Democrats are furious over President Donald Trump’s plans for Venezuela.
The president’s latest show of force on the world stage, which Trump says saw the U.S. military capture Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, quickly united both party leaders and rank-and-file lawmakers behind one message: The White House illegally bypassed Congress and appears woefully underprepared for the aftermath of the surprise military operation.
The top Democratic congressional leaders each released statements lambasting Trump after he revealed at a Mar-a-Lago news conference Saturday that the administration plans to run Venezuela for an undetermined amount of time.
“The administration has assured me three separate times that it was not pursuing regime change or taking military action in Venezuela,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said. “Clearly, they are not being straight with Americans. The idea that Trump plans to now run Venezuela should strike fear in the hearts of all Americans. The American people have seen this before and paid the devastating price.”
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries was even more explicit in drawing parallels to recent U.S. efforts at regime change that were costly in both taxpayer dollars and American lives.
“The promotion of security and stability in a region requires more than just military force as we painfully discovered in Iraq and Afghanistan,” he said.
Trump announced the strike in an early morning post on Truth Social Saturday, touching off a wave of praise from ideologically aligned members of his party. But while Democrats were largely careful not to defend Maduro, they had quick criticism for how Trump had secretly orchestrated the strike.
The Gang of Eight, which includes senior congressional leaders and top members of the House and Senate Intelligence committees, was notified of the operation only after it had been launched, according to a person with direct knowledge granted anonymity to discuss private outreach.
While several Republican lawmakers said Saturday they had been personally briefed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, few if any Democrats appear to have gotten that courtesy.
Schumer told reporters Saturday afternoon he still had not been briefed by the administration. In a separate joint statement, Schumer and Jeffries requested a Gang of Eight briefing as soon as Saturday, as well as a briefing for a wider group of lawmakers early next week.
Trump defended the administration’s tight lips in his news conference, telling reporters that “Congress has a tendency to leak.”
“This would not be good,” he added. “If they leaked … I think this would be a very different result.”
But Schumer called that an “excuse for secrecy” that is “outrageous” and “dangerous.” Schumer said Saturday that he is already strategizing with top committee Democrats about what steps they could take to “hold the administration accountable.” House Democrats are scheduled to hold an emergency caucus meeting Sunday, according to an invitation sent to members.
“Some of the Republican chairs, at least privately on the phone … have expressed a lot of troublesome comments about what Trump is doing and the way he is doing it, and those discussions will continue,” Schumer said, relaying private conversations between Democrats he had spoken to and the GOP chairs.
Well before the top Democratic congressional leaders spoke out, rank-and-file lawmakers took the lead in angrily denouncing Trump’s decision to topple a foreign leader by military force without asking lawmakers for authorization first.
“Congress did not authorize this war,” Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) wrote on X. “Venezuela posed no imminent threat to the United States. This is reckless, elective regime change risking American lives (Iraq 2.0) with no plan for the day after. Wars cost more than trophies.”
Congress has not authorized military action against Venezuela, and lawmakers have been split for months on the legality of the Trump administration’s strikes against suspected drug smuggling vessels in the waters off Latin America and a potential move to oust Maduro. Republicans have fended off several Democratic-led efforts to require Trump to seek approval from Congress before attacking Venezuela.
Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), who sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee, announced Saturday he would again force the chamber to vote on his effort to constrain Trump’s war powers next week.
“It’s time for Congress to get its ass off the couch and do what the Constitution mandates that we do,” Kaine told reporters during a call Saturday. “What we’ve seen is members of Congress who, frankly, lack the guts, lack the backbone, lack the courage to have that debate, and they’ve been willing to allow an increasingly declining and erratic president to make these decisions without them.”
In addition to the war powers vote, Kaine raised the possibility that an upcoming government funding deadline could offer further leverage. Democrats, he said, would “press for a vote” to prohibit expenditures on military actions concerning Venezuela without congressional approval.
Schumer, however, didn’t draw a red line on the spending fight, saying the immediate focus was on getting briefings and a war powers vote: “Let’s first get all the facts out,” he said.
In addition to criticizing the murky legal justification for the operation, several Democrats said the move is an about-face for administration officials who they said argued regime change wasn’t the end goal of the administration’s aggressive military campaign in Latin America.
“Secretaries Rubio and [Pete] Hegseth looked every Senator in the eye a few weeks ago and said this wasn’t about regime change. I didn’t trust them then and we see now that they blatantly lied to Congress,” Sen. Andy Kim (D-N.J.) said on X. “Trump rejected our Constitutionally required approval process for armed conflict because the Administration knows the American people overwhelmingly reject risks pulling our nation into another war.”
Meanwhile, Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), a combat veteran who deployed to Iraq as an infantryman in 2005, wrote on X Saturday that “the American people did not ask for this.”
And he wondered aloud about what comes next for the South American country, asking on X, “so who is in charge of Venezuela now?”
A December Quinnipiac poll found that Americans overwhelmingly oppose military action against Venezuela, with just 25 percent of respondents saying they supported an intervention inside the country. Even the White House’s strategy of targeting boats with alleged drug traffickers proved broadly unpopular.
“I fought in some of the hardest battles of the Iraq War,” Gallego wrote. “Saw my brothers die, saw civilians being caught in the crossfire all for an unjustified war. No matter the outcome we are in the wrong for starting this war in Venezuela.”
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), who is a co-chair of the Congressional Venezuela Democracy Caucus and represents a significant population of Venezuelan immigrants in South Florida, signaled agreement with the move to oust Maduro. She called his capture “welcome news” for Venezuela but argued Trump should have involved Congress before conducting the attack.
“The absence of congressional involvement prior to this action risks the continuation of the illegitimate Venezuelan regime,” Wasserman Schultz said in a statement.
Other Democrats voiced stronger opposition to the administration’s military moves.
“Millions of Americans voted in the last Presidential election to end frivolous conflicts and unnecessary foreign wars,” said Rep. Gabe Vasquez (D-N.M.), an Armed Services Committee member, in a statement. “This escalation of hostilities against Venezuela and the capture of a foreign leader without congressional authorization goes against the will of the Americans who put the president in power.”
Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), who found himself accused of sedition by Trump in November after encouraging American troops to disregard unlawful orders, urged Congress to reassert its war powers in this week’s vote.
“I want the people of Venezuela to be free to choose their own future, but if we learned anything from the Iraq war, it’s that dropping bombs or toppling a leader doesn’t guarantee democracy, stability, or make Americans safer,” he wrote in a statement. “More often, it leads to chaos or drags the U.S. into a war and lengthy occupation. I don’t trust that this administration has a plan, timeline, or price tag for what comes next.”
But haw
kish GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina offered a rejoinder on X to critics of the operation who are “focus[ed] on absurd ‘legal’ theories” and “virtually AWOL for the cause of freedom.”
“To the pathetically weak and hand wringing liberal Democrats who seem to be okay with a perpetual drug caliphate in our backyard, the centerpiece of which is Venezuela,” he wrote, “Get a grip.”
Jordain Carney contributed to this report.
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