Democrats are furious over President Donald Trump’s overnight strike in Venezuela.
The president’s latest show of force on the world stage, which Trump says saw the U.S. military capture Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, quickly united rank-and-file Democratic lawmakers behind one message: They say the White House illegally bypassed Congress and has no plan for the chaotic aftermath of war.
“Congress did not authorize this war,” Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) wrote on X. “Venezuela posed no imminent threat to the United States. This is reckless, elective regime change risking American lives (Iraq 2.0) with no plan for the day after. Wars cost more than trophies.”
Trump announced the strike in an early morning post on Truth Social Saturday, touching off a wave of praise from ideologically aligned members of his party — and fierce criticism from Democrats.
Notably, the top Democratic congressional leaders were not among the first to react. Instead, rank-and-file lawmakers took the lead in sharing their anger over Trump’s decision to topple a foreign leader by military force without asking lawmakers for authorization first.
One of the few Democrats in a key leadership position to speak out quickly Saturday was Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut, the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee. He said in a statement that the administration needed to “immediately brief Congress on its plan to ensure stability in the region and its legal justification for this decision.”
“Maduro is an illegitimate ruler,” Himes wrote. “But I have seen no evidence that his presidency poses a threat that would justify military action without Congressional authorization, nor have I heard a strategy for the day after and how we will prevent Venezuela from descending into chaos.”
Trump addressed the emerging Democratic criticism in a Fox News interview Saturday morning where he said “all they do is complain.”
“They should say, ‘Great job,'” he said. “They shouldn’t say, ‘Oh, gee, maybe it’s not constitutional.’ You know, the same old stuff that we’ve been hearing for years and years and years.”
Congress has not authorized military action against Venezuela, and lawmakers have been split for months on the legality of the Trump administration’s strikes against suspected drug smuggling vessels in the waters off Latin America and a potential move to oust Maduro. Republicans have fended off several Democratic-led efforts to require Trump to seek approval from Congress before attacking Venezuela.
Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), who sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee, announced Saturday he would again force the chamber to vote on his effort to constrain Trump’s war powers next week.
“Where will this go next?” he wrote. “Will the President deploy our troops to protect Iranian protesters? To enforce the fragile ceasefire in Gaza? To battle terrorists in Nigeria? To seize Greenland or the Panama Canal? To suppress Americans peacefully assembling to protest his policies? Trump has threatened to do all this and more and sees no need to seek legal authorization from people’s elected legislature before putting servicemembers at risk.”
Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah initially questioned the legal justification for the operation. But after a phone call with Secretary of State Marco Rubio to discuss the operation, the Utah senator said the move “likely falls within the president’s inherent authority under Article II of the Constitution to protect U.S. personnel from an actual or imminent attack.”
In addition to the murky legal justification, several Democrats said the move is an about-face for administration officials who they said argued regime change wasn’t the end goal of the administration’s aggressive military campaign in Latin America.
“Secretaries Rubio and [Pete] Hegseth looked every Senator in the eye a few weeks ago and said this wasn’t about regime change. I didn’t trust them then and we see now that they blatantly lied to Congress,” Sen. Andy Kim (D-N.J.) said on X. “Trump rejected our Constitutionally required approval process for armed conflict because the Administration knows the American people overwhelmingly reject risks pulling our nation into another war.”
Meanwhile, Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), a combat veteran who deployed to Iraq as an infantryman in 2005, wrote on X Saturday that “the American people did not ask for this.”
And he wondered aloud about what comes next for the South American country, asking on X, “so who is in charge of Venezuela now?”
A December Quinnipiac poll found that Americans overwhelmingly oppose military action against Venezuela, with just 25 percent of respondents saying they supported an intervention inside the country. Even the White House’s strategy of targeting boats with alleged drug traffickers proved broadly unpopular.
“I fought in some of the hardest battles of the Iraq War,” Gallego wrote. “Saw my brothers die, saw civilians being caught in the crossfire all for an unjustified war. No matter the outcome we are in the wrong for starting this war in Venezuela.”
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), who is a co-chair of the Congressional Venezuela Democracy Caucus and represents a significant population of Venezuelan immigrants in South Florida, signaled agreement with the move to oust Maduro. She called his capture “welcome news” for Venezuela but argued Trump should have involved Congress before conducting the attack.
“The absence of congressional involvement prior to this action risks the continuation of the illegitimate Venezuelan regime,” Wasserman Schultz said in a statement.
Other Democrats voiced stronger opposition to the administration’s military moves.
“Millions of Americans voted in the last Presidential election to end frivolous conflicts and unnecessary foreign wars,” said Rep. Gabe Vasquez (D-N.M.), an Armed Services Committee member, in a statement. “This escalation of hostilities against Venezuela and the capture of a foreign leader without congressional authorization goes against the will of the Americans who put the president in power.”
Hawkish GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina offered a rejoinder on X to critics of the operation who are “focus[ed] on absurd ‘legal’ theories” and “virtually AWOL for the cause of freedom.”
“To the pathetically weak and hand wringing liberal Democrats who seem to be okay with a perpetual drug caliphate in our backyard, the centerpiece of which is Venezuela,” he wrote, “Get a grip.”
