Caribbean Sea since the Cuban missile crisis in 1962.

According to the White House, the naval buildup and strikes on boats in international waters are part of counternarcotics operations. The vessels targeted allegedly belonged to Venezuelan drug smugglers, though the administration has produced no evidence that there were drugs on the boats, or what type. Trump has named fentanyl as one of them.

At times the president and some of his advisers have referred to the operators and occupants of the boats as “narco-terrorists.” But they have offered no explanation why the people would be considered terrorists.

The president and his advisers’ own words have also indicated that the larger intentions of the administration could be to topple the government of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela.

But as a former political-military analyst and former senior adviser at the Department of Defense, I find it hard to discern a coherent strategy or objective.

The puzzling drug angle

The boats that have been hit all had origins in, or connections to, Venezuela, and all were struck in the Caribbean Sea and in the Pacific north of Colombia, making the operation particularly puzzling. Venezuela is not a major producer of fentanyl or cocaine. The major cocaine trafficking routes are in the Pacific Ocean, not the Caribbean.

Typically, the U.S. Coast Guard stops vessels suspected of carrying illegal drugs in international waters. In 2025, the Coast Guard has interdicted a record amount of illegal drugs and precursor chemicals in the Caribbean. It is notable that the amount of methamphetamine precursor chemicals interdicted far exceeds that of fentanyl.

After interdiction, the Coast Guard typically begins a process that adheres to legal strictures, detaining the crew and eventually turning them over to a U.S. law enforcement agency.

But the Trump strikes have summarily killed most of the people on the boats and presumably destroyed any of the alleged illicit drugs. Many observers and legal experts have said the killings amount to murder.

Trump’s preoccupation with Venezuela

Trump has had a fixation with the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua for some time, adding to his administration’s focus on Venezuela.

The administration designated Tren de Aragua a terrorist organization in January, along with several other drug cartels. But the White House statement announcing the designation made no mention of any behavior or activity that would constitute terrorism.

Under U.S. law, terrorism is defined as politically motivated violence, usually targeting a civilian population, intended to bring about political change. The terrorist designation allows the government to pursue actions such as seizing assets and imposing travel restrictions on those appearing on the list of Designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations.

But the designation of a criminal gang with no clear political ideology or objectives mischaracterizes the group. That calls into question some of the White House’s motivations.

Then there’s the odd incident of the covert operation that wasn’t covert.

In early October, The New York Times reported that Trump had authorized covert operations in Venezuela and authorized the CIA to conduct “lethal strikes” inside the country.

Surprisingly, Trump confirmed that he had indeed authorized covert action. Yet the defining feature of a covert operation is that the role of the government is hidden.

Trump’s fixation on Venezuela goes back to his first term, when he also had Maduro’s regime in his sights. The administration eventually charged Maduro with leading the Cartel de los Soles – Cartel of the Suns – an informal criminal network tied to high-level Venezuelan military officials believed to have conducted drug trafficking into the U.S. The White House has also claimed that Maduro controls Tren de Aragua.

Independent observers assert that opposition leader Edmundo González Urrutia handily won the 2024 presidential election. The government-controlled National Electoral Council, however, declared Maduro the winner. If the White House has greater intentions in Venezuela, such as regime change, which some anonymous officials have suggested, Trump has tipped off Maduro to be vigilant.

Thorny issues

If the goal of the administration is interdiction of dangerous illicit drugs like cocaine, Colombia is a much bigger source. Venezuela acts mainly as a minor trans-shipment conduit rather than a producer.

In terms of mitigating the effects of drugs and narcotics in the United States, multiple studies over decades have found that measures taken to decrease demand in the U.S. rather than supply-side interdiction are more effective in reducing harm.

With little public information to suggest an overall strategy or objective, legal problems related to the maritime strikes become apparent.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said that the activities were a “counter drug operation.” But he went further in saying that instead of interdicting the boats, they would be blown up.

The method of interdiction and destruction of the boats and lives of those involved by a military strike presents problems, especially in terms of U.S. armed forces performing law enforcement duties. This would be proscribed by the Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits federal armed forces from performing law enforcement activities.

As for actions targeting Venezuela, Trump has said he would not ask Congress for a declaration of war but would notify it of any ground operation.

The 1973 War Powers Act, which requires the president to notify Congress before hostilities and brief it afterward, would apply to this situation. But almost every president since its passing has ignored it at some point.

Though some Republicans in Congress have objected to the military actions so far, the Senate in early October voted down a resolution that would have prevented further strikes in the Caribbean.

The Trump administration continues to depict its activities in international waters as a military operation and the smugglers as enemy combatants. Most legal experts dismiss this and characterize the strikes as extrajudicial killings.

In reply to a flippant and profane response from Vice President JD Vance about the killings, Republican Senator Rand Paul wrote on social media, “Did he ever wonder what might happen if the accused were immediately executed without trial or representation?? What a despicable and thoughtless sentiment it is to glorify killing someone without a trial.”

If Trump and his advisers like Rubio and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth are taken at their word in scattered statements on the activities around Venezuela, many questions remain, such as why the boats are being destroyed and their occupants killed rather than interdicted.

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