Since September, the Trump administration has struck 15 vessels in international waters, killing all aboard. The administration said that these boats were carrying dangerous drugs from Venezuela. The men on board were not identified. The coast guard did not attempt to intercept them, and the 64 men aboard the vessels were executed by bomb without a trial.
Since the strikes, President Donald Trump authorized the CIA to advance covert operations in Venezuela for the presumed purpose of regime change.
Trump frames these as acts of a war against “narcoterrorism” to obfuscate the legal and moral complications of killing people in international waters. He also said that the men killed are part of the Tren de Aragua gang that the president of Venezuela controls.
The strikes are filmed and published for the entire United States to watch: Aerial views of exploding ships give off the impression of an act of war in a foreign country. The government benefits from falsely presenting the strikes this way — it dehumanizes the people on board and stops us from looking at the morality and legality of their deaths.
But it shouldn’t be this way. As Americans, we accept that if someone is accused of a crime, they should be given a fair trial to determine their guilt. If these same men had made it into Boston, would we feel any differently if the United States government had bombed the Sheraton Hotel? Do they become people only after they cross the border or cross out of international waters? Does it matter whether they are killed by a bomb or a gun?
There is nothing legal about these strikes, internationally or domestically. Striking without any sort of provocation in international waters violates the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, and the United States government has also not published evidence that these boats carried narcotics in the first place. This makes their designation as military targets instead of civilians legally fraught.
The president did not obtain congressional approval for war or notify Congress that the strikes were happening. He is completely ignoring the constraints placed on the president by the War Powers Act of 1973. Trump, answering to why he hasn’t asked Congress for a declaration of war, said, “Okay. We’re going to kill them. They’re going to be, like, dead.” His own attorney general couldn’t care less about the legality of the strikes either.
Despite all of this, most people don’t seem to truly care. This isn’t dominating the news cycle. Members of Congress aren’t being shoved with cameras and microphones and asked to defend their positions on the strikes.
However, the United States was not always this apathetic. In 2010, when WikiLeaks published videos of U.S. Troops in Iraq indiscriminately killing over 20 men, it was one of the biggest scandals since the Iraq War started.
The videos were shocking, and people treated them as such. After their publication, the editor of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, became a champion of free speech and the free press.
The government responded by clamping down on security, and many government officials, including Hillary Clinton, emphasized the dire consequences of releasing classified videos. The Obama administration charged a record number of reporters and journalists with releasing similarly classified information under the Espionage Act.
In just over 15 years, summarily executing people went from one of the largest political scandals of an administration — one that required a crackdown on our First Amendment rights — to a blip in the news cycle. The videos released by the Trump administration are arguably worse: These bombings did not take place during an actual war, no victim was identified and there was absolutely zero congressional oversight.
But how has this happened? Why have the American people given up their sense of morality? For any other administration, summarily bombing people in international waters would be career-ending for those involved, or at the bare minimum, a stain on their governance.
For many people, including myself, it’s impossible to manage every Trump administration-related piece of information. On the international front, there are the Venezuelan boat strikes, Trump cozying up to Russia, Israeli strikes on Doha, the ceasefire that didn’t actually fully cease fire and student visa revocations.
Then domestically, don’t forget the Epstein files, National Guard deployments, the government shutdown, weaponization of the Justice Department and the IRS, mass deportations, Trump meme coin, executive orders against law firms, pentagon forcing out reporters with unreasonable demands, commutation of George Santos (the man who once claimed he was “Jew-ish”), Charlie Kirk’s death, Trump trying to fire a member of the Federal Reserve and the video our president posted of a King Trump AI plane defecating on protesters (yes this is real).
Furthermore, try not to forget the circus performers who are high-ranking Trump officials:
Stephen Miller practically quoting Joseph Goebbels, House Speaker Mike Johnson refusing to swear in an elected congresswoman, Department of Labor posting Nazi-like propaganda (also somehow real), Epstein files again, Pam Bondi stonewalling Congress, the Eric Trump Indonesia conflict of interest, corruption with tariffs, Kristi Noem shooting her dog, Karoline Levitt throwing a temper tantrum and Pete Hegseth giving a fascist speech (real to a worrying extent).
Now, please put those events and news in order of personal importance.
Even as someone involved with politics and seeking a career in the field, I cannot. I don’t even know where to start. Trump’s media blitz, his administration’s strategy of exploding the news cycle, stops us from getting a grip on the newest issue or topic. It’s hard to properly allocate any level of moral outrage. Before you can properly form an opinion, another morally and, quite often, legally reprehensible act is carried out.
No singular person can solve this problem, but there are still ways to combat this media barrage — the most effective one being focus. Democratic lawmakers and personalities need to be aggressive in focusing on stories that damage the administration, and so do we as individuals.
While you might not be able to rank the issues above, you might be able to pick out a single one that speaks to you. Take a moment and consider what makes you upset, angry, scared or confused. For me, it’s the Venezuelan boat strikes, but for you, it could be anything else. Be the reason people don’t forget about what you care about.
This doesn’t mean bringing up the most controversial topic to your tinfoil hat uncle at Thanksgiving, but it could mean being active in discussions and finding outlets for whatever issue you choose. This administration relies on people being hit with whiplash by every new story. The president’s approval rating, as of Nov. 4, is 39% — don’t let them dominate the discussion.
Neil Olsson is an international affairs and economics combined major. He can be reached at olsson.n@northeastern.edu.
If you would like to submit a letter to the editor in response to this piece, email [email protected] with your idea.
