By the slimmest of margins, the U.S. Senate successfully derailed a resolution that would have curtailed the Trump administration’s power to continue military action in Venezuela.
Of the five Republicans who originally voted to advance the war powers resolution, U.S. Sens. Josh Hawley, R-Mo.; and Todd Young, R-Ind.; flipped and voted for the majority leadership’s motion to tank it.
“After numerous conversations with senior national security officials, I have received assurances that there are no American troops in Venezuela…[and] that [if] American forces are needed in major military operations in Venezuela, the Administration will come to Congress in advance to ask for an authorization in force,” Young wrote on X.
Sens. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska; Susan Collins, R-Maine; and Rand Paul, R-Ky.; did not change their stances, prompting Vice President J.D. Vance to cast the tie-breaking vote.
“We still have an entire military blockade of a country,” Rand pointed out on the Senate floor. “I don’t know how we argue that that’s not war.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who pressed the holdouts to fold, has promised to provide updates on the Venezuelan situation to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in two weeks.
Democrats had introduced the war powers resolution after the Trump administration carried out a large-scale strike against the Venezuelan government, arresting Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife.
A few days later, the U.S. seized two sanctioned Venezuelan vessels operating in the Caribbean and North Atlantic.
Maduro and his wife will stand trial in New York, and both have already pleaded not guilty of “narco-terrorism conspiracy, cocaine importation conspiracy, possession of machine guns and destructive devices, and conspiracy to possess machine guns and destructive devices against the United States.”
