Removal of the Use of United States Forces for Hostilities Within or Against Venezuela

Floor Speech

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Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, why did the Framers vest the power to declare war in Congress alone? It was because the kings were constantly plunging their entire nations into wars of vanity, of conceit, of caprice, of mere whimsy.

They didn't trust one man to be able to take the entire country to war. They wanted that question proposed in the representatives of the people because it is our sons and daughters who will go fight, and it is the whole country's treasure that will be put at risk.

Now, Donald Trump, buffeted by dozens of election losses all across the country from Virginia to New York to New Jersey to California to Mississippi and Georgia, sinking in the polls like a stone because of his catastrophic unconstitutional tariffs and his complete destruction of the healthcare system of the country, now wants to turn the metaphorical war on drugs into an actual, physical war on drugs.

Well, Donald Trump's real interests in supporting dictators and big- time drug dealers were made clear with a series of Presidential pardons of major drug dealers, including the former President of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernandez. The guy was sentenced to 45 years in prison for bringing 40 tons--I am sorry--400 tons of cocaine into the country. Eight hundred thousand pounds of cocaine he brought into our country, and President Hernandez says: I am going to stuff the cocaine up the noses of the gringos.

President Trump pardoned him without any explanation. We eagerly await an explanation from someone on that side because they have blown up 26 vessels on the high seas which have at most, if each one has 2 tons of cocaine in it, 52 tons, and he pardoned this guy who brought in 800,000 pounds of cocaine to stuff up the noses of the gringos.

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Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I urgently commend to our colleagues across the aisle the speech that President Lincoln, the founder of their party, made about the Mexican-American War. He stood in this Chamber and said: On something as important and as grave as going to war, we want to know exactly what the rationale is, exactly why we are doing it.

He got the nickname Spotty because he said he wanted to know the exact spot where American blood was shed.

Well, there is a real accounting to be done in terms of what is the factual predicate for this war that Donald Trump wants.

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