The Senate narrowly advanced a bipartisan resolution Thursday morning blocking President Donald Trump from using future military force on Venezuela absent congressional authorization.
Lawmakers voted 52 to 47 to bring the war powers resolution to the Senate floor, overcoming a 50-vote threshold. The vast majority of Republicans rejected the effort to assert congressional oversight of Trump’s use of military action with the five defections limited to Republican Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky, Josh Hawley of Missouri, Todd Young of Indiana, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Paul were among the resolution’s cosponsors. Every Democratic senator voted to check the president’s authority.
A vote on final passage in the Senate is expected to happen next week. It is unclear whether House GOP leadership will allow the measure to come to the floor.
The White House urged senators to reject the resolution, citing “ongoing national security threats” posed by Venezuelan drug cartels. Trump would veto the measure if it reaches his desk, according to a statement of administration policy released Thursday.
Hawley, a close Trump ally, disputed that his “yes” vote should be viewed as crossing the president.
“On a going forward basis … that if the president should determine that he needs to put troops on the ground of Venezuela, I think then that Congress would have to be on the hook for that,” Hawley told reporters following the vote.
The Missouri Republican expressed skepticism of regime change in Venezuela during a brief interview with the Daily Caller News Foundation in November.
“That’s not where the administration is headed,” Hawley said before adding, “I’ve got to believe that it’s not.”
Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman, who has frequently backed Trump’s foreign policy agenda and signaled he might oppose the resolution, joined his fellow Democrats in supporting the measure. The maverick Democrat vocally praised the U.S. military operation capturing Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores.
Most GOP lawmakers, from leadership to longtime Trump critics, rejected the effort to check the president’s use of military force on Venezuela.
“Anything that Trump does, they’re opposed to, no matter how much in the past they may have been supportive of getting Maduro out of there,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune told the DCNF on Monday, adding that he didn’t see the war powers resolution as necessary.
“You don’t have to agree with a president’s approach to national security policy to acknowledge his compliance with the law & his constitutional authority for the use of force …which makes the invocation of the War Powers Act such a tired and blunt instrument,” Republican Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell wrote on X prior to the vote.
However, the dissenting Republicans argued that Congress must authorize future military action in Venezuela.
“I think it’s a crazy notion to say we’re going to call something that looks like war, not war, and call it a law enforcement operation, simply because we want to redefine it that way so we don’t have to ask Congress for permission,” Republican Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul told reporters. “I think it’s a clear violation of the Constitution.”
Collins said Thursday that she supported the effort to check Trump’s use of military force over concerns about his future plans with Venezuela. Trump told the New York Times that the United States could be running the South American country for years, adding that “only time will tell.”
“I believe invoking the War Powers Act at this moment is necessary, given the President’s comments about the possibility of ‘boots on the ground’ and a sustained engagement ‘running’ Venezuela, with which I do not agree,” Collins said in a statement prior to the vote Thursday.
Americans are roughly split on U.S. military action in Venezuela with 52% disapproving of the military operation to remove Maduro, according to a CBS News survey published Wednesday.
The Senate previously rejected a bipartisan measure to restrict Trump from striking Venezuela without congressional approval in November. Paul and Murkowski were the lone Republicans to break with Trump and support the resolution.
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