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A push to block Donald Trump from making war on Venezuela fell short in the Senate on Thursday when nearly every Republican sided with the White House.
Advocates for the war powers resolution sought to cast it as an embodiment of MAGA non-interventionism in a bid to sway Republican senators. The GOP, however, largely lined up behind Trump instead as he mulls attacking Venezuela.
“For decades, the globalists in Washington have led our country into one disastrous foreign war after another.”
Senators voted 51-49 against the resolution, dooming it even as a U.S. aircraft carrier sailed toward the Caribbean. The resolution would have faced long odds even if it had passed, since Trump could have vetoed it, as he did in 2019 in the face of a measure blocking him from supporting Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen.
Using language drawn from the MAGA lexicon, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., the lone Republican co-sponsor of the measure, asked his colleagues on the Senate floor to block the potential strikes.
“For decades, the globalists in Washington have led our country into one disastrous foreign war after another, whether in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and now Venezuela,” Paul said. “The warmongers have recycled these experiments in regime change again and again, and what has it brought? Instability, chaos, suffering, and resentment. It is the height of arrogance to think we can forcibly remove the dictatorship in Venezuela and expect a different result.”
The sole Republican to vote in favor of the resolution with him was Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.
Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, who last month was the sole Democrat to vote against a different war powers resolution aimed at blocking strikes on alleged drug boats, flipped to vote with the rest of his caucus on Thursday.
Ahead of the vote, Senate Foreign Relations Chair Jim Risch, R-Idaho, tried to rally Republican opposition to the war powers bill by noting that the White House had issued a statement against the resolution.
“President Trump has taken decisive action to protect thousands of Americans from lethal narcotics,” he said. “As commander-in-chief, the president sees a group of terrorists planning to harm America or our allies, he has the right — and not only the right, but the duty — to do something about it.”
Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., said that while Risch’s comments focused on Trump’s on attacks at sea, the resolution up for a vote Thursday was about attacks on Venezuelan land.
“This is about the prospect, openly discussed by the president, for a land invasion of the sovereign nation of Venezuela. The president has not asserted a rationale for it,” he said.
The vote came amid reports that some Republican lawmakers are not satisfied with the administration’s justification for its strikes on alleged drug boats. On Wednesday, top administration officials attempted to assure members of Congress in a briefing that they had no immediate plans to attack Venezuela — although they did not rule out strikes either, according to a CNN report.
Trump has not openly committed to attacking Venezuela, but according to multiple reports he is considering military force aimed at destabilizing President Nicolás Maduro.
Strikes on Venezuelan territory itself would represent a dramatic escalation from the U.S. military’s extrajudicial killings of alleged drug trafficking boat crew members in the Caribbean and Pacific Ocean, which so far have claimed at least 67 lives.
Ahead of the vote, advocacy groups sought to convince GOP senators that the war powers resolution reflected Trump’s oft-stated hostility toward nation-building and regime change.
