Fourth & Democracy | Narco Terror and Oil, Where's Congress, & Is Cuba Next?

Welcome to another edition of Fourth & Democracy – where the playbook meets the public square.

We’ve been anticipating it for some time, and last week Trump finally did it: U.S. military strikes hit Caracas, Venezuela, culminating in the capture of dictator Nicolás Maduro. The American people weren’t buying it. Not the timing, not the justification, and certainly not the Epstein files distraction soaked in oil money.

This is what Steve Bannon’s model of zone flooding looks like. Crisis stacked on crisis, outrage layered over outrage and all of it designed to fracture attention and exhaust accountability. But we don’t have the luxury of looking away. Midterms are coming. Pro-democracy movements are under pressure. The Epstein files still matter. And the stakes keep rising by the week.

That’s where Lincoln Square comes in – to keep you oriented, informed, and ready for the fight to come.

Let’s get started.

1st & 10: Narco-Terror or Oil?

Since September, when the Trump regime began carrying out extra-judicial killings through boat strikes in the Caribbean, the administration has been methodically building a public case that Venezuela is a so-called “narco-terror state.” Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth framed the strikes as counter-narcotics operations, leaning heavily on terror designations to widen both the legal justification and the PR runway for military escalation.

That narrative reached its climax last week when U.S. forces conducted strikes in and around Caracas that resulted in the capture of dictator Nicolás Maduro. Donald Trump immediately defended the move as a necessary step toward regime change and “rebuilding,” even as Venezuela’s vice president, Delcy Rodriguez, assumed continuity from Maduro on the ground, and despite Trump publicly boasting that the United States would now be “running things.”

Here’s the problem: if this were actually about drugs, the facts don’t line up.

The primary driver of America’s overdose crisis, fentanyl, doesn’t come from Venezuela. It enters the United States overwhelmingly through Mexico, sourced from synthetic production networks that have nothing to do with South America. And if the administration’s concern (or sourcing methods) were cocaine, the story still doesn’t start in Caracas. Cocaine production remains concentrated in Colombia, with trafficking routes running through Central America, Mexico, and the Caribbean.

Venezuela’s role, while real, is much more narrow than the administration suggests. It functions largely as a corrupt transit corridor where it acts as a permissive state apparatus that facilitates smuggling, not the engine of America’s drug crisis. That distinction matters because collapsing it allows the White House to sell military escalation as public health policy.

So why Venezuela?

Because as we’ve said in the past, Venezuela sits atop the largest proven oil reserves on the planet. Oil that has remained largely inaccessible to the United States interests for decades. Add to that a chaotic and under-governed mineral landscape that includes critical rare-earth minerals for tech advancements, and the strategic incentive becomes obvious. It’s why we saw Elon Musk back at Mar-a-Lago this past weekend. This isn’t counter-narcotics, it’s resource geopolitics wrapped in a moral narrative.

Maybe this operation was sold as narco-terrorism to Trump’s base. Maybe it was pitched as democracy promotion through regime change. But the logic is unmistakable. This was never about drugs. It was about controlling the narrative – and controlling what is under Venezuela’s soil.

Illegal Formation, Trump. Five-yard penalty. 2nd down.

2nd & 15: The Deal Being Broken

After World War II, the world made a quiet but critical agreement: we would not do that again.

The strongest nations on Earth – those armed with nuclear weapons and fresh memories of total war – accepted this basic rule set. No more territorial conquest by force, no more great powers imposing their will on smaller states simply because they could. Sovereignty would matter. Institutions would mediate these conflicts. Restraint would replace the urge for domination.

It wasn’t noble. It was survival.

That post-war bargain held for decades not because leaders became more kind, but because breaking it was understood to be catastrophic to humanity. War between major powers didn’t disappear – it was constrained, contained, laundered through diplomacy and proxy conflict rather than open conquests.

That restraint is eroding before our eyes.

Across the globe, leaders are rediscovering an old idea: that power itself is legitimacy. That borders are suggestions in the way of legacy. That sovereignty only applies to those strong enough to defend it.

We see it in Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, a naked attempt to reclaim a Russian empire. You see it in Netanyahu’s permanent state of war where military dominance substitutes for political resolution. You see it in Xi Jinping’s posture toward Taiwan, testing whether economic gravity can overcome self-determination. And you see it in Donald Trump, who treats international law as optional, NATO allies as expendable, and force as a branding exercise.

These conflicts aren’t isolated. They’re connected.

What we’re witnessing collapse isn’t just agreed upon peace – it’s the idea that the powerful must restrain themselves at all. And when that idea dies, wars stop being exceptions and start becoming the system.

3rd & Long: Colombia? Cuba? Who’s Next?

