Trump flags fly as rioters take over the steps of the Capitol on the East Front on Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2021. (Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
Five years ago today, on January 6, 2021, a violent mob stormed the Capitol building. Following the attack, over a hundred major companies released statements condemning the insurrection and promising to stop donating to the 147 members of Congress who voted to overturn the 2020 election, or to halt all political donations entirely.
Since returning to office, President Trump has continued to push false claims that the 2020 election was “rigged,” “stolen,” and filled with “fraud.” On Trump’s first day as president, he issued sweeping pardons and commutations for some of those involved in the Capitol insurrection. In a presidential action, Trump wrote that the pardons and commutations ended “a grave national injustice.”
The current members of Congress who voted to overturn the 2020 election have embraced Trump’s return to the White House. None has expressed any regret for their vote.
Nevertheless, most companies that pledged to stop donating to these lawmakers have broken their promise.
After January 6, 2021, for example, a Cigna spokesperson gave CNN the following statement:
There is never any justification for violence or the kind of destruction that occurred at the U.S. Capitol last week – a building that stands as a powerful symbol of the very democracy that makes our nation strong. Accordingly, CignaPAC will discontinue support of any elected official who encouraged or supported violence, or otherwise hindered a peaceful transition of power.
Cigna, however, has since donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to lawmakers who voted to overturn the election. In April 2021, a spokesperson for the company told the New York Times that resuming donations to members of Congress who voted to overturn the election did not violate its pledge because congressional voting is “by definition, part of the peaceful transition of power.” Cigna argued that its pledge only applied to “those who incited violence or actively sought to obstruct the peaceful transition of power through words and other efforts.”
Comcast, however, has since broken its pledge and donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to lawmakers who voted to overturn the election. Comcast also donated $1 million to Trump’s 2025 inaugural fund and was among the donors to Trump’s new White House ballroom, according to a list released by the White House.
After January 6, 2021, a spokesperson for General Mills said it had “suspended contributions to any member of Congress who voted to override the results of the U.S. presidential election.” In January 2025, Popular Information reported that the company had thus far upheld its pledge. Last year, however, General Mills resumed donations to lawmakers who voted to overturn the election. On March 27, the company donated $1,000 to Representative Kevin Hern (R-OK). On June 12, the company donated $1,000 to Representatives Glenn Thompson (R-PA) and Adrian Smith (R-NE), and an additional $1,000 to Hern.
Popular Information is an independent newsletter dedicated to accountability journalism since 2018. It is made possible by readers who upgrade to a paid subscription.
The promise keepers
While many companies have broken the pledges they made after January 6, 2021, some companies have kept their promises. Popular Information identified 10 companies that have upheld their promise to stop donating to members of Congress who voted to overturn the 2020 election
Farmers Insurance
Following the Capitol insurrection, former Farmers Group CEO Jeff Dailey released a statement promising to suspend political donations. “Like many Americans, we were horrified by the acts of violence that took place in our nation’s capital. While we recognize and support all Americans’ right to peacefully protest and exercise free speech, we strongly condemn acts of violence and hateful rhetoric,” Dailey said in the statement, according to CNN. Since January 6, 2021, the insurance company has kept its promise and has not donated to any members of Congress who voted to overturn the election.
Unlike Farmers Group, several other insurance companies — including Blue Cross Blue Shield and Allstate — broke their promises to withhold their money from those who voted against certifying the 2020 election results.
Airbnb
After January 6, 2021, Airbnb released a statement promising to withhold donations from those who voted against certifying the election. “Airbnb strongly condemns last week’s attack on the US Capitol and the efforts to undermine our democratic process,” the company said. The company also released a safety plan for the 2021 inauguration, including canceling Airbnb reservations in Washington, D.C., made by those associated with a hate group and banning individuals involved in the Capitol insurrection from the platform. Since January 6, 2021, Airbnb has kept its promise and has not donated to any members of Congress who voted to overturn the election.
Expedia Group
While Expedia Group and Airbnb have not given any money to election deniers since 2021, other travel and hospitality companies have reneged on their vows to do the same. Marriott International and Hilton Worldwide, for example, both donated to former Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
Nike
In January 2021, Nike released a statement promising to halt donations to members of Congress who voted to overturn the election. “Nike’s Political Action Committee (PAC) helps our employees support elected officials who understand our business and whose values align with our mission of serving athletes. These nonpartisan values rely upon upholding the principles of democracy,” the statement said. “Nike’s PAC will not support any member of Congress who ignores these principles, including those who voted to decertify the Electoral College results.” Since the Capitol insurrection, Nike has kept its promise and has not donated to any members of Congress who voted to overturn the election.
Clorox
Since 2021, Clorox has not donated any money to election deniers’ campaigns. Ecolab, a company selling similar products to Clorox’s, promised to stop donating to all congressional candidates, according to CNN. But during the 2024 election cycle, Ecolab donated thousands of dollars to Representative Steve Scalise (R-LA), Hern, and other members of Congress who tried to overturn the 2020 election.
