Marco Rubio speaks during a news conference as Donald Trump looks on at the Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida, on Saturday. Photograph: ABACA/Shutterstock
Lawmakers call US intervention and capture of Maduro ‘wildly illegal’ and say it lacked congressional approval
Democratic leaders responded with fury on Sunday to Donald Trump’s military intervention in Venezuela, slamming it as an illegal act carried out in the absence of required congressional approval that would lead to disaster for the American people.
Top Democrats took to the Sunday TV political talk shows to express their dismay at the lack of any prior notification of lawmakers about the audacious military raid 24 hours earlier.
They portrayed the action to unseat the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, as unlawful under the US constitution and ill-advised in terms of the US standing in the world, where numerous authorities, including the secretary general of the United Nations, have accused the US of breaching the UN’s founding charter.
“They literally lied to our face,” said Chris Murphy, a US senator from Connecticut, on Sunday, referring to a briefing on Venezuela that the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, gave to his chamber last month. “The message they sent was that this wasn’t about regime change … They said this is just a counter-narcotics operation.”
In an appearance on CNN’s State of the Union, Murphy called the action in Venezuela in the early hours of Saturday “wildly illegal”, adding: “There is no way to trust this administration.”
Stop the War warns government to ‘expect a very large riposte’ against its repression of pro-Palestine activism
PALESTINE protesters kicked off the New Year by smashing up Israeli-linked weapons factories, with Stop the War Coalition warning the government today of a “very large riposte” against its repression.
Activists broke into a Scottish aerospace factory minutes into 2026, attacking machinery and equipment with hammers and spray-painting slogans on the walls on Thursday.
Video shared by the protesters online showed computers and manufacturing equipment being hit with large hammers by people wearing black gloves and face coverings.
Footage further showed fire extinguishers being emptied into machinery at the Bruntons Aero Products site at the Inveresk Industrial Estate in Musselburgh, East Lothian, and the phrases: “There is only one way this ends” and “Drop Leonardo” being graffitied in red paint.
A spokesperson for a so-called “autonomous group” that has claimed responsibility said that Bruntons were targeted for supplying the Italian arms giant, which itself supplies Israel with aircraft and parts.
And today, a coalition of Bristol-based solidarity groups marched from Elbit Systems UK’s factory in Filton to a local police station to hand in evidence of alleged crimes by Israel’s biggest weapons manufacturer.
The group slammed the government for “continuing to ignore the four hunger strikers incarcerated without charge or trial” as Heba Muraisi marked day 61 of her strike.
Vote Labour for Genocide.Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.
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A view of a damaged building, belonged to medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF), following the Israeli attack in al-Mawasi, Khan Yunis, Gaza on February 21, 2024 [Ashraf Amra/Anadolu Agency]
Doctors Without Borders (MSF) has rejected Israeli allegations that its staff have links to armed groups describing the claims as unsubstantiated and politically timed to coincide with obstacles placed on the renewal of its registration.
In a statement issued on Thursday, MSF said the accusations are being made publicly without evidence and alongside the introduction of new and unclear registration requirements that threaten its ability to continue operating.
The organisation denied reports that it had failed to comply with registration rules, saying that since July 2025 it has fully engaged with Israeli authorities and provided most of the requested information. It said it continues to pursue dialogue in order to maintain its medical operations and support Gaza’s devastated health system.
MSF warned that such actions place medical personnel at risk and could deprive hundreds of thousands of Palestinians of life-saving healthcare at a time when the health system in the Gaza Strip has largely collapsed.
The organisation said it is still awaiting the renewal of its registration to operate in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank until 31 December 2025, under new Israeli requirements that include submitting lists of employees’ names. It added that despite months of communication, it has received no clear criteria or guarantees.
MSF said that on 30 December Israeli authorities publicly accused it of having ties to armed groups, an allegation it categorically denied.
Israel confirmed on Thursday that it intends to enforce a ban on the activities of 37 major international humanitarian organisations operating in Gaza, citing their alleged failure to provide lists of Palestinian employees under new legislation.
The so-called Israeli Ministry of Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism said organisations that did not meet what it described as required security and transparency standards would have their licences suspended, a move aid groups warn will further worsen the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
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Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.Vote Labour for Genocide.
