The removal of Nicolas Maduro from power is a watershed moment for the United States, the Western Hemisphere, and a world that has grown far too accustomed to tolerating narco-states masquerading as sovereign governments. Maduro presided over one of the most corrupt, brutal, and destabilizing regimes of the modern era, one that hollowed out Venezuela’s economy, drove millions into exile, partnered openly with transnational criminal networks, and flooded the hemisphere with illegal narcotics. The world is safer with him out of power.
The Trump administration deserves credit for accomplishing what years of half measures, diplomatic indulgence, and rhetorical condemnations failed to achieve. It recognized the Maduro regime for what it was: a criminal enterprise operating behind the façade of government and acted decisively. Moral clarity and strategic resolve mattered, and in this case, they produced results.
For years, Americans have asked a simple but haunting question: How many lives must be lost before the U.S. takes seriously the nexus between illegal drugs, violent cartels, and the regimes that enable them? Fentanyl alone now kills tens of thousands of Americans each year. The narcotics trade does not exist in a vacuum; it is protected by corrupt governments that profit from lawlessness and export human misery beyond their borders. Maduro’s Venezuela was not merely a failed state: It was an active participant in regional destabilization and a hub in the transnational criminal ecosystem. Holding such regimes accountable is not imperialism; it is a matter of national security. And the arrest of Maduro sends a clear message to Mexican cartels and other criminal syndicates that state protection and political status will not necessarily shield traffickers or their enablers from accountability.
That said, constitutional self-government demands that even successful actions be examined carefully. Victories do not absolve us of the responsibility to ask whether power was exercised properly, or whether the structures meant to restrain it were bypassed.
I share the concern, raised by others as well, about what role Congress played, or should have played, in the action to remove Maduro. Was the mission to apprehend him an “act of war”? And in an era of covert operations, proxy forces, and transnational criminal networks operating under the protection of state actors, what does that term even mean?
These questions go to the heart of Congress’s constitutional responsibility. The framers vested in Congress the authority to declare war precisely because they believed the people’s representatives would be less likely than a single executive to commit American lives and taxpayer dollars to armed conflict on impulse or political expediency. Yet that separation of powers has steadily eroded, in part because modern military and security actions increasingly occupy a gray zone — serious enough to provoke international consequences, but short of the formal declarations of war the Constitution originally envisioned.
Congress has too often chosen passivity over engagement, ceding decisions on war, national security, and foreign intervention to the executive branch, sometimes deliberately, sometimes through inertia. In doing so, it has reshaped expectations about how and when force is authorized and overseen.
This pattern did not begin with Trump, nor is it unique to him. President Polk entered the Mexican-American War only after moving troops into disputed territory. President Harry Truman committed forces to Korea without a declaration of war. President Bill Clinton conducted a NATO bombing campaign in Kosovo after the House declined authorization. President Barack Obama led military operations in Libya to overthrow Muammar Gaddafi without congressional authorization. These precedents reflect a long-standing erosion of Congress’s role in the core constitutional function of deciding when and how the nation uses military power.
The attempt to rein in that trend through the War Powers Resolution has not worked as intended. Designed to force a shared judgment between the legislative and executive branches, the Resolution has too often functioned as a procedural formality that presidents of both parties treat as advisory rather than binding. Instead of requiring affirmative authorization before significant force is used, it can create a clock model, once forces are deployed, Congress must muster the political will to stop operations rather than having the authority to say “no” up front. That structure has inadvertently encouraged the very unilateral action it was meant to prevent, allowing limited engagements to become open-ended commitments without clear legislative sanction.
Part of the difficulty is that the Resolution was written for a different era. We are dealing with novel asymmetric warfare issues that the framers did not, and could not, have envisioned. Today’s conflicts are not defined solely by battles between uniformed armies, but by cyber operations, information warfare, proxy engagements, clandestine support operations, and networks that blur the line between criminality and conflict. This reality breaks false binaries: this is not an “either-war-or-nothing” issue, and it is not a choice between conventional military responses and law enforcement alone. We are facing threats that span the spectrum from transnational crime to strategic malign influence, and our legal framework must reflect that complexity.
At the same time, this is fundamentally a law enforcement issue as much as a national security one. Transnational criminal organizations exploit jurisdictional seams, corrupt institutions, and global markets to operate with impunity. Treating every threat as conventional war risks mischaracterizing the nature of the challenge and eroding civil liberties; treating it only as ordinary crime understates the strategic implications. What is needed is a legal and institutional framework that recognizes the continuum of threats, one that empowers both Congress and the executive to act decisively without bypassing democratic legitimacy.
The Constitution does not require Congress to micromanage operations or deliberate publicly in advance of every tactical decision. It does, however, require the legislative branch to authorize the use of national military power and define its scope prospectively and to provide meaningful oversight after the fact. Congress must address the asymmetric nature of 21st-century conflict, not by handing the executive a blank check, but by updating national security policy so it preserves both deliberation and decisive action.
Congress must reassert its constitutional role in authorizing and overseeing the use of force, working with the executive to craft durable frameworks that reflect today’s security environment. This is not a weakening of the presidency, it is a strengthening of legitimacy, ensuring that when national power is used, it is backed by both legal authority and democratic consensus.
Maduro’s fall should be remembered as both a victory and a warning. A victory against corruption, criminality, and tyranny. A warning that liberty is not preserved by good outcomes alone but by sustained attention to constitutional structure. The framers wisely created a complex system of representative institutions capable of both legislative deliberation and executive energy. If Congress continues to neglect its responsibilities, the public will inherit a simplistic system reduced to executive fiat.
Celebrating justice need not require surrendering constitutional principle. In fact, the endurance of this victory depends on our willingness to do both.
Jason E. Thompson is an entrepreneur and public servant currently serving in the Utah House of Representatives and is a member of the Utah Federalism Commission. A former mayor of River Heights, Utah, he is passionate about promoting dialogue on the balance and structure of government and strengthening unity in local communities. He lives in River Heights, Utah, with his wife, Dana, and their six children.