Eversource Energy
On January 13, 2021, Eversource Energy, a large electricity provider in the Northeast, announced that it would not donate to any of the members of Congress who voted against certifying the 2020 election results. In a statement, Eversource’s Chief Communications Officer Jim Hunt said, “at Eversource, we were deeply disturbed by the intentional disruption of our democratic process and the violence that occurred at the Capitol last week.”
Eversource has kept its promise not to donate to any election deniers and has made few political contributions in general. NRG Energy, a competing electricity provider serving some of the same states as Eversource, also promised not to donate to any election deniers, but has since reneged.
Holland & Hart LLP
Holland & Hart, among the top 200 earning law firms in the world, has not donated to anyone who voted to overturn the 2020 elections. In contrast, Cozen O’Connor, an even bigger firm, reneged on its promise.
Qurate Retail
Unlike other retail brands like Amazon and Walmart that have not followed through on their vows not to give money to election deniers, Qurate Retail — which has since been rebranded as QVC Group — has kept its promise.
Lyft
Lyft has kept its promise to withhold donations to election deniers after January 6. While Uber never made such a promise, the company and its CEO donated $2 million to Trump’s inauguration fund.
Whirlpool
Whirlpool has not given any money to people who voted to overturn the 2020 election. The company terminated its political action committee in 2023.
In some places in the US cops are maga not enforcers of public peace and honoring the constitution. We have the right in the constitution to address the government with protests of their actions. How far have we moved to a fascist nation where the rule of law is simply might be delivered by thugs makes right. Agree with us or else … A horrible place we are in. Hugs
WATCH: Woman Arrested Mid-Interview After Protesting Against Trump’s Venezuela Strike
A Michigan protest organizer was arrested on camera while giving a TV interview criticizing President Donald Trump’s actions in Venezuela on Saturday.
Jessica Plichta, a 22-year-old preschool teacher and Grand Rapids Opponents of War organizer, was speaking to local ABC affiliate WZZM about a weekend protest condemning the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro when police officers moved in behind her and placed her in handcuffs. The patrol car had been visible in the background moments earlier, its presence unremarked upon until the interview abruptly ended.
“It’s not just a foreign issue, it’s our tax dollars that are being used to commit these war crimes,” Plichta said on camera. “It is also the duty of us, the people, to stand against the Trump regime, the Trump administration, that are committing crimes both here in the U.S. and against people in Venezuela.”
As she was escorted to the police vehicle, she could be heard saying, “I am not resisting arrest.”
The clip quickly went viral, with WZZM later reporting that police said Plichta was arrested for “obstructing a roadway and failure to obey a lawful command from a police officer.”
Prior to her detention, Plichta told WZZM she had recently returned from Venezuela, where she attended the People’s Assembly for Peace and Sovereignty of Our America summit.
A police department spokesperson issued the following statement to AlterNet following the arrest:
A group was marching in the roadway. Over 25 announcements were made from the PA system of a marked police cruiser for the group to leave the roadway and relocate their activities to the sidewalk. Blocking traffic in this manner is a direct violation of city and state law,” the spokesperson stated. “The group refused lawful orders to move this free speech event to the sidewalk and instead began blocking intersections until the march ended. Patrol officers consulted with their sergeant and the watch commander who informed the officers that if the individuals could be located, they were subject to arrest. The adult woman who was arrested was positively identified by officers, and the lawful arrest was made.
After her release from jail, Plichta spoke with Zeteo about the incident.
“I don’t think it’s a coincidence that as soon as I finished an interview speaking on Venezuela, I was arrested – the only person arrested out of 200 people,” she told the outlet.
It was all a lie. Rubio has always pushed for regime change in Cuba, and may experts say it should start with Venuzalia. Rubio doesn’t care about the oil, he wants all support for Cuba stopped so the US can go into Cuba and return it to what his family fled so many years ago when they were abusing the locals for profit. It is all a personal agenda he hopes will lead him to the presidency. Hugs
The Trump administration has set its sights on Venezuela in its latest campaign against illegal drugs, but data shows that the country is responsible for just a sliver of drug trafficking directly to the United States.
The Get the Facts Data Team analyzed data on cocaine and fentanyl trafficking. While Venezuela is a player in cocaine manufacturing and trafficking, drug seizure data shows that it’s not as prominent a supplier of cocaine to the U.S. as other South American and Latin American countries.
There is also no evidence that any significant level of illegal fentanyl — the primary killer in U.S. overdose deaths — is produced in South America, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
UNODC analyzes global drug trafficking based on reporting from its member states, open sources and drug seizure information.
Yet President Donald Trump has linked his administration’s attacks on drug vessels in Latin America to the fentanyl crisis, among other drugs.
After the Sept. 19 attack on a boat in the Caribbean that killed three people, Trump posted on Truth Social, claiming that the boat was carrying drugs and headed for America. “STOP SELLING FENTANYL, NARCOTICS, AND ILLEGAL DRUGS IN AMERICA,” his post said.
