As Venezuela Attack Death Toll Continues to Rise, Congress May Finally Take a Stand

When it comes to the Trump administration’s brazen disregard for international and Constitutional law, and bullying tactics as it attempts to reassert the United States’ total dominance over the Western Hemisphere, the common refrain from just about anyone other than MAGA zealots is naturally, “Where is Congress?” So often cowed into submission by Trump’s glee in taking a lead role in personally attacking and backing primary challenges against any Republican who doesn’t immediately fall in line–and plenty of them who do–the 119th United States Congress has been persistently characterized as a scrap heap of inaction, filled alternatingly with slavish lapdogs and zealots on the right side of the aisle, and feckless token resistance on the left. These legislators, like many others in the judicial branch, have been all too happy to surrender powers and responsibilities assigned to them by the Constitution in order to prop up Trump’s burgeoning dictatorship, leaving public approval for Congress as a body at an anemic 17% as of mid-December. But today, at least, the U.S. Senate can say that it’s made some symbolic gesture in rebuking Trump’s most recent warmongering actions in the nation of Venezuela, with a handful of GOP defectors joining Democrats to advance a resolution that would require congressional approval for further military action there.

Granted: Said resolution, in which senators voted 52-47 to allow a future vote on the Senate floor, comes after the United States already invaded Venezuela, abducted its admittedly illegitimate president Nicolás Maduro, and immediately started claiming that we would be controlling the entire oil industry upon which the destabilized, corruption-wracked nation depends. In a New York Times piece yesterday, Trump was asked directly how long the U.S. would need to be “running” things as it extorts relatively useless heavy oil from the country. Would it take months? Years? Trump’s reply: “I would say much longer.”

Naturally, this flies directly in the face of how Trump and his administration had been attempting to portray the military involvement in Venezuela, saying that they were simply enforcing an arrest warrant against Maduro, rather than, you know … going to war or anything like that. This line has only become more and more absurd as the known death toll from said “surgical operation” has continued to climb. Venezuela’s interior minister finally offered some numbers on that front this week, saying that more than 100 Venezuelans–with some implied civilians–had been killed during the strikes and abduction operation to nab Maduro, which left a handful of U.S. soldiers wounded. That’s in addition to at least 32 military personnel from Cuba who were also killed, even as the ceasing of deliveries of Venezuelan oil to the island nation 90 miles off the American coast is likely to lead to economic collapse and mass starvation within weeks, to Marco Rubio’s delight. And not to make too big a deal of it, but in a “surgical strike,” one doesn’t typically continue to blockade foreign ships entering a country, or insist that you’re taking over its oil industry for decades to come.

“We’re seizing its oil,” said Senator Tim Kaine (VA), one of the sponsors of the bipartisan resolution that advanced in the Senate today. “We’ve got a military blockade. You know, this is, this is not a surgical arrest operation, by any stretch, and that means we got to declare where we are on it.”

Kaine was joined by Kentucky Senator Rand Paul as a co-sponsor, who insisted to reporters after its advancement that the resolution wasn’t about the moral status or legitimacy of Maduro as Venezuela’s leader, but about Congress asserting its constitutionally granted power, codified in the War Powers Resolution of 1973, to declare war and apply the U.S. military in these international situations. He was joined in defection by traditional Republican moderate wafflers Lisa Murkowski (AK) and Susan Collins (ME), and the more surprising additions of Sen. Todd Young (IN) and Sen. Josh Hawley (MO).

Susan Collins is a YES on Venezuela war powers res: “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.”

— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur.bsky.social) Jan 8, 2026 at 11:29 AM

“The debate really isn’t about good or evil, bad or good,” Paul said. “There’s a lot of evil in the world. The question is about who has the power to take the country to war. The Constitution was very clear, and it divides war into two aspects. One is the declaration or initiation of war, that power was given to Congress, and then the execution of the war, the making of the war, was left to the president.”

Human wet blanket and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer was likewise happy to talk about the “clear signal” that was being sent, saying the following: “I’m very grateful to the Republicans who joined us. It was not a partisan act. It was a constitutional one. We forced Republicans to face what is obvious. Trump will not stop here and won’t stop now. Today’s vote sends a clear signal: no president, no matter how reckless, no matter how egotistical, gets a blank check to wage large scale military action abroad.”

The resolution will still need to face another vote in the Senate, which will now be expected to pass. At the same time, however, the U.S. House of Representatives is scheduled to have a vote of its own on a similar measure that would likewise limit Trump’s powers to use the military in Venezuela. If that resolution was to pass, the two chambers of Congress would need to come together to craft a unified version, ultimately sending something (purely symbolic, most likely) to Trump’s desk. If he were to veto such a resolution like the aggrieved baby he is, then we’d get a real taste for how willing this Congress is to stand up to the President on the subject, which we would predict to be “not very.” Still, the success of the resolution could prompt congressional Democrats to push for more preemptive resolutions to prevent further U.S. military use without congressional approval in other countries that Trump has recently threatened, including Greenland, Colombia and Nigeria.

The White House and its surrogates, meanwhile, have already launched into a new talking point: Calling the War Powers Act itself unconstitutional, and telegraphing that as with so many judicial rulings, they’ll probably just choose to ignore whatever Congress says and dare them to do anything about it. Speaking to reporters today, Vice President JD Vance claimed without offering any specifics that the War Powers Act was “fake,” and that the Senate’s movement toward passing its resolution wouldn’t change anything about how they’re operating.

“Every President, Democrat or Republican, believes the War Powers Act is fundamentally a fake and unconstitutional law,” said Vance in the press briefing, taking the bold leadership role of speaking for every former President, living and dead. “It’s not going to change anything about how we conduct foreign policy over the next couple of weeks, the next couple of months, and that will continue to be how we approach things go.”

As ever, Trump’s favored lieutenants are not shy about sneering at members of the rest of the government who believe they have any authority to provide, say, a check or a balance on any of the executive branch’s actions. This is what we get, for establishing a representative democracy that assumed anyone elected to the highest office in the land would have some kind of respect for its toothless lack of enforcement. Turns out that all it took to circumvent Congress was someone willing to say “Hey, we’re circumventing Congress,” while daring them to do anything about it. Maybe our lifelong, octogenarian career legislators will suddenly decide they have an appetite for confrontation? We wouldn’t count on it.