How Trump’s Pressure Tactics Sank the Venezuela War Powers Debate

The U.S. Senate narrowly voted Wednesday night to strip a bipartisan resolution aimed at preventing unauthorized military operations in Venezuela of its privileged status. The action effectively killed the war powers measure and sidestepped (for now) what would likely have been a difficult and embarrassing congressional debate for U.S. President Donald Trump regarding his recent and potential future invasions of the South American country.

The Senate voted 51-50, with Vice President J.D. Vance providing the tiebreaking vote, on a procedural point of order that deemed that the resolution from Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine was not privileged and thus not entitled to the fast-track status that permits the forcing of floor votes. Two of the five Republican senators—Josh Hawley and Todd Young—who last week voted with Democrats to allow debate on the measure switched their votes after coming under intense criticism from Trump.

In switching their votes, Hawley and Young said they were convinced on a technical point that the wording of the Kaine resolution—specifically directing “the president to terminate the use of United States Armed Forces for hostilities within or against Venezuela”—described a situation that was no longer taking place since U.S. troops were not currently deployed in the country.

“For me, this has always been about ground troops … ground troops into Venezuela, occupying Venezuela. That’s not something that I think I would want to do,” Hawley said in a Wednesday interview with Fox News, noting that since his vote last week, he had spoken with Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio about his concerns. “I thank the administration for all of their outreach, and what the secretary of state said to me, very clearly, is, ‘We’re not doing that. We don’t have ground troops in Venezuela. This is not another Iraq. We’re not going to occupy Venezuela.’ And you know what? That’s good enough for me.”

Speaking on the Senate floor on Thursday, Young said: “I’ve had numerous conversations with senior national security officials over the past week. … I’ve received assurances that there are, number one, no longer any American troops in Venezuela. I’ve also received a commitment that if President Trump were to determine American forces were needed in any major military operations in Venezuela, the administration will come to Congress in advance to ask for a formal authorization on the use of military force.”

Young also said he had received a commitment from Rubio to “provide a public update on Venezuela” before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee “immediately” after next week’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday recess.

Following the vote, Democrats vented their frustrations.

“If President Trump were confident in the merits and legality of his deeply unpopular Venezuela war, he wouldn’t have bullied members of his own party into using an obscure procedural trick to avoid a public debate about it,” Kaine said in a statement, adding that Democrats planned to file “a whole lot more war powers resolutions to stop the President from taking military action against the many other countries he’s threatened.”

Those threatened countries include Colombia, Cuba, Mexico, and NATO ally Denmark. With Trump and his administration ramping up threats to use military force to seize Greenland, a Danish territory, numerous lawmakers, including multiple senior Republicans such as Sen. Mitch McConnell, have blasted the administration for threatening Denmark and hurting NATO members’ faith in the United States to honor its military guarantees to the alliance.

“The administration has failed to provide many of the answers Congress is rightfully owed and made clear it has no plan to ensure the will of the Venezuelan people is honored, or that power is transferred to legitimate democratic leadership,” Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley said in a statement on Wednesday. “Instead of standing up to Trump, Senate Republicans blocked yet another attempt to rein in our warmonger president.” Merkley has introduced a separate bill that would use Congress’s power of the purse to deny funding to any unauthorized military attacks on Venezuela.

The procedural tactic that Democrats lampooned Republicans for using this week was last used by Democrats themselves in 2024 to strip a war powers resolution of its privileged status. That resolution, from Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, sought to end then-President Joe Biden’s deployment of U.S. military service members to build and operate a pier near the Gaza Strip coast to deliver humanitarian supplies into the besieged territory.

“This institution cannot stop something that isn’t happening, and that’s exactly what the resolution directs the president to do,” Republican Sen. Jim Risch, the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, said in a Wednesday floor speech, praising Trump’s early January incursion into Venezuela to capture President Nicolás Maduro. Risch said the operation involved 200 U.S. troops who were inside Venezuela for less than two hours, including 27 minutes spent fighting and killing Maduro’s Cuban guards. “It was incredibly brief, targeted, and very successful,” Risch said.

“The operation has ended. It’s over. There’s no troops there,” he added, highlighting the official letter he received from Rubio this week assuring him of the matter.