On March 15, National Security Adviser Michael Waltz informed fellow Trump Administration officials through their now-infamous Signal chat that a U.S. missile attack had resulted in the collapse of an apartment building filled with Yemeni civilians. Vice President J.D. Vance replied, “Excellent.”

Democrats on Capitol Hill have since expressed outrage—not at the deaths of innocent civilians, or at the United States’ unprovoked attack on a sovereign country, but at the fact that the conversation was not more carefully shielded from the public. 

The Trump Administration claims to have resumed bombing in Yemen to stop the Houthi rebels’ attacks on shipping vessels in the Red Sea, despite the fact that the Houthis, who serve as the de facto government of much of the country, had ceased those attacks months ago. Scores of Yemeni civilians have died since the United States resumed the bombing last month. Air strikes have denied tens of thousands of people in this impoverished country access to electricity and drinking water. The Democratic leadership in Congress has refused to condemn this destruction or attempt to invoke the War Powers Resolution, which was enacted in 1973 to limit a President’s ability to engage in armed conflict without the consent of Congress.

Those same Democratic leaders have expressed little opposition to President Donald Trump’s support of Israel’s ongoing occupation forces in Lebanon, which violate the terms of the cease-fire agreement made between Israel and Lebanon last fall. Nor have the Democrats objected to Trump’s support for Israel’s violation of its 1974 disengagement agreement with Syria, or his defense of the ongoing large-scale seizure of Palestinian lands and destruction of villages in the occupied West Bank.