US Senate Moves To Curb Trump’s Military Powers In Venezuela

The United States Senate has advanced a resolution aimed at restricting President Donald Trump’s ability to take further military action against Venezuela without explicit congressional authorisation.

In a 52–47 procedural vote on Thursday, five Republicans joined Senate Democrats in supporting the measure to advance the war powers resolution. If fully passed, the legislation would require Trump to withdraw US forces from “imminent engagement” in hostilities “within or against Venezuela” unless Congress approves further action.

The resolution will now proceed to full Senate debate before heading to the House of Representatives. Even if both chambers approve it, Trump could veto the measure, and overriding such a veto would demand a two-thirds majority in both chambers, a threshold analysts described as “highly unlikely.”

Despite that, Thursday’s vote was widely viewed as a symbolic victory for lawmakers seeking to reassert Congress’s constitutional authority over matters of war and peace, especially following last weekend’s military capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro during a dramatic US-led raid in Caracas.

“With this historic, bipartisan vote to prevent further war in Venezuela, Congress has begun the long-overdue work of reasserting its constitutional role in decisions of war and peace,” said Kharrazian, vice president for government affairs at the Center for International Policy, in a post on X (formerly Twitter).

Dylan Williams of the same organisation hailed the move as “a major rebuke” to Trump’s unilateral military tactics.

The five Republican senators who joined Democrats are Rand Paul, Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins, Todd Young, and Josh Hawley.

They broke ranks with their party, prompting an angry response from Trump.

In a fiery post on Truth Social, Trump said the group “should be ashamed” and “should never be elected to office again.”

LEADERSHIP reports that the US Constitution grants only Congress the authority to declare war, a power it has not exercised since World War II. The War Powers Act of 1973 was designed to check the president’s ability to engage in military conflict without legislative consent.

Many legal experts argued Trump’s operations in Venezuela clearly overstepped that boundary.

“Trump’s actions in Venezuela are a clear-cut case of presidential overreach crying out for congressional action,” said David Janovsky, acting director of the Constitution Project at the Project on Government Oversight, in an interview with Al Jazeera.

US military assets have remained deployed in the Caribbean since Maduro’s abduction. While no American troops are known to be on the ground in Venezuela, Trump has continued to threaten the country’s interim leader, Delcy Rodríguez , Maduro’s former deputy, warning that she could “pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro,” if she fails to meet U.S. demands.

Trump has also hinted at possible military action against Colombia and even Greenland, an autonomous Danish territory, raising fresh concerns about his expansive view of presidential war powers.

Not all Republicans shared the view that Trump’s actions amounted to overreach. Senator James Risch defended the U.S president’s moves, describing the Caracas operation as a brief, necessary mission.

“Unlike the former president, President Trump demonstrated he is a man of action, he was decisive, and did what he promised the American people he would do — keep them safe,” Risch said before the vote.

He argued the 47-minute operation did not constitute a “prolonged military engagement” and therefore did not need congressional approval.

But Senator Rand Paul took a sharply different view, accusing his party of having “lost its grip.”

“Make no mistake, bombing another nation’s capital and removing their leader is an act of war, plain and simple,” Paul wrote in an editorial for Responsible Statecraft. “No provision in the Constitution provides such power to the presidency.”

The Senate is expected to hold a final vote on the resolution soon.