Watch: Senate Republicans defeat the war powers resolution in Venezuela, and yield to Trump’s pressure

WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Republicans voted Wednesday to reject a war powers resolution that would have limited President Donald Trump’s ability to launch further attacks on Venezuela after two GOP senators reversed course on supporting the legislation.

Watch the Senate vote in the video player above.

Trump exerted intense pressure on five Republican senators who joined Democrats to push the resolution last week and ultimately succeeded in avoiding passage of the legislation. Two Republicans — Sens. Josh Hawley of Missouri and Todd Young of Indiana — flipped under pressure.

Read more: Trump attacks 5 Republican Senators over their vote on war powers

Vice President J.D. Vance had to break a 50-50 deadlock in the Senate over a Republican motion to reject the bill.

The result of the high-profile vote showed how Trump still has control over much of the GOP convention, yet the slim number of votes also demonstrated growing concern on Capitol Hill about the president’s aggressive foreign policy ambitions.

Democrats were forced into the debate after US forces captured Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro in a surprise nighttime raid earlier this month.

“We have here one of the most successful attacks ever, and they found a way to counter it,” Trump said in a speech in Michigan on Tuesday. “It’s absolutely amazing. It’s unfortunate.” He also hurled insults at several Republicans who advanced the legislation, calling Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky a “cold loser” and Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine “disasters.” These three Republicans have maintained their support for the legislation.

Trump’s latest statements came after previous phone calls with senators, which they described as brief. The president’s outburst highlights how the war powers vote has taken on new political significance as Trump also threatens military action to achieve his goal of controlling Greenland.

This legislation, even if approved by the Senate, had no chance of becoming law because it would eventually need Trump’s signature. But it represents a test of GOP loyalty to the president and a sign of how much the Republican-controlled Senate is willing to grant Trump use of the military abroad. Republican concern about his recent foreign policy moves — especially threats to use military force to seize Greenland from the NATO ally — remains high in Congress.

Two Republicans are reconsidering

Hawley, who helped push the war powers resolution last week, said Trump’s message during the 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 on Monday and was told, “Frankly, we’re not sending ground troops.”

The senator added that he had also received assurances that the Trump administration would follow constitutional requirements if it became necessary to again deploy troops to the South American country.

“We get along very well with Venezuela,” Trump told reporters at a signing ceremony for an unrelated bill on Wednesday.

When senators went to vote on Wednesday evening, Young also told reporters that he no longer supported it. He said he had extensive conversations with Rubio and received assurances that the Secretary of State would appear at a public hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Young also shared a message from Rubio stating that the president “will seek advance congressional authorization (circumstances permitting)” if he participates in “major military operations” in Venezuela.

The senators also said his efforts were also instrumental in pushing the administration to release a 22-page Justice Department memo Wednesday outlining the legal justification for the kidnapping against Maduro.

That memo, which has been heavily redacted, indicates that the administration, for now, has no plans to intensify military operations in Venezuela.

“We have been assured that there is no contingency plan to engage in any substantive and sustained operation that would rise to the level of constitutional warfare,” said the memo signed by Assistant Attorney General Elliot Geiser.

Trump’s changing justifications for military intervention

Trump used a series of legal arguments to campaign against Maduro.

While building a naval force in the Caribbean and destroying ships that were allegedly carrying drugs from Venezuela, the Trump administration exploited the war powers of the global war on terrorism by designating drug cartels as terrorist organizations.

The administration claimed that the arrest of Maduro himself was actually a law enforcement operation, essentially to extradite the Venezuelan president to stand trial on charges in the United States that were filed in 2020.

Paul criticized the administration for initially describing its military buildup in the Caribbean as an anti-drug operation, but now floating Venezuela’s vast oil reserves as a reason to keep up the pressure.

“The bait and switch has already happened,” he said.

Trump’s foreign policy worries Congress
Lawmakers, including many Republicans, have been upset by Trump’s recent foreign policy talk. In recent weeks, he has pledged that the United States will “run” Venezuela for years to come, threatened military action to seize control of Greenland, and told Iranians protesting their government that “help is on the way.”

Senior Republicans tried to massage the relationship between Trump and Denmark, a NATO ally that considers Greenland a semi-autonomous region. But Danish officials emerged from a meeting with Vance and Rubio on Wednesday saying the “fundamental disagreement” over Greenland remained.

“What happened tonight is a road map to another endless war,” Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said in a press conference after the vote.

More than half of American 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 rejected the bill

Last week’s procedural vote on the war powers resolution was supposed to lead to hours of discussion and a vote on final approval. But Republican leaders began looking for a way to defuse the conflict between their members and Trump and also quickly move on 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 said U.S. troops were not currently deployed in Venezuela.

“We are not currently conducting military operations there,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune said in a speech. “But Democrats are adopting this bill because their anti-Trump hysteria knows no bounds.”

Democratic Senator Tim Kaine, who has introduced a series of war powers resolutions this year, accused Republicans of burying a debate about the merits of the ongoing campaign of attacks and threats against Venezuela.

“If this reason and this legal basis are so valid, the administration and its supporters will not be afraid to hold this discussion before the public and the US Senate,” he said in a speech.

Kaine pledged to force a vote on war powers resolutions that could apply to a number of potential military conflicts, including Greenland. House Democrats have also introduced a similar war powers resolution and could force a vote on it next week.

Associated Press writers Josh Goodman, Lisa Mascaro, Mary Clare Jalonick and Joy Cappelletti in Washington and Bill Barrow in Atlanta contributed to this report.