Senate Moves to Limit Trump’s Military Action in Venezuela

In a rare bipartisan rebuke following concern over the covert capture of leader Nicolas Maduro, the US Senate made significant progress on Thursday in enacting a resolution to limit President Donald Trump’s military activities in Venezuela.

With the backing of five Republicans, the Democratic-led bill passed a crucial procedural vote that prohibits additional US actions against Venezuela without express congressional authorization.

The final passage vote, which is scheduled for next week, is now viewed as little more than a formality and would be one of Congress’s strongest declarations of its power to declare war in decades.

However, the resolution has a difficult climb in the US House and virtually no chance of surviving a potential Trump veto, so the attempt is mostly considered as symbolic.

On his Truth Social platform, the president denounced the five Republican rebels for their “stupidity” and declared that they “should never be elected to office again.”

He went on, “Republicans should be ashamed of the senators that just voted with Democrats in an attempt to take away our powers to fight and defend the United States of America.”

The vote came after a sharp increase in US intervention, which senators from both parties claimed went beyond a limited law-enforcement operation and clearly passed into war. This action included air and naval operations as well as the nighttime capture of Maduro in Caracas.

“Less than courageous members of Congress fall all over themselves to avoid taking responsibility, to avoid the momentous vote of declaring war,” stated Senator Rand Paul, a Republican from Kentucky who co-sponsored the bill in defiance of the majority of his party.

However, it is unquestionably an act of war to bomb the capital of another country and overthrow its leader. There is no constitutional provision that gives the president such authority.

In an interview that was published on Thursday, Trump told The New York Times that the United States could control Venezuela and access its oil reserves for years. He also stated that “only time will tell” how long Washington would seek direct control over the South American country.

After what they called months of deceptive briefings, including promises from the administration as recently as November that it had no preparations for strikes on Venezuelan soil, Democrats are presenting the resolution as a constitutional line in the sand.