President Donald Trump, followed by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, arrives to speak at Mar-a-Lago after announcing that US military forces had captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores.Alex Brandon/AP
Democratic members of the Committee on Armed Services, which helps oversee the nation’s military, denounced President Donald Trump’s announcement on Saturday that United States military forces struck Venezuela and captured the nation’s president, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife, Cilia Flores.
Trump did not seek congressional authority for the attack and said at a press conference that the US is “going to run the country.” Trump’s decision to move ahead without congressional approval may be a violation of the US constitution and amount to a criminal act, according to legal experts.
Sen. Mark Kelly, a Democrat from Arizona and a veteran who served as a combat pilot and flew dozens of missions in the Gulf War with Iraq, said in a statement that Trump “doesn’t understand the risks and costs involved with these poorly thought-out decisions that don’t make Americans any safer today than they were yesterday.” Maduro, he added, “is a brutal, illegitimate dictator who deserves to face justice.”
“I want the people of Venezuela to be free to choose their own future,” Kelly continued, “but if we learned anything from the Iraq war, it’s that dropping bombs or toppling a leader doesn’t guarantee democracy, stability, or make Americans safer.”
In the early hours of Saturday, according to Trump, US military forces “successfully carried out a large scale strike against Venezuela and its leader” in an operation “done in conjunction with U.S. Law Enforcement.” The operation included a strike on Caracas, the Venezuelan capital, in the middle of the night. Early reports from Venezuelan officials and journalists indicate that there were civilian casualties.
During a press conference at Mar-a-Lago hours later, President Trump said the US would not hesitate to attack again, and signaled an indefinite occupation of Venezuela. During that address, Trump defended his decision to skirt congressional approval, saying that “Congress has a tendency to leak.” He has also neglected to get approval from Congress for the dozens of known strikes in South American waters against boats that the administration says are filled with drug smugglers. Those strikes have killed at least 115 people.
Other Democratic senators on the Armed Services Committee decried the Trump administration’s latest escalation in their ongoing military operation against Venezuela.
“This is ludicrous,” Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the top Democrat on the committee, said in a statement. He added that no plan has been presented for what the costs the US will have to bear to “run” Venezuela, as Trump has described. Reed, a decorated veteran and former West Point faculty member, continued, “History offers no shortage of warnings about the costs – human, strategic, and moral—of assuming we can govern another nation by force.”
“President Trump’s unilateral military action to attack another country and seize Maduro—no matter how terrible a dictator he is—is unconstitutional and threatens to drag the U.S. into further conflicts in the region,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts wrote on X.
Sen. Tammy Duckworth, an Iraq war veteran and Purple Heart recipient, wrote on X that Trump’s “actions continue putting American troops, personnel and citizens at risk both in the region and around the globe.” “None of that,” the Illinois representative added, “serves our nation’s interests.”
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) wrote in a series of posts on X, “Maduro is a cruel criminal dictator, but President Trump has never sought approval from Congress for war as the Constitution requires—& our military deserves.”
“If we’re starting another endless war, with no clear national security strategy or need,” Blumenthal, who enlisted in the Marine Corps Reserves in 1970, began, “count me out.”
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York also critiqued Maduro, calling him a “thuggish dictator.” But she also said the Constitution and international law are “not optional.” She called on the administration to justify this “act of war” to her committee and the American people.
According to the Trump administration, Maduro and his wife are en route to Manhattan to face several charges in an indictment filed with the Southern District of New York court by the Justice Department. The indictment, posted on social media by US Attorney General Pam Bondi, claims Maduro “allows cocaine-fueled corruption to flourish for his own benefit, for the benefit of members of his ruling regime, and for the benefit of his family members.” Amongst others allegations, he is being charged with narco-terrorism and conspiracy to import cocaine.
Since late summer, Trump has justified the US’s offensive against Venezuela as a way to curb the flow of drugs into the US, where fentanyl leads to the majority of overdose deaths. Yet the indictment doesn’t mention fentanyl. And, as the New York Times has reported, “Venezuela is not a major source of drugs in the United States.”
On Saturday, Trump repeated his claim about Venezuela playing an oversize role in the US drug trade. But he also spoke at length about obtaining control over oil in Venezuela—home to the largest known oil reserve in the world, which is currently controlled by a Venezuelan state-owned company.
Several Republican members of the Armed Services Committee on Saturday praised Trump’s decision to capture Maduro, without engaging with the likelihood that his actions may have violated the law.
Committee Chair Roger Wicker, a senator from Mississippi who served in the Air Force, said in a statement, “I commend President Trump for ordering a successful mission to arrest illegitimate Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro and bring him to the United States to face justice.”
“It’s a reminder to adversaries around the world of what our military is capable of when we have a commander-in-chief with the strength and resolution to deploy that military when necessary to defend vital US national interests,” Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton, a veteran who served two combat tours, said during an interview with Fox News.
Sen. Jim Banks from Indiana, a Navy veteran who deployed to Afghanistan wrote on X: “Let this be a warning to every narcoterrorist in the Western Hemisphere. President Trump is doing exactly what Americans elected him to do, protect America and keep our people safe.”
During President Trump’s press conference at Mar-a-Lago, he issued a similar warning. “All political and military figures must realize,” he began, “that what happened to Maduro can happen to them.”
