WASHINGTON — Senate Republicans voted to dismiss a war powers resolution Wednesday that would have limited President Donald Trump’s ability to conduct further attacks on Venezuela after two GOP senators reversed course on supporting the legislation.
Trump put intense pressure on five Republican senators who joined with Democrats to advance the resolution last week and ultimately prevailed in heading off passage of the legislation. Two of the Republicans — Sens. Josh Hawley of Missouri and Todd Young of Indiana — flipped under the pressure.
Vice President JD Vance had to break the 50-50 deadlock in the Senate on a Republican motion to dismiss the bill.
The outcome of the high-profile vote demonstrated how Trump still has command over much of the Republican conference, yet the razor-thin vote tally also showed the growing concern on Capitol Hill over the president’s aggressive foreign policy ambitions.
Democrats forced the debate after U.S. troops captured Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro in a surprise nighttime raid earlier this month
“Here we have one of the most successful attacks ever and they find a way to be against it. It’s pretty amazing. And it’s a shame,” Trump said at a speech in Michigan Tuesday. He also hurled insults at several of the Republicans who advanced the legislation, calling Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky a “stone cold loser” and Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine “disasters.” Those three Republicans stuck to their support for the legislation.
Trump’s latest comments followed earlier phone calls with the senators, which they described as terse. The president’s fury underscored how the war powers vote had taken on new political significance as Trump also threatens military action to accomplish his goal of possessing Greenland.
The legislation, even if it had cleared the Senate, had virtually no chance of becoming law because it would eventually need to be signed by Trump himself. But it represented both a test of GOP loyalty to the president and a marker for how much leeway the Republican-controlled Senate is willing to give Trump to use the military abroad. Republican angst over his recent foreign policy moves — especially threats of using military force to seize Greenland from a NATO ally — is still running high in Congress.
Two Republicans reconsider
Hawley, who helped advance the war powers resolution last week, said Trump’s message during a phone call was that the legislation “really ties my hands.” The senator said he had a follow-up phone call with Secretary of State Marco Rubio Monday and was told “point blank, we’re not going to do ground troops.”
The senator added that he also received assurances that the Trump administration will follow constitutional requirements if it becomes necessary to deploy troops again to the South American country.
“We’re getting along very well with Venezuela,” Trump told reporters at a ceremony for the signing of an unrelated bill Wednesday.
As senators went to the floor for the vote Wednesday evening, Young also told reporters he was no longer in support. He said that he had extensive conversations with Rubio and received assurances that the secretary of state will appear at a public hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Young also shared a letter from Rubio that stated the president will “seek congressional authorization in advance (circumstances permitting)” if he engaged in “major military operations” in Venezuela.
The senators also said his efforts were also instrumental in pushing the administration to release Wednesday a 22-page Justice Department memo laying out the legal justification for the snatch-and-grab operation against Maduro.
That memo, which was heavily redacted, indicates that the administration, for now, has no plans to ramp up military operations in Venezuela.
“We were assured that there is no contingency plan to engage in any substantial and sustained operation that would amount to a constitutional war,” according to the memo signed by Assistant Attorney General Elliot Gaiser.
Trump’s shifting rationale for military intervention
Trump has used a series of legal arguments for his campaign against Maduro.
As he built up a naval force in the Caribbean and destroyed vessels that were allegedly carrying drugs from Venezuela, the Trump administration tapped wartime powers under the global war on terror by designating drug cartels as terrorist organizations.
The administration has claimed the capture of Maduro himself was actually a law enforcement operation, essentially to extradite the Venezuelan president to stand trial for charges in the U.S. that were filed in 2020.
Paul criticized the administration for first describing its military build-up in Caribbean as a counternarcotics operation but now floating Venezuela’s vast oil reserves as a reason for maintaining pressure.
“The bait and switch has already happened,” he said.
Trump’s foreign policy worries Congress
Lawmakers, including a significant number of Republicans, have been alarmed by Trump’s recent foreign policy talk. In recent weeks, he has pledged that the U.S. will “run” Venezuela for years to come, threatened military action to take possession of Greenland and told Iranians protesting their government that “ help is on its way.”
Senior Republicans have tried to massage the relationship between Trump and Denmark, a NATO ally that holds Greenland as a semi-autonomous territory. But Danish officials emerged from a meeting with Vance and Rubio Wednesday saying a “fundamental disagreement” over Greenland remains.
“What happened tonight is a roadmap to another endless war,” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said at a news conference following the vote.
More than half of U.S. adults believe President Donald Trump has “gone too far” in using the U.S. military to intervene in other countries, according to a new AP-NORC poll.
How Republican leaders dismissed the bill
Last week’s procedural vote on the war powers resolution was supposed to set up hours of debate and a vote on final passage. But Republican leaders began searching for a way to defuse the conflict between their members and Trump as well as move on quickly to other business.
Once Hawley and Young changed their support for the bill, Republicans were able to successfully challenge whether it was appropriate when the Trump administration has said U.S. troops are not currently deployed in Venezuela.
“We’re not currently conducting military operations there,” said Senate Majority Leader John Thune in a floor speech. “But Democrats are taking up this bill because their anti-Trump hysteria knows no bounds.”
Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine, who has brought a series of war powers resolutions this year, accused Republicans of burying a debate about the merits of an ongoing campaign of attacks and threats against Venezuela.
“If this cause and if this legal basis were so righteous, the administration and its supporters would not be afraid to have this debate before the public and the United States Senate,” he said in a floor speech.
Kaine vowed to force votes on war powers resolutions that would apply to a number of potential military conflicts, including Greenland. House Democrats have also filed a similar war powers resolution and can force a vote on it as soon as next week.
Associated Press writers Josh Goodman, Lisa Mascaro, Mary Clare Jalonick and Joey Cappelletti in Washington and Bill Barrow in Atlanta contributed to this report.