Are Trump’s Actions in Venezuela Legal?

Critics have denounced Nicolas Maduro’s arrest as executive overreach and a violation of international law. But using targeted force to protect U.S. interests without a formal declaration of war is nothing new.

“Indeed, Congress has declared war only 11 times in U.S. history, and not once since World War II,” Ilya Shapiro and Santiago Vidal Calvo write. “Nonetheless, American presidents have deployed troops or ordered strikes hundreds of times under their own authority.” From Thomas Jefferson and James Monroe to George H. W. Bush and Barack Obama, the nation has a long history of such presidential action.

“True, Trump’s interventions have faced significant pushback from Congress over the past few months,” Shapiro and Calvo write. “Lawmakers—primarily Democrats, but also some Republicans—argue that he is risking an escalation without the legislative branch’s consent. But Congress as a body has not expressed disapproval, with repeated failures to muster majorities to do so.”

Read more about how presidents have used their authority throughout history and how the Supreme Court has ruled on the question.

Last month, Virginia Governor-elect Abigail Spanberger announced her affordability agenda, promising to lower costs for health care, energy, and housing. But most of her proposals, Judge Glock points out, “would drive up expenses for one group of consumers in order to benefit another group deemed more deserving.”

Take her support for a bill concerning health insurance. It would ban insurers from charging higher premiums to smokers but would almost certainly raise costs for nonsmokers. Or consider her proposal to boost reimbursements for independent and community pharmacies. “This means requiring that insurers and patients pay more for their medicine to make sure that certain pharmacies get sufficient profit,” Glock writes. “Whatever the reason for such a proposal, it can’t be affordability.”

Read his analysis.

IM–1776 is an America-focused magazine that has helped to define the Right’s avant-garde cultural movement in recent years. Mark Granza, its editor-in-chief, has sought to make space for the so-called “dissident Right.” Christopher F. Rufo spoke with him to get a better sense of where the movement currently stands and where it’s going next. Read their conversation.

The Manhattan Institute is proud to serve as the Principal Institutional Partner for the Sun Valley Policy Forum’s 2026 Winter Summit in the iconic resort town of Sun Valley, Idaho on February 11, 2026.

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“Amen. As usual, Ms. MacDonald hits the peg squarely on the head. When I was a child, I lived in Norwich, Connecticut, and my father was the business manager at the Norwich State Hospital, a very large state mental institution. At this place, the mentally ill were housed, treated, given things to do commensurate with their abilities, and kept away from the general public. I have a vivid recollection of what happened in the late 1960s when the elites decided that the mentally ill should not be institutionalized, but should instead be treated in their communities. The result was entirely predictable. The mentally ill would not take their meds. Families had no interest in dealing with people who had serious mental illness. Almost overnight, the doorways to every business in Norwich were clogged with the homeless mentally ill. Businesses began to close, and Norwich became a Mecca of shuttered storefronts. Bring back the mental institution.”

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