US Senate advances war powers resolution to stop Trump from taking further military action in Venezuela

The US Senate on Thursday advanced a bipartisan resolution to prevent Donald Trump from taking further military actions against Venezuela, after he ordered a weekend raid to capture that country’s president, Nicolás Maduro, without giving Congress advance notice.

The measure passed with 52 senators in favor and 47 opposed. All Democrats voted for the measure, as did Republicans Rand Paul, Todd Young, Lisa Murkowski, Josh Hawley and Susan Collins.

The war powers resolution, introduced by the Democratic senator Tim Kaine, requires Trump to seek permission before attacking or otherwise using the military against Venezuela. Following the Saturday raid that saw US special forces assault the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, and spirit Maduro to New York City to face trial on charges related to “narco-terrorism”, the president said he did not tell lawmakers beforehand because “Congress has a tendency to leak”.

That sparked outrage among Democrats and some Republicans, who argued that the raid was illegal without Congress’s approval, and risked plunging the United States into a prolonged conflict.

“After the administration’s actions over the weekend, which resulted in several injuries to US service members … Congress needs to tell the American public where it stands,” Kaine said in a speech on the Senate floor on Tuesday.

Related: Democrats decry Venezuela attack as Republicans defend Trump after Senate briefing

Concern over US involvement in Venezuela is “about an instinctive wisdom among the American people that says war should be a last resort and it shouldn’t be entered into upon the say-so of one person”, he added.

The resolution was the latest to be proposed by Congress’s Democratic minority to halt Trump’s campaign against Venezuela’s government, which intensified in September when Trump approved airstrikes on boats off its coast that he alleges carried drugs.

Those attacks have killed at least 110 people, though experts have disputed Trump’s claim that the vessels were carrying fentanyl to US shores. Controversy intensified after it emerged that the military opted to kill two survivors of a strike rather than take them captive.

Previous war powers resolutions proposed in both chambers had failed – albeit narrowly – to garner enough support from the Republican majority to advance. Many in the GOP have praised Trump’s strikes on Venezuela as well as the rendition of Maduro as effective uses of US power.

“The world is safer because Maduro is apprehended in the hands of the US justice system,” the Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson said on Wednesday after the US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, and the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, briefed members of both chambers.

“President Trump is a strong president who takes decisive action, and that sends an important message to other dangerous people, terrorists and tyrants around the world. I think that’s an important role for America to play.”

In the Senate, Paul, a Kentucky senator who co-sponsored the resolution, and Murkowski of Alaska had been the only Republicans to break with their party and support the earlier war powers resolutions.. In comments to reporters the day prior , Paul argued that Congress must assert its authority over making war even when a military operation is successful, or risk allowing the country to be “run by emergency”.

“The reason you argue on principle against even things that appear to be good … isn’t even always for the current president, it’s for the next president,” he said.

The Democratic senator John Fetterman, who represents swing state Pennsylvania, voted for the resolution, after earlier calling the Saturday attack a “positive for Venezuela”.

“As a Democrat, I don’t understand why we can’t acknowledge a good development for Venezuelans – and how deft our military’s execution of that plan was,” he wrote on X.

Kaine said he expects lawmakers to introduce other war powers resolutions intended to stop hostilities towards Nigeria, Cuba, Mexico and Colombia – all countries Trump has struck in the past year, or threatened to attack.

Gregory Meeks, the top Democrat on the House foreign affairs committee, criticized Rubio and Hegseth after Wednesday’s briefing for not fully answering lawmakers’ questions. Last month, a war powers resolution he proposed was rejected by the House, and Meeks said he was considering introducing another.

“I have not seen the justification. We went from drugs to regime change to oil,” Meeks said. “I think that we need to get another war powers plan and get a vote on the floor, because this should upset not only Democrats, but Republicans also.”