The next day, in a speech, Trump said that thousands are dying because of “boatloads” of fentanyl and drugs. He’s also repeatedly said that each boat strike would save 25,000 lives.
As of Friday, the number of known boat strikes was 35, and the number of people killed stands at least 115, according to the Trump administration.
Previously, Trump said that the U.S. is engaged in an “armed conflict” with drug cartels and has justified the boat strikes as necessary to stem the flow of drugs into the U.S. Hearst Television’s partner PolitiFact labeled that 25,000 number mathematically dubious.
Maduro’s capture on Jan. 3
On Saturday, the Trump administration struck Venezuela in a new, stunning way, capturing its leader, Nicolas Maduro, and his wife. Both are being taken to the United States to face charges related to drug trafficking.
The strike followed a monthslong Trump administration pressure campaign on the Venezuelan leader, including a major buildup of American forces in the waters off South America and attacks on boats in the eastern Pacific and Caribbean accused of carrying drugs. Last week, the CIA was behind a drone strike at a docking area believed to have been used by Venezuelan drug cartels — the first known direct operation on Venezuelan soil since the U.S. began strikes in September.
Venezuela’s role in cocaine trafficking
Venezuela is not among the primary direct traffickers of cocaine to the U.S.
Like fentanyl, most cocaine enters the U.S. from Mexico and typically gets to Mexico via maritime transportation on both the Pacific and Caribbean sides, according to UNODC research officer Antoine Vella. Some also arrives in Mexico via land transportation.
While the Trump administration’s early September attacks targeted Venezuelan boats, there is no known direct cocaine trade route from Venezuela to the U.S. via sea. The only known direct Venezuela to U.S. trafficking route is via air, according to drug seizure data from UNODC. Cocaine could still arrive from Venezuela to the U.S. through intermediary countries.
Colombia, Ecuador and Panama are among the main direct traffickers of cocaine to the U.S. via boat.
From harvest to production
Coca, the plant that cocaine is made from, is grown primarily in Colombia, Peru and Bolivia.
Once coca is harvested, the cocaine in the leaf needs to be extracted. That processing occurs at illegal manufacturing facilities around the globe.
The three coca-growing countries also have the most illegal processing facilities. Colombia had by far the most of any country at about 26,400 detected and dismantled from 2019 to 2023, according to UNODC data. It’s followed by about 3,200 processing facilities in Bolivia and 2,400 in Peru.
Venezuela, which neighbors Colombia, had about 260 illegal processing facilities detected and dismantled from 2019 to 2023, according to UNODC data. It’s ranked fifth among countries with the most processing facilities.
“Every country that borders Colombia has an issue with cocaine in terms of cocaine trafficking,” Vella said.
Throughout its history, the United States has characteristically remained a country of two things: a country of immigrants, and a country of unmatched religious diversity. And yet when compared with the rest of the world – where these two very factors alone have so often engendered horrible religious wars and decades of enduring conflict – the history of religious conflict in the United States seems almost nonexistent.
That is not to say the United States has been immune to its share of conflict explicitly rooted in religion. This paper explores the various manifestations of religious conflict throughout the history of the United States, from the Revolutionary War to the attacks of September 11th and their fallout. A distinction is drawn between religious intolerance, which is not the focus of this paper, and outright religious persecution or violence. Similarly, the paper reflects efforts made to de-conflate religious conflict from ethnic and racial conflict, which has been much more prominent throughout the history of the United States. In examining the history of religious violence, intolerance, discrimination, and persecution in the United States, we arrive at some possible explanations for why the United States has seen such minimal religious conflict despite being so religiously diverse.
The Revolution
It has been said that the United States is a nation founded on religious conflict. The colonies were settled by those escaping religious persecution in Europe. There is even some evidence that religion played a major role in the American Revolution and that revolutionaries believed it was willed by God for the Americans to wage war against the British.[1]
As the Church of England was striving to establish one, uniform religion across the kingdom, colonial America was divided, each of the colonies being dominated by their own brand of Christianity. Due to the distance from England and the room in the colonies, many religions were able to establish themselves in America, colony by colony. For example, Anglicans, who conformed to the Church of England, populated Virginia. Massachusetts was home to the Puritans. Pennsylvania was full of Quakers. Baptists ruled in Rhode Island. And Roman Catholics found a haven in Maryland, where they could establish themselves amid the other colonists’ protestant majority. Each of these colonies maintained a distinct religious character and favored one religious denomination’s power.
The American colonists saw the revolution not only as a war for political independence, but to protect the religious diversity of the thirteen colonies. Put in other terms, it was a war for religious independence and freedom. To sever ties with Mother England would be to ensure that the various Christian denominations could co-exist on the American continent. The conflict was, in part, a conflict that pitted the various American religious denominations against the Church of England, who wanted to impose a uniform, Anglican religion on the colonies.
