On Saturday, January 3, 2026, Trump, with and through high-ranking members of his administration and by abusing the might of the U.S. military, carried out an unprovoked, unconstitutional, large-scale military attack on the sovereign country of Venezuela. Acting under Trump’s orders, the U.S. military bombed multiple locations in northern Venezuela, conducted airstrikes around the capital city of Caracas, killed Venezuelan civilians and soldiers, and kidnapped the country’s leader and his wife. Trump has announced plans to place Venezuela under U.S. control, and give U.S. oil companies control over Venezuela’s oil industry. To carry out this attack, Trump committed a breathtaking number of offenses against the U.S. Constitution, U.S. law, the American people, and international law; and he has implicated not only himself but the United States as a whole and the U.S. military in the crime of aggression and other war crimes. Congress’s duty is clear, now more so than ever: in order to protect the United States, it must impeach and remove Trump and any senior official who participated in the unlawful attack on Venezuela. 

Trump must be impeached and removed for his blatant disregard of article 2, section 4 of the U.N. Charter. The Charter, the founding document of the United Nations and a treaty binding on the United States, obligates its members to “refrain in their international relation from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.” U.N. Charter art. 2 sec. 4. Under section of article II of the U.S. Constitution, Trump is obligated to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed,” a requirement that includes treaties (notably, the Supremacy Clause, U.S. Const. art. VI, § 2, confirms that “all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land”). Trump’s attack on Venezuela constitutes an aggressive violation of Venezuela’s territorial integrity and political independence, in a clear violation of the U.N. Charter and the Take Care Clause of the U.S. Constitution. 

But to be clear: the attack on Venezuela is an egregious abuse of power that warrants impeachment and removal, independent of Trump’s violation of the Take Care Clause. He has invaded a sovereign nation, threatened to place the whole country under U.S. occupation, and turned its natural resources over to be controlled and plundered by U.S. corporations. It is a crime of aggression, long defined by the United Nations as “the use of armed force by a State against the sovereignty, territorial integrity or political independence of another State, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Charter of the United Nations.” Aggression cannot be justified, “whether political, economic, military or otherwise,” and is considered not just a crime against the victim nation, but “against international peace.” See U.N. General Assembly Resolution XXIX. It is a crime with tremendous cost for the victim country, for the people of the aggressor country, and for the stability of the region in which the crime is committed. The United States is now at risk of retaliation and of becoming an occupying country, to which the American people have not agreed, but the cost of which we will bear. 

Furthermore, in committing this ultimate crime of aggression, Trump committed other serious and impeachable offenses. He has usurped Congress’s power to declare war, U.S. Const. art. I, sec. 8, cl. 11. He has abused his power over the military to attack civilian targets and kill civilians, both in his deadly strikes against civilian boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific and in the January 3 attack on Venezuela itself. And he has engaged in corruption by wresting control of a sovereign nation’s natural resources in order to enrich the U.S. oil industry, led by companies that have backed Trump financially and politically—an industry that in 2024, Trump promised to provide with tax breaks and regulatory favors if its companies paid $1 billion in contributions to super PACs backing Trump’s campaign. 

Trump’s purported reasons for bombing Venezuela do not withstand scrutiny. If he were truly concerned about drug trafficking, he would not have pardoned former Honduras president Juan Orlando Hernández, who in 2024 was convicted by a jury in federal court of drug trafficking and weapons offenses and sentenced to 45 years in prison. If Trump were truly concerned about the illegitimacy of Venezuela elections, he would not have blocked funding for democracy-building efforts around the globe, or dismantled USAID, which provided critical support for pro-democracy and human rights efforts in Latin America. Venezuela did not pose a threat to the United States, and the administration cannot justify Trump’s usurpation of congressional authority. Even now, Congress and the public remain in the dark about the attack, its victims, the consequences for Venezuela’s democracy-building efforts, and the consequences for America’s foreign policy.  

But Congress is not helpless. It retains, and must use, the power entrusted to it by our Founders to impeach, convict, and remove leaders who defiantly and egregiously trample over our Constitution. Ignorance of the attack beforehand does not excuse congressional inaction in its aftermath. Inaction is a choice. 

For Congress, now: silence is complicity. Each and every member of Congress who fails to step up now and support Trump’s prompt impeachment in the House and conviction and removal by the Senate is in violation of their sworn oath to defend the Constitution. The United States has bombed a foreign country that Trump is threatening to occupy and control. The attack has harmed the security of the American people, undermined our democracy, and implicated our country in war crimes. If our Congress is committed to the Constitution, to the laws of this country, and to the treaties that secure a global peace, then it must impeach, convict, and remove Trump from office.