Trump

WASHINGTON — President Trump has made broad but vague assertions that the United States is going to “run” Venezuela after the ouster of Nicolás Maduro but has offered almost no details about how it will do so, raising questions among some lawmakers and former officials about the administration’s level of planning for the country after Maduro was gone.

Seemingly contradictory statements from Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have suggested at once that the U.S. now controls the levers of Venezuelan power or that the U.S. has no intention of assuming day-to-day governance and will allow Maduro’s subordinates to remain in leadership positions for now.

Rubio said the U.S. would rely on existing sanctions on Venezuela’s oil sector and criminal gangs to wield leverage with Maduro’s successors.

The uncertainty on definitive next steps in Venezuela contrasts with the years of discussions and planning that went into U.S. military interventions that deposed other autocratic leaders, notably in Iraq in 2003, which still did not often lead to the hoped-for outcomes.

‘Disagreement about how to proceed’

The discrepancy between what Trump and Rubio have said publicly has not sat well with some former diplomats.

“It strikes me that we have no idea whatsoever as to what’s next,” said Dan Fried, a retired career diplomat, former assistant secretary of state and sanctions coordinator who served under both Democratic and Republican administrations.

“For good operational reasons, there were very few people who knew about the raid, but Trump’s remarks about running the country and Rubio’s uncomfortable walk back suggests that even within that small group of people, there is disagreement about how to proceed,” said Fried who is now with the Atlantic Council think tank.

Supporters of the operation, meanwhile, believe there is little confusion over the U.S. goal.

“The president speaks in big headlines and euphemisms,” said Rich Goldberg, a sanctions proponent who worked in the National Energy Dominance Council at the White House until last year and is now a senior adviser to the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a hawkish think tank.

Goldberg does not see Rubio becoming “the superintendent of schools” but “effectively, the U.S. will be calling the shots.”

“There are people at the top who can make what we want happen or not, and we right now control their purse strings and their lives,” he said. “The president thinks it’s enough and the secretary thinks it’s enough, and if it’s not enough, we’ll know very soon and we’ll deal with it.”

If planning for the U.S. “to run” Venezuela existed prior to Maduro’s arrest and extradition to face federal drug charges, it was confined to a small group of Trump political allies, according to current U.S. officials, who note that Trump relies on a very small circle of advisers and has tossed aside much of the traditional decision-making apparatus.

These officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss their understanding of internal deliberations, said they were not aware of any preparations for either a military occupation or an interim civilian governing authority, which has been a priority for previous administrations when they contemplated going to war to oust a specific leader or government. The White House and the State Department’s press office did not return messages seeking comment.

Long discussion among agencies in previous interventions

Previous military actions that deposed autocratic leaders, notably in Panama in 1989 and Iraq in 2003, were preceded by months, if not years, of interagency discussion and debate over how best to deal with power vacuums caused by the ousters of their leaders. The State Department, White House National Security Council, the Pentagon and the intelligence community all participated in that planning.

In Panama, the George H.W. Bush administration had nearly a full year of preparations to launch the invasion that ousted Panama’s leader Manuel Noriega. Panama, however, is exponentially smaller than Venezuela, it had long experience as a de facto American territory, and the U.S. occupation was never intended to retake territory or natural resources.

By contrast, Venezuela is vastly larger in size and population and has a decadeslong history of animosity toward the United States.

“Panama was not successful because it was supported internationally because it wasn’t,” Fried said. “It was a success because it led to a quick, smooth transfer to a democratic government. That would be a success here, but on the first day out, we trashed someone who had those credentials, and that strikes me as daft.”

He was referring to Trump’s apparent dismissal of opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, whose party is widely believed to have won elections in 2024, results that Maduro refused to accept. Trump said Saturday that Machado “doesn’t have the support within or the respect within the country” to be a credible leader and suggested he would be OK with Maduro’s No. 2, Delcy Rodríguez, remaining in power as long as she works with the U.S.

Hoped-for outcomes didn’t happen in Iraq and Afghanistan

Meanwhile, best-case scenarios like those predicted by the George W. Bush administration for a post-Saddam Hussein Iraq that it would be a beacon of democracy in the Middle East and hopes for a democratic and stable Afghanistan following the ouster of the Taliban died painfully slow deaths at the tremendous expense of American money and lives after initial euphoria over military victories.

“Venezuela looks nothing like Libya, it looks nothing like Iraq, it looks nothing like Afghanistan. It looks nothing like the Middle East,” Rubio said this weekend of Venezuela and its neighbors. “These are Western countries with long traditions at a people-to-people and cultural level, and ties to the United States, so it’s nothing like that.”

The lack of clarity on Venezuela has been even more pronounced because Trump campaigned on a platform of extricating the U.S. from foreign wars and entanglements, a position backed by his “Make America Great Again” supporters, many of whom are seeking explanations about what the president has in mind for Venezuela.

“Wake up MAGA,” Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, who has bucked much of his party’s lockstep agreement with Trump, posted on X after the operation. “VENEZUELA is not about drugs; it’s about OIL and REGIME CHANGE. This is not what we voted for.”

Sen. Rand Paul, also a Kentucky Republican, who often criticizes military interventions, said “time will tell if regime change in Venezuela is successful without significant monetary or human cost.”

“Easy enough to argue such policy when the action is short, swift and effective but glaringly less so when that unitary power drains of us trillions of dollars and thousands of lives, such as occurred in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Vietnam,” he wrote on social media.