Early Religious Persecution
The period after the Revolutionary War saw a lot of infighting between the various states and Christian denominations. Virginia, which was home to the largest portion of Anglicans loyal to the Church of England, was the scene of notorious acts of religious persecution against Baptists and Presbyterians. Anglicans physically assaulted Baptists, bearing theological and social animosity. In 1771, a local Virginia sheriff yanked a Baptist preacher from the stage at his parish and beat him to the ground outside, where he also delivered twenty lashes with a horsewhip. Similarly, in 1778, Baptist ministers David Barrow and Edward Mintz were conducting services at the Mill Swamp Baptist Church in Portsmouth, Virginia.[2] As soon as the hymn was given out, a gang of men rushed the stage and grabbed the two ministers, took them to the nearby Nansemond River swamp, and dunked and held their heads in the mud until they nearly drowned to death.
The period during and soon after the Revolutionary War also saw abundant political manifestations of religious conflict. At the time, some states abolished churches, while supporting others, issued preaching licenses, and collected tax money to fund and establish state churches. Each state constitution differed in its policy on religious establishment, or state-supported religion. It would not be until well after the adoption of the Constitution of 1789 and the First Amendment religion clauses that the disestablishment for which the United States is so recognized became the de facto practice.
1800s
The early part of the 19th Century was relatively quiet in terms of religious conflict in America. The religious conflict that stands out in this period involves tensions between Catholics and Protestants, culminating in violence directed at Irish Catholic immigrants. The surge in immigration from Europe during the 19th Century coincided with and influx of Catholics and the rise of activist Protestantism in the U.S. As strong Protestant values permeated the country, immigrants who were Catholic also became viewed as outsiders and undemocratic. These views are separate from, but on top of, the harsh anti-Irish sentiment that also spread during the period.
In the 1830s and 1840s, anti-Catholic violence broke out in the Northeast and elsewhere. In 1835, one incident was ignited by a speaking tour by Lyman Beecher, who published Plea for the West, a book about a Catholic plot to take over the U.S. and impose Catholic rule. After Beecher’s speaking tour passed through Charlestown, Massachusetts, a mob set fire to the Ursuline convent and school.[3] In Philadelphia in 1844, pitched gun battles broke out between “native” Americans and mostly Irish Catholics. Martial law had to be declared in order to end the violence.[4]
The Mormon War, the Utah War
Around the same time as anti-Catholic violence broke out in the Northeast, another religious group was being chased out of the same area. The Mormons, who emerged after the 1830 discovery of The Book of Mormon, were a religious community chased out of New York, out of Ohio, out of Missouri, and out of Illinois, to Utah, where they finally settled.
In Illinois in 1839, the Mormons settled Nauvoo and built a thriving Mormon town there, complete with a large Mormon temple. In the short period of three years, the Mormons prospered, announced the doctrine of polygamy, and founder Joseph Smith announced his candidacy for president of the United States. Locals were intimidated and envious. Smith and his brother Hyrum were arrested on morals charges and held in jail. On June 27, 1844, an anti-Mormon mob attacked Nauvoo and burned it to the ground.[5] They also invaded the jail cells where Smith and his brother were being held, and executed them.
Shortly after the sacking of Nauvoo, Brigham Young announced his leadership of the Mormons and led them to Utah, where they flourished. In 1857, fears of a religious state of Mormons grew and the president ordered federal troops to enforce the installation of federal judges and a new non-Mormon governor. At some point in the interim, this is still a subject of debate, the infamous Mountain Meadow Massacre happened – in which local Mormons slaughtered a group of 120 California-bound pioneers who were openly hostile toward their religion and making threats to return from California to attack them.[6]
The massacre only fueled anti-Mormon sentiment. Tensions escalated. The Mormon army, also known as the Nauvoo Legion, was called out to respond to the imminent arrival of 2,000 U.S. Army troops. Salt Lake City was evacuated on standing orders to burn the city should an invasion occur. No violence was to break out, as attention was diverted to the Civil War.
As the federal government focused its energies on fighting the Civil War, legal sanctions and political oppression of the Mormons continued that virtually dissolved the church by 1887. It wasn’t until the 1890s, when the Mormons ended the practice of polygamy, that Utah finally achieved statehood in 1896.[7]
The Jewish Experience
At the end of the 1890s, the U.S. began seeing the first wave of anti-Semitism, just as the federal government began restricting immigration from Europe. While concentrations of Jews have lived in America since colonial times, they were largely tolerated and discriminated against in localized incidents. By the 1920s, immigration quotas had taken effect and limits on the basis of national origin. These quotas were not repealed during the Holocaust, even as Jewish refugees were fleeing Hitler’s Europe.
Between 1933 and 1939, the period of the Great Depression, anti-Semitic fervor reached heights never before seen or later seen in entire the history of the Jewish experience in America. In urban areas such as New York and Boston, Jews were violently attacked.[8] Most anti-Jewish sentiment was manifested in social and political discrimination. Assaults, propaganda and intimidation were mostly carried out by special societies, such as the Silver Shirts or the Ku Klux Klan.
