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Home / Venezuela / ‘A line crossed’: Lawmakers, lawyers, anti-war advocates alarmed by Venezuela overthrow
Venezuela, Grand strategy, Western Hemisphere

January 3, 2026

‘A line crossed’: Lawmakers, lawyers, anti-war advocates alarmed by Venezuela overthrow

Jennifer Kavanagh, a senior fellow and director of military analysis at the Defense Priorities think tank told Defense One the operation marked an international expansion of the Trump administration’s domestic military actions against alleged narco-terrorists. Actions such as militarizing land along the U.S. southern border, deploying troops to U.S. cities for missions alongside law enforcement, were all done without Congressional insight or consent.

“I am generally concerned about the trend in which Congress seems to play a decreasing role in decisions about use of military force, because that’s not how it’s supposed to be in principle,” Kavanagh said. “In this case, my view is that Trump has now consolidated executive power to the point and made Congress irrelevant to the point where I’m not sure it would have mattered.”

Read at Defense One

Featuring

Jennifer
Kavanagh

Senior Fellow & Director of Military Analysis

Defense Priorities

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