WASHINGTON, DC – The U.S. Senate has introduced a resolution that would prohibit President Donald Trump from taking further military action against Venezuela without Congressional approval.
Thursday’s vote on procedural steps to advance the War Powers Resolution was 52-47. Several of Trump’s Republicans broke with the president and joined all Senate Democrats in voting to move forward.
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If ultimately passed, the resolution would require President Trump to remove U.S. forces from “imminent involvement” in hostilities “within or against Venezuela” without further approval from Congress.
The resolution will now move to the full floor of the Senate for debate. It would need to pass both houses of Congress to reach President Trump’s desk. The president can then veto the resolution. Overriding a veto would require two-thirds support from both the Republican-controlled House and Senate, a likely insurmountable threshold.
Still, observers hailed Thursday’s vote as symbolically important, highlighting frustration over the abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in a dramatic military raid in Caracas on Saturday and Trump’s threat to attack Venezuela and other countries in the region again.
Dylan Williams, vice president of government affairs at the Center for International Policy, said in a post on X that the move was a “serious rebuke” to Trump.
Cavan Karazuan, senior policy director at the Demand Progress advocacy group, called the vote “a rare piece of good news for the nation and the Constitution.”
“With this historic bipartisan vote to prevent further war in Venezuela, Congress begins the long-overdue task of reaffirming our constitutional role in making war and peace decisions,” Karadzuan said.
Several attempts to advance similar resolutions were blocked by both the House and Senate last year as Republicans rallied around supporting Mr. Trump. The five Republicans who voted to move forward Thursday included Sens. Rand Paul, Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins, Todd Young and Josh Hawley.
Their vote appears to have struck a nerve with Trump. Truth Society Trump said the quartet was “ashamed” and “should never be elected president again.”
It was not immediately clear when a final vote on the Senate resolution would take place, but it is expected within the next week.
“Clear cut case”
Since Maduro’s abduction, U.S. military assets have remained deployed in the Caribbean, and the Trump administration has said attacks on alleged drug smuggling vessels will continue.
There are no known U.S. troops in the country, but Trump threatened interim leader Maduro’s former vice president, Delcy Rodriguez, that she would “pay a very high price, perhaps even a higher price than Maduro,” if she did not comply with U.S. demands.
Trump also threatened to use military force against other countries in the Western Hemisphere, including Colombia and Denmark’s autonomous territory of Greenland. It is not yet clear how the U.S. military will play a role in Trump’s pledge to assert indefinite control over Venezuela’s government and open the country’s oil industry to U.S. companies.
Legal experts said Congress has for decades retreated from asserting authority over U.S. military involvement abroad.
Under the U.S. Constitution, only Congress can declare war, but Congress has not done so since World War II.
Meanwhile, the War Powers Act of 1973 created a process by which the legislature could restrain the president’s unilateral use of military force. Many experts argue that the Constitution only authorizes the president to take unilateral military action in immediate self-defense or in response to an imminent attack.
David Janofsky, acting director of the Government Oversight Project’s Constitution Project, said in an interview with Al Jazeera earlier this week that Trump’s actions in Venezuela were a “clear case” of presidential overreach and “call for Congressional action.”
“No more endless wars”
But many Republicans rejected that position and adopted President Trump’s argument that the United States needed to take urgent action against Maduro, even though there was little evidence to justify that position.
“Unlike his predecessor, President Trump has been active, decisive, and delivered on what he promised the American people, and that is to keep them safe,” Sen. James Risch said ahead of Thursday’s vote.
Risch also argued that Congressional intervention was not necessary because the action against Maduro was a one-time “47-minute” operation and not part of a long-term military engagement.
Meanwhile, the top House Democrat, Chuck Schumer, called on the Senate to assert its “constitutional authority on matters of war and peace.”
“On behalf of the American people, we must send a clear message to Donald Trump: No more endless wars.”
In an editorial published by Responsible Statecraft on Wednesday, Republican Rand Paul accused the party of having “lost its leadership and become a eunuch in thrall to presidential control.”
“But make no mistake: bombing another country’s capital and eliminating its leader is an act of war, plain and simple,” he said. “No provision of the Constitution confers such authority on the office of the President.”
