Democrats condemn Trump’s Venezuela strikes as Republicans largely cheer Maduro’s capture

As details about the Trump administration’s military strikes on Venezuela and the capture of President Nicolás Maduro emerged on Saturday morning, Democrats and Republicans had largely opposing reactions to the operation, which congressional lawmakers did not approve and had no prior knowledge about.

Democratic lawmakers, who uniformly condemned the attack and criticized the administration’s lack of plans following Maduro’s ouster, demanded answers. House Democrats scheduled an emergency virtual caucus meeting for Sunday afternoon.

“President Trump’s unauthorized military attack on Venezuela to arrest Maduro — however terrible he is — is a sickening return to a day when the United States asserted the right to dominate the internal political affairs of all nations in the Western Hemisphere,” said Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere, in a statement. “That history is replete with failures, and doubling down on it makes it difficult to make the claim with a straight face that other countries should respect the United States’ sovereignty when we do not do the same.”

Kaine, who is also a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, called on Congress to “reassert its critical constitutional role” in foreign policy matters and said his resolution to curtail the administration’s hostilities against Venezeula without congressional authority will be up for a vote next week.

President Donald Trump announced the strikes early on Saturday and said that Maduro and his wife are in U.S. custody. The attack marks a huge escalation of Trump’s hostilities toward the Venezuelan government and raises questions about the legal justification for the operation.

Several Democrats also called out Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who they said had told Congress that the administration did not intend to impose regime change in Venezuela.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York said Saturday he was “shocked” by the developments, especially after Trump administration officials assured him last month they were not seeking a regime change in Venezuela. He called the Trump administration’s failure to notify Congress “an excuse for secrecy” and “outrageous and dangerous.”

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries issued a statement lambasting Trump and his top officials for not seeking congressional approval for the use of military force. And in a joint statement, Schumer and Jeffries called on the Trump administration to provide an immediate briefing to top Democratic and GOP leaders in the House and Senate. 

“Maduro is an illegitimate ruler, but I have seen no evidence that his presidency poses a threat that would justify military action without Congressional authorization, nor have I heard a strategy for the day after and how we will prevent Venezuela from descending into chaos,” said Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., ranking member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. “Secretary Rubio repeatedly denied to Congress that the Administration intended to force regime change in Venezuela. The Administration must immediately brief Congress on its plan to ensure stability in the region and its legal justification for this decision.”

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the attack “is entirely inconsistent with what his cabinet repeatedly briefed to Congress” and is counter to what the American public wants.

“Because the President and his Cabinet repeatedly denied any intention of conducting regime change in Venezuela when briefing Congress, we are left with no understanding of how the Administration is preparing to mitigate risks to the U.S. and we have no information regarding a long-term strategy following today’s extraordinary escalation,” Shaheen said. “Instead, the Administration consistently misled the American people and their elected representatives by offering three differing and contradictory explanations for its actions.”

Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., Vice Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said the administration’s actions may set a dangerous precedent.

“If the United States asserts the right to use military force to invade and capture foreign leaders it accuses of criminal conduct, what prevents China from claiming the same authority over Taiwan’s leadership? What stops Vladimir Putin from asserting similar justification to abduct Ukraine’s president?” Warner said. “Once this line is crossed, the rules that restrain global chaos begin to collapse, and authoritarian regimes will be the first to exploit it.”

Republicans, on the other hand, largely praised Trump for the attack.

Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, hailed the operation as one that “changed the course of Latin America for a generation.” Moreno, whose family immigrated to Florida from Colombia, also repeated the administration’s claim that the war on Maduro was aimed at protecting Americans from narcoterrorism.

“Today’s military action in Venezuela was a decisive and justified operation that will protect American lives,” House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said about the attack. “Nicolas Maduro is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans after years of trafficking illegal drugs and violent cartel members into our country — crimes for which he’s been properly indicted in U.S. courts and an arrest warrant duly issued — and today he learned what accountability looks like.”

Republican lawmakers also defended the administration’s actions and suggested that they were lawful, citing federal charges against Maduro.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said the Venezuelan leader’s capture was in “execution of a valid Department of Justice warrant.” However, Thune appeared to acknowledge that the administration had not presented a post-Maduro strategy to senators, saying that he looked forward to “receiving further briefings from the administration on this operation as part of its comprehensive counternarcotics strategy when the Senate returns to Washington next week.”

There were some voices of dissent from the GOP, however. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., who had a high-profile break with Trump and who is set to depart Congress this month, questioned the administration’s focus on Venezuela. She pointed to the outsized role of Mexican cartels in bringing illicit drugs into the U.S. and Trump’s pardoning of former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez who was convicted in a drug trafficking case.

“Americans [sic] disgust with our own government’s never ending military aggression and support of foreign wars is justified because we are forced to pay for it and both parties, Republicans and Democrats, always keep the Washington military machine funded and going,” Greene said in a statement on X. “This is what many in MAGA thought they voted to end. Boy were we wrong.”

Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, who has backed legislation to curb Trump’s hostilities against Venezuela, also questioned the constitutionality of the attack.

“If this action were constitutionally sound, the Attorney General wouldn’t be tweeting that they’ve arrested the President of a sovereign country and his wife for possessing guns in violation of a 1934 U.S. firearm law,” Massie wrote on X, referring to the indictment against Maduro and his wife that accuses them of violating the National Firearms Act.