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Donald Trump depart the State Dining Room of the White House following a press conference in Washington, DC on September 29, 2025. [Stringer – Anadolu Agency]
You will meet Benjamin Netanyahu. Cameras will flash. Words will be exchanged in polished rooms, polished suits, polished lies. You will talk about “security,” “alliances,” “regional stability,” and all the hollow, sterile phrases that sanitize horror and suffocate truth.
But I want to talk to you about tents.
Not metaphorical tents. Not symbolic tents. Not poetic tents. Real tents. Fabric huts. Plastic roofs. Human shelters. The kind of tents that hang between life and death.
In Gaza, rain does not fall. It assaults. It slashes. It invades. It turns the ground into a grave of mud and disease. Children are sleeping in rags under tarps shredded by storms. Infants wake screaming, not from nightmares, but because their bodies are soaked in sewage. Mothers hold babies wrapped in blankets sodden with foul water and human waste. They whisper prayers into the night air that smells of death. Wind tears at canvas walls while hunger gnaws at their bones.
And the world shrugs.
We were told Palestinian families would receive tents and caravans with every agreement, every deal, every negotiation Israel struck with Hamas. Promised. Documented. Repeated. Lied about.
Those caravans are there. They exist. They stand mere kilometers away — pristine, dry, safe — imprisoned by checkpoints and political indifference. They are not being delivered because the suffering of Palestinians has become a bargaining chip. A tool. A punishment.
And while two million human beings live in filth, drowning in misery, freezing in cruel winter wind, you are planning to build a ballroom. Marble floors. Crystal chandeliers. Velvet drapes. A palace to ego while children cough blood in swamp water.
America — the nation that once claimed to be a moral compass — now walks willingly into contradiction so obscene it cannot stand upright.
Has the United States truly fallen this low? Has its heart calcified past redemption? Has the “shining city on a hill” dimmed into a glittering tomb?
Mr Trump, Netanyahu promised 600 aid trucks per day. Not as generosity. As a necessity. As a minimum survival. Some days now, there are barely 120 trucks — if Israel allows them at all. Hunger swells. Hospitals collapse. Food rots behind borders while stomachs collapse inward.
You will sit across from Netanyahu. You will look him in the eye.
Will you speak? Or will you bow?
Are you afraid of angering him? To risk access? To disturb the sacrosanct theater of political allegiance? Is the relationship that fragile? Is your courage that conditional? Or is Palestinian suffering simply beneath the dignity of conversation?
History will remember the lie that civilization tells itself: that this is complicated. It is not. It is brutal. It is deliberate. It is man-made.
Do you know what the Greeks once called Arab desert tribes? Saracens — people of the tents.
Look at Gaza now. Zionism has not merely dispossessed Palestinians. It has hurled them two thousand years back into history, stripped them of walls, roofs, identity, security, dignity — and left them to rot in filth that only war and cowardice can create.
But do not romanticize these tents. These are not proud desert shelters. These tents are soaked in excrement. Their beds drip with disease. Their blankets stink of rot. This is not poverty.This is engineered humiliation. This is political cruelty masquerading as policy.
And so I ask you, not as a partisan, not as a critic, but as a man addressing another man whose decisions will echo long after his voice fades:
You live in gilded spaces — towers, mansions, palaces of marble and polished gold. Your life is wrapped in velvet. Gaza is wrapped in sores. And yet, the lives trapped in those tents are no less human than the ones who dine in your ballrooms.
They are pleading for one million tents and 600 caravans. Not tomorrow. Not next month. Now. Their children do not have the luxury of political delay. Their lungs are drowning. Their bones are thinning. Their hope is cracking.
Will you order those caravans through? Will you pressure Netanyahu to open the gates? Will you let those shelters roll forward instead of rotting behind barriers of arrogance and calculation?
Or will you remain silent and let winter finish the work that bombs began?
You have been handed a moment history rarely grants: the power to choose compassion over alliance, humanity over political comfort, moral action over moral collapse.
Redeem something. Redeem anything. Redeem at least one shred of the idea that America can still mean something beyond brute power and selective grief.
Do not tell the world America is strong. Show it is capable of mercy. Do not boast of greatness. Demonstrate decency.
Let the convoys through. Let the tents rise. Let children sleep dry for once. Let the name “American” mean rescue rather than ruin.
The Palestinians have screamed for decades into a deafening world. Today they scream again:
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.Vote Labour for Genocide.
