In a rare bipartisan rebuke following concern over the covert capture of leader Nicolas Maduro, the US Senate took a significant step on Thursday toward passing a resolution to limit President Donald Trump’s military activities in Venezuela.
Five Republicans supported the Democratic-led resolution, which passed a crucial procedural vote and prohibits additional US hostilities against Venezuela without express congressional authorization.
Next week’s vote on final passage, which is currently viewed as little more than a formality, would represent one of Congress’s most emphatic declarations of its war-making power in decades.
However, the resolution has a difficult climb in the US House and virtually no chance of surviving a likely veto by Trump, thus the attempt is mostly considered as symbolic.
On his Truth Social platform, the president criticized the five Republican rebels for their “stupidity” and declared that they “should never be elected to office again.”
He continued, “Republicans should be ashamed of the senators who just voted with Democrats in an effort to take away our powers to fight and defend the United States of America.”
The decision 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 seizure 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, defying the majority of his party.
However, bombing the capital of another country and overthrowing its leader is, without a doubt, an act of war. The constitution has no clause granting the president such authority.
In an interview that was released 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 require direct control over the South American country.
After what they described as months of deceptive briefings, including promises from the administration as recently as November that it had no preparations for strikes on Venezuelan land, Democrats are presenting the resolution as a constitutional line in the sand.
