Congress
Rand Paul: ‘All of these people have been blown up without us knowing their name’
Sen. Rand Paul on Sunday questioned the wisdom and legality of President Donald Trump’s policies toward Venezuela and suspected drug dealers coming from its coast.
Speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” the Kentucky Republican again raised concerns about the legality of the Trump administration’s strikes on boats that it claims are carrying drug traffickers, as well as the president’s statement that the United States might conduct direct attacks on Venezuela’s territory.
“When you kill someone, you should know, if you’re not at war, not in a declared war, you really need to know someone’s name at least,” Paul said. “You have to accuse them of something. You have to present evidence. So all of these people have been blown up without us knowing their name, without any evidence of a crime.”
He said that given the distance these boats are from the United States, it’s more likely that if there are indeed drug smugglers, they are bringing them to nearby islands such as Trinidad and Tobago, instead of the U.S.
Paul added: “For decades, if not centuries, when you stop people at sea in international waters or in your own waters, you announce that you’re going to board the ship and you’re looking for contraband, smuggling, or drugs. This happens every day off of Miami. But we know from Coast Guard statistics that about 25 percent of the time the Coast Guard boards a ship there are no drugs. So if our policy now is to blow up every ship we suspect or accuse of drug running, that would be a bizarre world in which 25 percent of the people might be innocent.”
He also wondered about the wisdom of telling another country that the United States planned to conduct secret operations aimed at its government.
“If you announce that you’re going to have covert CIA action, it’s no longer covert,” he said to host Kristen Welker. “So if you’re going to spy on a country you usually don’t announce that you’re going to spy on a country. So it’s a little bit unusual there. I do think there are members of his administration who have been agitating for war with Venezuela for a long, long period of time.”
This is not the first time that Paul has challenged American policy on Venezuela, particularly the extra-judicial killing of possible drug smugglers. “What a despicable and thoughtless sentiment it is to glorify killing someone without a trial,” Paul wrote on X in September after Vice President J.D. Vance praised the policy.
Paul also said that though he is critical of Trump in some areas, he holds him in very high regard.
“I’ve known the president for over a decade,” Paul told Welker. “I’ve played golf with him many, many times. I enjoy his company. I was one of his biggest defenders on impeachment and would do so again. I think he’s one of the best presidents, if not the best president, of my lifetime. But it doesn’t mean I will sit quietly and say, ‘Oh well, whatever you want to do.'”
A Democratic trio attempted to pass an artificial intelligence bill via a unanimous consent request on Tuesday but were blocked on the Senate floor.
Sens. Mark Warner (D-Va.), Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) and Andy Kim (D-N.J.) sought to pass their Artificial Intelligence Risk Management and Security Act using the procedural mechanism, which allows expedited consideration of legislation but fails if one senator opposes it.
“The whole world has recognized that we’ve got to do something,” Warner said in a speech on the floor. “We should not miss the moment to put a safety protocol in place now.”
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) objected to the bill, preventing any chance of passage.
“Congress must not legislate on the issue of artificial intelligence hastily or in a closed manner,” he said on the floor, adding that it gave some in the government too much power to dictate the technology that could be permitted to be released.
As some lawmakers grow concerned over dire warnings from AI labs’ top executives about the technology’s risk to humanity, Congress’ attempts to legislate AI guardrails have largely stalled.
In the past few weeks, two other AI-related bills, the Ratepayer Protection Act and AI Emergency Button Act, were also nixed in an attempt to pass them unanimously.
Warner, Schatz and Kim’s new bill would have established a new safety board within the Commerce Department to vet models before they are deployed and set safety standards for the industry. It would also have created a reporting process for safety and security incidents.
Sen. Darline Graham sought to take up her brother’s mantle Tuesday, going after former special counsel Jack Smith for obtaining the late-Sen. Lindsey Graham’s phone data.
“You should be ashamed of yourself,” the South Carolina Republican told Smith as he testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee, adding that the anguish the prosecutor caused her brother “makes me sick.”
Lindsey Graham, until his unexpected death in July, was among the most vocal in his outrage over revelations that Smith secretly collected electronic data from GOP lawmakers as part of the Biden-era investigation into President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
The late senator was also unapologetic in his support for a provision tucked into a government funding package, which was later repealed, allowing senators to sue the federal government for $500,000 or more if they discover their electronic records were seized without notification — language specifically designed to compensate Smith’s targets.
But Smith replied that Lindsey Graham was not a target of his investigation and was not suspected of wrongdoing — in fact, he considered Darline Graham’s brother “a patriotic public servant” who likely would have been a “witness” in his case against Trump for attempted election subversion.
“Your brother investigated the claims that Donald Trump was making,” Smith told Darline Graham. “He found them to be false.”
The federal government’s internal watchdog told Congress Tuesday that it has concluded President Donald Trump acted unlawfully in unilaterally canceling $810 million in federal funding.
In a letter to congressional leaders obtained by Blue Light News, the Government Accountability Office’s top lawyer panned Trump’s declaration Friday that he is nixing money Congress appropriated through a controversial budget maneuver called a “pocket rescission.”
“The Constitution vests in Congress the power of the purse,” GAO General Counsel Edda Emmanuelli Perez wrote,
adding that “Congress did not cede this important power” by enacting the 1970s impoundment law intended to stop presidents from withholding money Congress approves.
“Any withholding of appropriated funds beyond their date of expiration, regardless of size, subverts both the constitutional process for enacting federal law and Congress’s constitutional power of the purse,” Perez added. “The President may not force the expiration of budget authority Congress has already enacted and did not rescind.”
It is unclear what practical effect, if any, the letter will have on the interbranch funding fight. Outside groups sued the administration last year over a prior pocket rescission, but the Supreme Court issued a preliminary ruling that they did not have standing to challenge the matter. The Trump administration has argued that only the head of the GAO is able to sue under the 52-year-old law governing rescissions.
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