Running a news weekly as I do, it’s always interesting to watch the narrative around developing stories that I might comment on as a journalist change quickly over days or even hours. Such is the case with two big national and international stories of great interest to many American citizens and residents this week: the capture of Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro by the US military under orders from President Donald Trump and the killing of Renee Nicole Good by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent (now identified as Jonathan Ross) in Minneapolis.

As more information pours in, both stories are changing by the minute at this point. We’ve seen the White House excitedly claim credit for a successful military action in Venezuela on Saturday that may turn out to have been more of a diplomatic and intelligence “win” than anything else, but the Senate just advanced a bipartisan measure to invoke the War Powers Act to block Trump from “using military force ‘within or against Venezuela’ unless he gets prior approval from Congress.”

Does the Senate vote mean that Trump, his administration, and their oil company cronies aren’t getting what they want from the country with the world’s largest oil reserves? No, they probably are for the time being, but it’s fascinating that five Republican senators crossed the aisle to vote with 47 Democrats, including conservative Dems like Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, to attempt to restrict presidential power. A clear result of public pressure on the pols to rein in executive authority.

After the tragic Minneapolis shooting, the immediate reaction of tens of thousands of people there and around the country, including here in Boston, was to get out in the street to protest. And Trump has been immediately and roundly condemned for being far too quick to declare the fatal shooting of a person who may have had nothing to do with the small anti-ICE protest on a residential block to be some kind of act of self-defense by an armed government agent against a........

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