WASHINGTON — While Republican leaders and allies of President Donald Trump praised his strike in Venezuela to capture leader Nicolás Maduro, Democrats and even some Republicans from various ideological corners of the party are pushing back.
In the immediate aftermath of the attack, Trump is facing questions from Capitol Hill about the legality and the wisdom of the attack, with critics fearing it could drag the U.S. into another costly war with no end in sight.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., a MAGA firebrand who has recently accused Trump of betraying the movement, questioned Trump’s justification for the strike, saying on X that if it is truly about going after drug traffickers, “then why hasn’t the Trump admin taken action against Mexican cartels?”
Instead, she accused Trump of seeking regime change in “a clear move for control over Venezuelan oil supplies.”
“Americans 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,” Greene continued. “And both parties, Republicans and Democrats, always keep the Washington military machine funded and going. This is what many in MAGA thought they voted to end. Boy were we wrong.”
Centrist Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., echoing others in both parties, said in a statement that the capture of Maduro is “great for the future of Venezuelans and the region.” But the military veteran said he worries the strike will embolden other countries to take similar actions.
“My main concern now is that Russia will use this to justify their illegal and barbaric military actions against Ukraine, or China to justify an invasion of Taiwan,” Bacon said. “Freedom and rule of law were defended last night, but dictators will try to exploit this to rationalize their selfish objectives.”
Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., a fiscal hawk and libertarian, argued that the Trump administration is contradicting its own legal justifications for the military strike.
“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 said on X.
Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., issued a pointed criticism of the attack and questioned its legality, saying that it is “long past time for Congress to reassert its critical constitutional role in matters of war.”
Kaine, who sits on the Foreign Relations and Armed Services committees, said the full Senate will vote “next week” on his bipartisan resolution, which was prepared before the U.S. strike, to avoid “war with Venezuela absent a clear congressional authorization.”
“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,” Kaine said in a statement.
“Where will this go next?” he added. “Will the President deploy our troops to protect Iranian protesters? To enforce the fragile ceasefire in Gaza? To battle terrorists in Nigeria? To seize Greenland or the Panama Canal? To suppress Americans peacefully assembling to protest his policies? Trump has threatened to do all this and more and sees no need to seek legal authorization from people’s elected legislature before putting servicemembers at risk.”
The so-called gang of eight — the top four leaders in Congress and top four intelligence committee chiefs — were “not notified ahead of time” regarding the Venezuela attack, said a spokesperson for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., also accused the administration of failing to “properly notify Congress in advance of the operation in Venezuela.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio defended the decision not to notify lawmakers beforehand.
“We called members of Congress immediately after. This was not the kind of mission that you can do congressional notification on,” he said Saturday at a press conference with Trump. “It’s just not the kind of mission you can prenotify because it endangers the mission.”
Trump chimed in: “Congress has a tendency to leak. This would not have been good.”
Several critics of the move have drawn comparisons to the Iraq War, citing Trump’s statement Saturday that the U.S. is “going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition.”
Jeffries said in his statement that “the promotion of security and stability in a region requires more than just military force as we painfully discovered in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
Schumer sounded a similar note. “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.”
Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, said: “We should have learned by now not to get involved in endless wars and regime change missions that carry catastrophic consequences for Americans.”
Rubio has been making calls to some members of Congress — including House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., they said in separate statements Saturday.
“Today’s military action in Venezuela was a decisive and justified operation that will protect American lives,” Johnson said. “The Trump Administration is working to schedule briefings for Members as Congress returns to Washington next week.”
Thune said he looks forward to those briefings and also suggested the attack was justified.
“President Trump’s decisive action to disrupt the unacceptable status quo and apprehend Maduro, through the execution of a valid Department of Justice warrant, is an important first step to bring him to justice for the drug crimes for which he has been indicted in the United States,” he said.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., told NBC News that Trump’s press conference was a “very strong statement … that the days of narco-terrorism drug caliphates in your backyard are over.”
“My takeaway is we’re going to be patient. Make sure we rebuild Venezuela, beneficial to the Venezuelan people and make them an ally,” he said. “If I were Cuba, I’d be nervous about this news conference.”
When pressed on Trump’s statement that the U.S. would control Venezuela, Graham said: “The context made sense, but long-term operations are difficult. Securing the oil, helping rebuild the institutions. But the sooner we can have an election, the better.”
Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, tweeted in the early hours of Saturday morning, “I look forward to learning what, if anything, might constitutionally justify this action in the absence of a declaration of war or authorization for the use of military force.”
Within two hours, Lee changed his tune after a call from Rubio, saying the move “likely falls within the president’s inherent authority under Article II of the Constitution to protect U.S. personnel from an actual or imminent attack.”