Overall, the experience of Jews in America has been encouragingly free from the violent persecution seen elsewhere in the world. Indeed, racial and social intolerance persisted since the colonial days until the 1950s, as Jews were not allowed membership in country clubs, excluded from colleges, banned from practicing medicine, and from holding political office in many states. However, religious conflict rooted in anti-Semitism has been largely non-violent.
Hate Crimes as Religious Conflict
The incidents of violence against individual Jews that characterized the anti-Semitism of the Great Depression would have fallen under the category of religious hate crimes if the FBI, then known as the Bureau of Investigation, were collecting those statistics at the time. Despite the diversity of the United States, in all aspects such as race, national origin, religion and sexual orientation, the federal government (by way of the FBI) did not start keeping tabs on hate crimes until 1992. Religiously speaking, anti-Semitic hate crimes have always dominated the national hate crime statistics gathered by the FBI for the past ten years. However, the current numbers paint a changing landscape.
According to the ACLU, the U.S. is home to more than 1,500 religions and 360,000 religious centers.[9] Christianity has long dominated the country’s religious make-up, followed by Judaism. According to the latest statistics released by the Harvard University Religious Pluralism Project, Islam has surpassed Judaism and is the country’s Number Two religion.[10]
Following the terrorist attacks of September 11th, the FBI found that anti-Muslim sentiments spiked and verifiable, religiously motivated hate crimes against Muslims in the U.S. increased 1,600 percent in 2001 from the prior year.[11]
In fact, the FBI, which has tracked hate crimes since 1992, reports that Anti-Muslim hate crimes had previously been the second-least reported. But in 2001, they became the second-highest reported, second only to anti-Jewish hate crimes. It should be noted that these statistics are separate from crimes motivated against race, national origin or ethnicity – these are crimes against person and property in which religion was a motivating negative factor.
Conclusion
The U.S. has been fortunate in that it has not witnessed religious war and conflict of the scale seen in the Middle East and Europe. Although the number of different religions in the U.S. has steadily grown over the decades, this diversity has not let to conflict. Some propositions for why this may be:
The United States as a country of immigrants
This factor defuses historical and religious claims to territory, which are not as strong as they are in places such as the West Bank and Ireland. It also may explain a greater likelihood for a system of conflict to eventually resolve itself in favor of tolerance rather than further conflict, as each new group of immigrants to America has generally shared a story of persecution.
Constitutional protections and religious disestablishment
The American tradition of the separation of church and state cannot be overlooked in mediating and possibly preventing religious conflict to erupt. In many other parts of the world, religion is still highly influential and, in some cases, sponsored by the state. However, in a country with such religious diversity, religious disestablishment has proved necessary so that the government could not take sides in a religious conflict.
Diversity creates tolerance
The argument also exists that the immense diversity in and of itself has promoted tolerance among religions. Religious pluralism inspires attitudes that homogeneity is a natural part of the religious environment and that there is room for each religion to exist in America.
As the United States enters the 21st Century, these important factors will prove to be influential in the face of catastrophic events, and economic, social and political changes that challenge the level of religious tolerance the nation has maintained for over two centuries.
What is Donald Trump running away from so hard? Is it the fifth anniversary of his January 6 insurrection, which we will mark on Tuesday? It should be.
It could be Jack Smith’s newly released testimony, which is damning and damaging—and we haven’t even gotten the release date of Volume II of his special counsel report, due sometime in February unless Trump manages to hang it up in court. On balance, Congressman Jim Jordan’s “Weaponization” work is backfiring.
It could also be the Epstein Files. DOJ missed its reporting date to Congress over the weekend, and the full release of the files is still nowhere in sight.
Donald Trump has a lot to try to hide from. It could be all of the above, and it’s all closing in on him this week. In the past, he has always been able to delay or distract just long enough for the public to forget. But this week, the past seems to be catching up with the lame duck president.
That may be at least a partial explanation for Trump’s strike on Venezuela—distract, distract, distract. It’s a better explanation than Trump as a committed warrior against narcoterrorism. That one doesn’t work particularly well for Donald Trump, who pardoned Honduran ex-president Juan Orlando Hernández, a man who former National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said in our Substack Live on Sunday morning, “personally trafficked tons of cocaine into the United States and actually said at one point he wanted to shove cocaine up the noses of the gringos.” When Trump pardoned Hernández, he said, “If somebody sells drugs in that country, that doesn’t mean you arrest the president and put him in jail for the rest of his life.” As Jake pointed out, and I agree, “the drugs excuse holds no water.”
This week, we’ll be watching Congress—and watching Trump watch Congress, which has been showing a few signs of life lately. I don’t want to oversell that, but this is definitely a week that warrants paying attention, particularly with the privileged War Powers Resolution I mentioned in last night’s post coming to the Senate floor this week. The ball is in Congress’ court.
