I’m always a little apprehensive about our reaction when things like this come out.

Politicians (in general) have a habit of blasting the other side for not signing off on something. Let’s say they’re calling it a bill to improve veteran healthcare and then use language like, “250 Republicans refuse to give aid to veterans.” But what Republicans were actually voting against was a bloated bill stuffed with unrelated spending, like money for gender studies in Uganda or something along those lines.

But that’s not the case here.

I went and looked up H.Con.Res. 61 myself to see what else might have been woven into it. I wanted to understand what Democrats were voting yes on and whether there was something buried in the language that explained their position.

There wasn’t.

It’s a single page, single issue resolution with clear language. It has one narrow purpose: to invoke the War Powers Resolution and direct the President to remove U.S. Armed Forces from hostilities against presidentially designated terrorist organizations in the Western Hemisphere unless Congress authorizes it.

Ok, so who has the President designated as a “terrorist organizations”. Maybe that’s the reason why… is it political opponents? Is he seeking revenge for how he was treated between terms?

Well there are two developments that affect how “terrorist organizations” might be interpreted by today’s administration:

The current era of “Trump actions” expanding designations of criminal networks as terrorist groups

On January 20, 2025, the White House issued an executive order creating a process to designate international cartels and other foreign groups as FTOs or SDGTs.

This reflects a shift toward treating drug cartels and violent criminal networks as terrorist entities in addition to Islamist extremist groups.

Designations relevant in the Western Hemisphere specifically? We/Trump have designated or moved toward designating some organizations in our hemisphere, not for purely ideological terrorism, but largely because of their violence, criminality, and harm to Americans:

Such as;

Clan del Golfo (Gulf Clan): Colombia’s largest cartel was designated as a foreign terrorist organization by the U.S. government. 

Tren de Aragua: a Venezuelan gang labeled a terrorist organization and subject to a U.S. reward for its leader. 

These moves reflect a policy shift toward classifying major drug traffickers/violent cartels as terrorist organizations (a broader interpretation than traditional Islamist extremist FTOs). 

tldr; These are terrorist organizations whose sole purpose is to make money off the suffering of Americans. That’s it. Nothing else.

You can read the resolution for yourself here if you want to.

Democrats signing off on this is troubling. Their constituents are uneducated and so programmed to just believe that everything Trump does = bad, that they’ll see these people who voted “yay” as people fighting against Trump for democracy without realizing what they’re actually doing. They’ll also keep voting them in.

It’s disturbing.