While Trump is creating the Project 2025-guided chaos in almost every aspect of American society, we cannot lose sight of the horrors he’s inflicting offshore. Because they could and almost certainly would lead to further awfulness here at home.

In case you missed it, Trump and his war-criminal-loving secretary of war, Pete “WhiskeyLeaks” Hegseth, just launched their fourth military strike on civilian boats in the Caribbean. As The New York Times reported, Hegseth claimed, without offering evidence, that the four men he just killed were smuggling narcotics. “He also asserted that they were “affiliated” with one of the cartels and gangs that the Trump administration has designated as foreign terrorist organizations, but did not specify which.” The body count has now reached 21, according to The Times.

“It is illegal for the military to deliberately kill civilians — even suspected criminals — who are not directly participating in hostilities,” The Times noted. Yet, the Trump administration “told Congress this week that [the president] has ‘determined’ that the United States was engaged in an armed conflict with the cartels his administration had designated as terrorist groups, and that people crewing vessels suspected of smuggling drugs for such groups were ‘unlawful combatants,’ not civilians.”

But, as The New Republic pointed out, it’s Congress’ role, not Trump’s, to decide if the U.S. is at war. Even worse, “the administration has offered no actual evidence to back up its claims that the vessels were linked to any drug cartel at all.”

Yet, this past week it was reported that the U.S. military is drawing up plans to attack Venezuela.

This is awful enough. But wait, there’s more. Teacherbill at Daily Kos explained why Trump may want a new war more than he wants a Nobel Peace Prize: because a war would give him the authoritarian powers to steamroll civil liberties that he and his lickspittles think the administration deserves. The only question is whether that would be a fig leaf big enough for the MAGA toadies on the Supreme Court to use as cover to go along.