Article I, Section 8, Clause 11 of the Constitution gives Congress the power to declare war, as well as to “make rules concerning captures on land and water.” Presidents before and including Trump, as experts at the Brennan Center explain, have tried to claim some of that authority for themselves, using “outdated and overstretched war authorizations like the 2001 and 2002 authorizations for use of military force.” Multiple presidents have also “asserted an inherent authority to undertake airstrikes, raids, and other military interventions without prior congressional authorization. When Congress has authorized conflict, such as the War in Afghanistan and Iraq War, presidents have overread Congress’s approval and expanded U.S. military involvement into countries that Congress never contemplated. Compounding the problem, presidents often fail to give Congress the information it needs to oversee these conflicts.” This is not a Trump problem—presidents since at least George H.W. Bush have claimed a share of Congress’ power. But Trump, who is uniquely interested in amassing presidential power, has the potential to move on from Venezuela and keep going, if Congress doesn’t step in and assert itself.
It’s possible for two things to be true at once: it’s possible that Maduro was a corrupt, dangerous leader and also, that our Constitution and the separation of powers demand preserving. Our country does not, and indeed cannot, remove every dangerous leader around the globe from office with in-country strikes. We could strengthen local populations with stability-enhancing programs like USAID (which the Trump administration, of course, has cut) to increase the ability of local populations to act on their own impulses. We can engage in vigorous law enforcement, like the prosecution of Honduras’ former president. But we can do so without permitting our president to freelance as a warlord, especially one with dubious motives. So don’t buy into the false equivalency that says the smash and grab in Venezuela that resulted in Maduro’s arrest was a righteous exercise of the president’s power.
The constitutional prescription for fixing this problem of presidential overreach is Congress. New Jersey Senator Cory Booker had something to say about that over the weekend, in light of the Trump administration’s strike on Venezuela.
Cory Booker@CoryBooker
Today, many leaders will rightly condemn President Donald Trump’s unlawful and unjust actions in Venezuela, and I join them. But just as glaring, and far more damning, is Congress’ ongoing abdication of its constitutional duty. For almost a year now, the legislative branch has
4:40 PM · Jan 3, 2026 · 70.8K Views
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“Today,” he wrote, “many leaders will rightly condemn President Donald Trump’s unlawful and unjust actions in Venezuela, and I join them.
But then, Senator Booker put the blame precisely where it is due. He continued, “just as glaring, and far more damning, is Congress’ ongoing abdication of its constitutional duty. For almost a year now, the legislative branch has failed to check a president who repeatedly violates his oath, disregards the law, and endangers American interests at home and abroad.”
He called out the Republican-led Congress for choosing “spineless complicity over its sworn responsibilities.” He condemned its inaction in the face of Signalgate, with Trump’s “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth escaping any censure for “the reckless leaking of classified information that put American troops at risk.” The senator also pointed to the “stunning absence of accountability” for the administration’s “illegal use of military force destroying vessels and killing people in the Caribbean and the Pacific without congressional authorization.”
Booker cited a litany of Congressional failures:
No hearings. No serious investigations. No enforcement of checks and balances. No accountability.
He called Congress cowardly and submissive.
We are long past due for someone to speak so plainly to the country about the Republican-led Congress’ failure to do its constitutional duty. The question is, who is listening, and will it lead to action this week? As my good friend Norm Eisen like to say, I am not optimistic, but I am hopeful.
Booker writes that “Republicans in Congress own this corrosive collapse of our constitutional order” and that their submission to Trump’s will “now stands as one of the greatest dangers to our nation and to the global order America claims to defend.” The fact that Maduro is “a brutal dictator who has committed grave abuses” does not, Booker concludes, suspend the Constitution. And so, he drives home the point of what must come next:
“The Constitution is unambiguous: Congress has the power and responsibility to authorize the use of military force and declare war. Congress has a duty of oversight. Congress must serve as a check, not a rubber stamp, to the President.”
“We face an authoritarian-minded president who acts with dangerous growing impunity. He has shown a willingness to defy court orders, violate the law, ignore congressional intent, and shred basic norms of decency and democracy. This pattern will continue unless the Article I branch of government, especially Republican congressional leadership, finds the courage to act.”
“What happened today [in Venezuela] is wrong. Congressional Republicans would say so immediately if a Democratic president had done the same. Their silence is surrender. And in that surrender lie the seeds of our democratic unraveling.”
“Enough is enough,” Booker concludes. With three years left in this administration, it’s time to stop the (constitutional) bleeding.