In remarks following the capture of Nicolás Maduro, Trump openly mused about whether Cuba or Colombia would be “next.” He framed the comments casually as leverage, as deterrence, as part of an ongoing “narco-terror” performance. What Trump was actually signaling wasn’t just an expanding theater of conflict, but a dangerous normalization. That the United States can now threaten or initiate military action against sovereign nations at the discretion of one man.

That should’ve set off a fire storm in Congress, because under the Constitution, Trump doesn’t have that authority.

Article I is unambiguous. The power to declare war, and by extension authorize military operations, belongs to the United States Congress, not the president. The executive branch may repel attacks, it may conduct limited actions under existing authorizations, but regime change and cross-border strikes along with the threat of further invasions are not defensive measures. They are acts of war.

And Congress didn’t vote on Venezuela.

By bypassing Congress entirely, Trump isn’t just escalating conflicts abroad, he’s eroding one of the most fundamental checks and balances in the American system of government. War powers deliberately split after the founders watched kings drag nations into endless conflict for personal ambition. Trump is now collapsing that distinction through a right wing hobby of bolstering executive power to that of a kind. They treat military force as an extension of executive branding rather than a last resort subject to democratic consent.

That’s what makes his comments about Cuba and Colombia so dangerous. Cuba represents unfinished business – a regime long vilified (especially in Trump’s backyard of Florida), economically fragile, and symbolically useful to hardline politics. Colombia is something else entirely: a U.S. partner, a regional democracy, and a lynchpin in stability in the hemisphere. Threatening them under a vague “narco-terror” narrative signals that alliances, sovereignty, and even friendship are no longer protection from force.

Zoom out a bit and the pattern becomes unmistakable. It’s the same logic driving Putin in Ukraine, Xi in Taiwan, and Netanyahu’s permanent state of war: power justifies itself. Institutions are obstacles. And law is optional.

For the United States, the cost isn’t just our credibility – it’s a constitutional crisis and decay. When presidents wage war without Congress, voters lose their voice in the most consequential decision they can make. Wars become easier to start, more difficult to end, and politically useful as distractions from scandal, accountability, and domestic failure.

This is how republics slide into empires. Not all at once, but one “operation” at a time.

And once Congress decides to accept its irrelevance on war, they won’t get that power back.

4th & Democracy: Consent of the Governed

The most dangerous part about what we’re witnessing isn’t any single boat strike, threat, or target list. It’s the quiet erosion of consent.

Under the United States Constitution, war is not meant to be easy. The power to declare war was deliberately vested in the United States Congress, not the president, because the founders understood something essential: war is the ultimate expression of the power of the state, and it must carry democratic legitimacy. It requires debate. It requires votes. It requires ultimate accountability.

What we’re seeing from Trump is the opposite.

Military operations justified through executive declarations, vague terror designations, or “limited actions” bypassing the Constitution entirely. They turn Congress into an afterthought and the American people into spectators. When the president initiates or threatens wars without authorization, the consent of the governed becomes implied rather than earned. Assumed rather than granted.

That’s a democratic issue, not a procedural one.

Unchecked war powers collapse the separation of powers that underpins our republic. They normalize permanent conflict for political reasons. They make ‘force’ a policy shortcut rather than a last resort. And they hollow out the idea that citizens have a say in the gravest decision a nation can make – who we fight, where we fight, and why Americans are asked to bear that cost.

This is why the stakes of 2026 extend far beyond any single candidate or race.

Pro-democracy movements cannot afford to treat foreign policy, war powers, or constitutional authority as secondary issues. Authoritarianism doesn’t arrive waving a flag – it arrives by sidelining institutions, concentrating power, and daring the public to object. Silence becomes consent. Fatigue becomes acquiescence.

The answer isn’t performative outrage and protests. It’s democratic reassertion.

Demand congressional authorization and action. Demand hearings, votes, and transparency. Continue to demand the Epstein files. Only support candidates who understand that constitutional limits aren’t obstacles, but safeguards for our democracy. Organize around the principle that no president, regardless of party, has the right to do what Trump has.

In 2026, democracy doesn’t need just defending at the ballot box. It needs sustained enforcement through law, policy, and active participation.

Consent of the governed isn’t automatic. It has to be claimed, again and again.

What to Watch

The Return of Congress – Independent media, News networks, Social Media

Our elected officials are back in session after a conveniently timed vacation. Remember those? When you get time off from work and can actually afford to go relax somewhere?

This week, keep an eye on social media, independent media, and major news outlets for fights over government funding and healthcare – particularly ACA subsidies – alongside the backlash over Trump’s strikes on Venezuela. Expect the full Capitol Hill media blitz: committee hearings, press conferences, and live interviews. Members of Congress will be everywhere this week, eager to shape the narrative wherever they can find a camera.

Host of Anchor Watch and Lincoln Square’s resident expert veteran, Bobby Jones, went live to discuss Trump’s strikes on Venezuela and what it means going forward. What happens next? What are the resources we’re after? Do the Venezuelan people want this? Bobby answers it all.

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