This morning I woke up to the New York Times telling me the United States had “captured” the president of Venezuela.

Let me say that again. The United States military conducted airstrikes on a sovereign nation’s capital, killed an unknown number of its citizens, and dragged its head of state out of his bedroom in the middle of the night. And the word the paper of record chose was “capture.”

Capture is what happens when you execute an arrest warrant. Capture is what happens when there’s an ICC indictment. Capture is what happens when the UN Security Council authorizes military action. Capture is what happens when Congress declares war.

None of those things happened here.

The word is kidnapping.

I’ve been writing about executive power. About how Congress abdicated its war-making authority decades ago. About how presidents from both parties have consolidated power while everyone looked the other way because the bombs were falling on someone else.

Last week I wrote about how the tools Trump is using to reshape the executive branch aren’t inherently authoritarian—they’re just tools. The problem is who’s wielding them and what they’re being used for. I stand by that.

But here’s the thing about tools: they can be used to build a house or burn one down. And what happened in Caracas this morning isn’t building anything. It’s the United States government deciding, unilaterally, that it has the authority to bomb a country, kill its citizens, and abduct its leader because we say he’s a drug dealer.

We say. Not the International Criminal Court. Not the UN. Not even Congress. Marco Rubio looked senators in the eye weeks ago and said this wasn’t about regime change. He lied. They knew he was lying. And the media is busy debating whether this was “constitutional” under some tortured reading of Article II instead of stating the obvious:

This is an act of war conducted without declaration. This is a kidnapping dressed up as law enforcement. And if any other country on earth did this to us, we would call it what it is.

I pray we see protests. I pray the “No Kings” folks see this as the move of a monarch.

In October, millions marched under the No Kings banner. Veterans. Nurses. Teachers. Regular people who understood that unchecked executive power is a threat to everything we claim to believe in.

We need that again. This is insanity. If we allow this to happen unchecked it sets yet another unnerving precedent.

Trump watched the operation from Mar-a-Lago. He told Fox News it was like watching a television show. He said the military action was “genius.” And then he admitted he has no plan for what comes next. “We’re making that decision now,” he said.

We just decapitated a government—a government with the largest proven oil reserves on the planet, let’s not pretend that’s incidental—and the President of the United States is figuring out the day-after plan in real time.

The Democrats issued some statements. Andy Kim said it “sends a horrible signal.” Jim McGovern called it “unjustified and illegal.” Chris Murphy has been screaming about this for months.

But where are the marches? Where are the mass mobilizations? Where is the machinery of opposition that showed up in June and October? Are we powerless against this regime? Can our leaders not grind the gears of government to a halt?

At what point do we need Sen. Chris Murphy to lay on the tracks to stop this Crazy Train?

Let’s talk about what we’re actually seeing here.

The administration has been building toward this for months. They designated drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations. They claimed Maduro ran something called Cartel de los Soles. Our own intelligence agencies have assessed that this cartel doesn’t exist as an actual organization—it’s a term used to describe various Venezuelan military officers involved in drug trafficking. There’s no evidence Maduro directs it.

And even if it did—this is the same government that ran cocaine through Central America to fund the Contras, that looked the other way while our Afghan allies controlled the opium trade, that kept Noriega on the CIA payroll until he stopped being useful. We don’t have a problem with drug traffickers. We have a problem with drug traffickers who won’t cut us in.

But the indictment exists. It was unsealed this morning, conveniently timed. And that indictment—a piece of paper generated by US prosecutors, not recognized by any international body—is being used to justify bombing a capital city and kidnapping a head of state.

Think about what this means. The United States has now established that it can unilaterally declare any foreign leader a terrorist, indict them in a US court, and then use military force to extract them. No international warrant required. No Security Council authorization. No declaration of war.

Benjamin Netanyahu has an actual ICC warrant for crimes against humanity. If China conducted an airstrike on Tel Aviv and dragged him onto a warship, we would call it an act of war. We would probably consider it an act of madness.

But when we do it? It’s a “capture.” It’s “law enforcement.” It’s protecting American personnel executing an arrest warrant—never mind that the arrest warrant exists only because we created it.

The fourth estate is failing us again.

I’ve read the coverage from the Times, the Post, NPR, NBC, CNN. Every single outlet uses the word “capture.” Every single one frames this as Trump says versus Venezuela says, as if there’s some legitimate debate about whether bombing a country and taking its president constitutes an act........

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