Senator Booker wrote at length at a time when many Americans have lost the will or the ability to take in an argument laid out like this. For some people, it’s easier to ignore common sense and stay in the fold of the cult. But Booker’s words are well worth our time and well worth sharing with others. His argument is not subtle or nuanced, and it’s accessible to anyone who has taken a fourth-grade civics class: Congress should do its job, not Donald Trump’s bidding. The future of the Republic depends upon it. They would demand it if a Democratic president had done what Donald Trump did—something that has been true over and over, but is all the more poignant with the anniversary of January 6 staring us in the face. Maybe Congress will remember what that day felt like and how they reacted. Maybe enough of them can muster some courage—if for no other reason than that the history books, and likely voters at the midterms, will condemn them if they don’t.
Make sure you share Senator Booker’s message with your elected officials this week. They need to hear it. They need to know you heard it.
A final note: a development we won’t be following this week, because it won’t be happening, is the federal criminal trial of former FBI Director Jim Comey, which was slated to start on Monday. This trial will not take place because the case was dismissed, in a serious blow to the credibility of Pam Bondi’s Justice Department. There are, in fact, some guardrails that remain in place. And this year, we’re going to rebuild more of them. Get ready to vote.
Where you get your news and analysis is a choice. I’m very appreciative that you’re here, with me, at Civil Discourse. Your subscriptions make it possible for me to devote the time and resources it takes to research and write the newsletter, and I’m very grateful for all of you. This is what community looks like.
Imran Ahmed, the founder of the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), giving evidence to joint committee seeking views on how to improve the draft Online Safety Bill designed to tackle social media abuse. Credit: House of Commons – PA Images / Contributor | PA Images
Imran Ahmed’s biggest thorn in his side used to be Elon Musk, who made the hate speech researcher one of his earliest legal foes during his Twitter takeover.
Now, it’s the Trump administration, which planned to deport Ahmed, a legal permanent resident, just before Christmas. It would then ban him from returning to the United States, where he lives with his wife and young child, both US citizens.
After suing US officials to block any attempted arrest or deportation, Ahmed was quickly granted a temporary restraining order on Christmas Day. Ahmed had successfully argued that he risked irreparable harm without the order, alleging that Trump officials continue “to abuse the immigration system to punish and punitively detain noncitizens for protected speech and silence viewpoints with which it disagrees” and confirming that his speech had been chilled.
US officials are attempting to sanction Ahmed seemingly due to his work as the founder of a British-American non-governmental organization, the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH).
“An egregious act of government censorship”
In a shocking announcement last week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirmed that five individuals—described as “radical activists” and leaders of “weaponized NGOs”—would face US visa bans since “their entry, presence, or activities in the United States have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences” for the US.
Nobody was named in that release, but Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy, Sarah Rogers, later identified the targets in an X post she currently has pinned to the top of her feed.
Alongside Ahmed, sanctioned individuals included former European commissioner for the internal market, Thierry Breton; the leader of UK-based Global Disinformation Index (GDI), Clare Melford; and co-leaders of Germany-based HateAid, Anna-Lena von Hodenberg and Josephine Ballon. A GDI spokesperson told The Guardian that the visa bans are “an authoritarian attack on free speech and an egregious act of government censorship.”
While all targets were scrutinized for supporting some of the European Union’s strictest tech regulations, including the Digital Services Act (DSA), Ahmed was further accused of serving as a “key collaborator with the Biden Administration’s effort to weaponize the government against US citizens.” As evidence of Ahmed’s supposed threat to US foreign policy, Rogers cited a CCDH report flagging Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. among the so-called “disinformation dozen” driving the most vaccine hoaxes on social media.
Neither official has really made it clear what exact threat these individuals pose if operating from within the US, as opposed to from anywhere else in the world. Echoing Rubio’s press release, Rogers wrote that the sanctions would reinforce a “red line,” supposedly ending “extraterritorial censorship of Americans” by targeting the “censorship-NGO ecosystem.”
For Ahmed’s group, specifically, she pointed to Musk’s failed lawsuit, which accused CCDH of illegally scraping Twitter—supposedly, it offered evidence of extraterritorial censorship. That lawsuit surfaced “leaked documents” allegedly showing that CCDH planned to “kill Twitter” by sharing research that could be used to justify big fines under the DSA or the UK’s Online Safety Act. Following that logic, seemingly any group monitoring misinformation or sharing research that lawmakers weigh when implementing new policies could be maligned as seeking mechanisms to censor platforms.
Notably, CCDH won its legal fight with Musk after a judge mocked X’s legal argument as “vapid” and dismissed the lawsuit as an obvious attempt to punish CCDH for exercising free speech that Musk didn’t like.
In his complaint last week, Ahmed alleged that US officials were similarly encroaching on his First Amendment rights by unconstitutionally wielding immigration law as “a tool to punish noncitizen speakers who express views disfavored by the current administration.”
Both Rubio and Rogers are named as defendants in the suit, as well as Attorney General Pam Bondi, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, and Acting Director of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement Todd Lyons. In a loss, officials would potentially not only be forced to vacate Rubio’s actions implementing visa bans, but also possibly stop furthering a larger alleged Trump administration pattern of “targeting noncitizens for removal based on First Amendment protected speech.”
