Republicans Block Effort to Check Trump’s Power in Venezuela

G.O.P. leaders succeeded in pressuring fellow senators who initially supported the measure that would have limited President Trump’s military authority in Venezuela.

The Senate on Wednesday blocked a resolution that sought to force President Trump to seek congressional approval for any U.S. military action related to Venezuela.

Republican leaders were able to garner enough support for their procedural maneuver to kill the resolution after Senators Josh Hawley of Missouri and Todd Young of Indiana flipped their position and joined the effort to stop it from coming up for a vote.

The shift brought about a 50-50 tie, which was broken late Wednesday in favor of Republican leadership by Vice President JD Vance, in his role as president of the Senate.

Mr. Hawley and Mr. Young were part of a group of five Republicans who last week joined all Democrats in supporting the measure aiming to curb the president’s war powers.

The move prompted backlash from Mr. Trump. In a social media post, he condemned the Republican senators’ “stupidity” and said they should lose their seats in Congress. White House officials and G.O.P. leaders had been pressing the five defectors to change their votes.

The effort to derail the measure began almost immediately after last week’s vote and centered on arguments that U.S. forces were no longer operating in Venezuela and that the mission was complete. Administration officials and Republican leaders have sought to portray the military action as a discrete one rather than a protracted, open-ended engagement, downplaying concerns raised by lawmakers about what could come next.

On Tuesday, Senator James R. Risch, Republican of Idaho and the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, asked the White House in a letter to confirm that Operation Absolute Resolve had ended and that “U.S. military personnel are no longer involved in hostilities in Venezuela.”

In a response sent Wednesday morning, Secretary of State Marco Rubio emphasized the limited scope of the operation and assured Mr. Risch that “there are currently no U.S. armed forces in Venezuela.” He also said that any future military actions that placed American forces into hostilities would be undertaken “consistent with the Constitution” and that Congress would be notified in accordance with the War Powers Resolution.

Such notifications from the Trump administration have come only after military operations have been carried out, including the dozens of strikes on vessels in the Caribbean and Pacific Oceans and the operation to capture Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro.

Mr. Hawley said that assurances from Mr. Rubio in the letter, and in phone calls from both the secretary and Mr. Trump, had convinced him that the resolution was no longer needed.

Similarly, Mr. Young said that after multiple conversations with Trump administration officials, he had secured “fairly extensive personal assurances related to our future intentions in Venezuela.” He also said that Mr. Rubio had agreed to appear before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee next month for the first public hearing on the military campaign, which began with strikes on boats in the Caribbean and culminated with the capture of Mr. Maduro.

The resolution, led by Senators Tim Kaine of Virginia, Adam B. Schiff of California, and Chuck Schumer of New York, the minority leader, all Democrats, together with Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, would have directed “the removal of United States armed forces from hostilities within or against Venezuela that have not been authorized by Congress.”

Its defeat follows two other unsuccessful attempts to reassert congressional authority on matters of war last year in the Senate.

Mr. Paul, the sole Republican to cosponsor the resolution, said that he too had spoken with Mr. Trump but was unmoved. He criticized party leaders for “playing games” and accused the administration of misleading lawmakers.

“Oh, it’s a drug bust. Oh, we’re going for drugs. Oh, it’s not really drugs, now it’s oil,” he said. “So see, the bait and switch has already happened.”

Last week, Mr. Hawley said that efforts to reassure senators in classified briefings that Mr. Trump did not plan to put U.S. boots on the ground did not sway him.

“He thinks that’s unlikely, which is great — that’s terrific,” Mr. Hawley said at the time. “But what I had to vote on today was: Does Congress need to authorize future in-country military operations? And I think we probably will need to under Article One.”

Now, he said that recent assurances from Mr. Rubio to “follow the relevant statutes in the Constitution” and not place U.S. ground troops in Venezuela without consulting Congress were enough.

“Nobody knows what will happen,” Mr. Hawley said Wednesday morning, “and that is why the commitment today from him to follow the relevant statutes, the notification procedures and to come back to Congress, I think, is really significant.”

The resolution was defeated with a procedural motion that challenged the resolution’s relevance by arguing that because U.S. troops are not currently in Venezuela, the issue is not germane.

“It’s pretty clear, in my view at least, that there are no hostilities that exist today, which, as I’ve suggested before, means that it shouldn’t be accorded privilege on the floor,” Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the majority leader, said Wednesday morning.

The deployment of the rare procedural tool to cut off debate and avoid the possibility of handing an embarrassing defeat to Mr. Trump provided the Republican defectors an offramp without fully appearing to abandon their objections.

Senators Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, along with Mr. Paul, were the only Republican defectors who affirmed their positions on Wednesday.

Democrats argued that the U.S. military remained involved, and they insisted that congressional oversight was required.

“There are U.S. military seizing Venezuelan oil every day. There’s U.S. military striking Venezuelans on boats in the water every day. We’re not occupying their country without the military,” Mr. Kaine said. “We just went in and deposed their government. We are controlling who governs the country. We are controlling when Venezuelans are entitled to have elections again. We’re controlling their chief economic asset. That’s all being done by the U.S. military.”

Related Content