Lawsuit may force Rubio to justify visa bans
For Ahmed, securing the temporary restraining order was urgent, as he was apparently the only target currently located in the US when Rubio’s announcement dropped. In a statement provided to Ars, Ahmed’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan, suggested that the order was granted “so quickly because it is so obvious that Marco Rubio and the other defendants’ actions were blatantly unconstitutional.”
Ahmed founded CCDH in 2019, hoping to “call attention to the enormous problem of digitally driven disinformation and hate online.” According to the suit, he became particularly concerned about antisemitism online while living in the United Kingdom in 2016, having watched “the far-right party, Britain First,” launching “the dangerous conspiracy theory that the EU was attempting to import Muslims and Black people to ‘destroy’ white citizens.” That year, a Member of Parliament and Ahmed’s colleague, Jo Cox, was “shot and stabbed in a brutal politically motivated murder, committed by a man who screamed ‘Britain First’” during the attack. That tragedy motivated Ahmed to start CCDH.
He moved to the US in 2021 and was granted a green card in 2024, starting his family and continuing to lead CCDH efforts monitoring not just Twitter/X, but also Meta platforms, TikTok, and, more recently, AI chatbots. In addition to supporting the DSA and UK’s Online Safety Act, his group has supported US online safety laws and Section 230 reforms intended to protect kids online.
“Mr. Ahmed studies and engages in civic discourse about the content moderation policies of major social media companies in the United States, the United Kingdom, and the European Union,” his lawsuit said. “There is no conceivable foreign policy impact from his speech acts whatsoever.”
In his complaint, Ahmed alleged that Rubio has so far provided no evidence that Ahmed poses such a great threat that he must be removed. He argued that “applicable statutes expressly prohibit removal based on a noncitizen’s ‘past, current, or expected beliefs, statements, or associations.’”
According to DHS guidance from 2021 cited in the suit, “A noncitizen’ s exercise of their First Amendment rights … should never be a factor in deciding to take enforcement action.”
To prevent deportation based solely on viewpoints, Rubio was supposed to notify chairs of the House Foreign Affairs, Senate Foreign Relations, and House and Senate Judiciary Committees, to explain what “compelling US foreign policy interest” would be compromised if Ahmed or others targeted with visa bans were to enter the US. But there’s no evidence Rubio took those steps, Ahmed alleged.
“The government has no power to punish Mr. Ahmed for his research, protected speech, and advocacy, and Defendants cannot evade those constitutional limitations by simply claiming that Mr. Ahmed’s presence or activities have ‘potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States,’” a press release from his legal team said. “There is no credible argument for Mr. Ahmed’s immigration detention, away from his wife and young child.”
X lawsuit offers clues to Trump officials’ defense
To some critics, it looks like the Trump administration is going after CCDH in order to take up the fight that Musk already lost. In his lawsuit against CCDH, Musk’s X echoed US Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) by suggesting that CCDH was a “foreign dark money group” that allowed “foreign interests” to attempt to “influence American democracy.” It seems likely that US officials will put forward similar arguments in their CCDH fight.
Rogers’ X post offers some clues that the State Department will be mining Musk’s failed litigation to support claims of what it calls a “global censorship-industrial complex.” What she detailed suggested that the Trump administration plans to argue that NGOs like CCDH support strict tech laws, then conduct research bent on using said laws to censor platforms. That logic seems to ignore the reality that NGOs cannot control what laws get passed or enforced, Breton suggested in his first TV interview after his visa ban was announced.
Breton, whom Rogers villainized as the “mastermind” behind the DSA, urged EU officials to do more now defend their tough tech regulations—which Le Monde noted passed with overwhelming bipartisan support and very little far-right resistance—and fight the visa bans, Bloomberg reported.
“They cannot force us to change laws that we voted for democratically just to please [US tech companies],” Breton said. “No, we must stand up.”
While EU officials seemingly drag their feet, Ahmed is hoping that a judge will declare that all the visa bans that Rubio announced are unconstitutional. The temporary restraining order indicates there will be a court hearing Monday at which Ahmed will learn precisely “what steps Defendants have taken to impose visa restrictions and initiate removal proceedings against” him and any others. Until then, Ahmed remains in the dark on why Rubio deemed him as having “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences” if he stayed in the US.
Ahmed, who argued that X’s lawsuit sought to chill CCDH’s research and alleged that the US attack seeks to do the same, seems confident that he can beat the visa bans.
“America is a great nation built on laws, with checks and balances to ensure power can never attain the unfettered primacy that leads to tyranny,” Ahmed said. “The law, clear-eyed in understanding right and wrong, will stand in the way of those who seek to silence the truth and empower the bold who stand up to power. I believe in this system, and I am proud to call this country my home. I will not be bullied away from my life’s work of fighting to keep children safe from social media’s harm and stopping antisemitism online. Onward.”
Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. She is a Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience.
Updated: 4:23 PM EST Jan 3, 2026
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