In addition to the Venezuela operation, Trump is preparing to take the helm of an as-yet unformed Board of Peace to run postwar Gaza, involving the United States in yet another Mideast engagement for possibly decades to come.

And yet, as both the Iraq and Afghanistan experiences ultimately proved, no amount of planning guarantees success.

Lee writes for the Associated Press.

The betting markets suddenly jumped to near 100% that Trump will “invoke war powers” against Venezuela. What does it mean? The President, exercising his commander-in-chief authority, would order military action and then initiate the legal process that follows when U.S. forces are deployed into hostilities.

A few weeks ago we published a piece on what Polymarket and the debt surge could reveal about the Venezuela conflict. There was a nugget on what happened the day before María Corina Machado received the Nobel peace prize:

“The 2025 Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Maria Corina Machado made the news due to the behaviour of the Polymarket odds. Machado had a winning probability of around 3.5% around 12 hours prior to the announcement. Then, it shot up to a 73% probability of Machado taking the prize. This led to speculation that information was leaked, giving some traders room to cash in on bets in her favour. The ability of the site to “predict” an outcome, in this case, seems to be no more than information asymmetry. Someone out there had better (insider) intelligence, and simply traded on that information.“

Moreover, the night before the Maduro extraction, this happened:

Someone made $408,000 by placing a $30,000 bet in the nick of time. It obviously doesn’t mean that it’s going to happen in this case, pero cuando el río suena… One user placed around $15,000 during the past 6 hours on Trump invoking War Powers on Venezuela. Maybe someone knows something, or they’re just going on a limb because they saw The Verge post.

On War Powers

Under Article II of the US Constitution, presidents have long argued they can initiate certain military operations to defend U.S. interests without waiting for Congress, especially if they frame it as limited, urgent, or defensive. The War Powers Resolution (1973) was intended to impose limits on this authority: once forces are committed, the President must notify Congress within 48 hours, and the operation has a 60-day clock, unless Congress authorizes it or extends it. The US, after all, is a democracy with established separations of powers. Right? It’s likely to get messy in Congress, but we’ll see.

So why reach for that toolbox now, especially if Maduro has already been extracted? And why didn’t it need to before? Because Maduro’s removal was carried out through legal warrants, in coordination with the DEA, in other words, it was done through other legal motions. In this new transition, if the U.S. wants the option to use force quickly (without having to establish the legal basis for it every time), having the “war powers” gives Trump the legal framework to continue using force.

Now, Polymarket shows a sudden, overnight repricing of almost 100%, as if someone had entered the market with new information. Prediction markets can move on leaks or real inside signals. In other words: does someone know something and wants to profit out of it? Does it flag imminent action? The next few days will tell, but with confidence it is almost a certainty that Trump will request (or invoke!) such powers.

The UN human rights office says the US military intervention that ousted Venezuela’s leader violates international law and the UN Charter, warning it undermines global security and risks worsening human rights. It says Venezuela’s future must be decided by its people.

Washington, DC – It has become a familiar pattern. United States presidents conduct unilateral military actions abroad. Congress shrugs.

On Saturday, in the hours after the US military abducted Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro, Democrats in the Senate pledged to raise yet another resolution to rein in US President Donald Trump’s military actions.

Chuck Schumer, the top Democrat in the chamber, has said the party will push for a vote within the week. By all accounts, the odds of its success remain long.

Since Trump took office for a second term in 2025, Congress has weighed multiple bills that would force him to seek legislative approval before initiating a military strike.

But the latest attack on Venezuela offers a stark instance of presidential overreach, one that is “crying out for congressional action”, according to David Janovsky, the acting director of the Constitution Project at the Project on Government Oversight.

Experts say it is also one of the clearest tests in recent history of whether Congress will continue to cede its authority to check US military engagement abroad.

“There are a lot of angles where you can come at this to say why it’s a clear-cut case,” Janovsky told Al Jazeera.

He pointed out that, under the US Constitution, Congress alone wields the authority to allow military action. He also noted that the Venezuela attack “is in direct contravention of the UN Charter, which is, as a treaty, law in the United States”.

“Any of the fig leaves that presidents have used in the past to justify unilateral military action just don’t apply here,” Janovsky added. “This is particularly brazen.”

An uphill battle

Since August, the Trump administration has signalled plans to crank up its “maximum pressure” campaign against Venezuela.

That month, Trump reportedly signed a secret memo calling on the US military to prepare for action against criminal networks abroad. Then, on September 2, the Trump administration began conducting dozens of strikes on alleged drug-smuggling boats off the Venezuelan and Colombian coasts.

That deadly bombing campaign was itself condemned as a violation of international law and an affront to Congress’s constitutional powers. It coincided with a build-up of US military assets near Venezuela.

Trump also dropped hints that the US military campaign could quickly expand to alleged drug-trafficking targets on Venezuelan soil. “When they come by land, we’re going to be stopping them the same way we stopped the boats,” Trump said on September 16.

The strikes prompted two recent votes in the House of Representatives in December: one that would require congressional approval for any land strikes on the South American country, and one that would force Trump to seek approval for strikes on alleged drug-smuggling boats.

Both resolutions, however, failed roughly along party lines. A similar resolution in the Senate, which would have required congressional approval before any more attacks, also fell short in November.

But speaking to reporters in a phone call just hours after the US operation on Saturday, Senator Tim Kaine said he hoped the brashness of Trump’s latest actions in Venezuela would shock lawmakers into action.

Republicans, he said, can no longer tell themselves that Trump’s months-long military build-up in the Caribbean and his repeated threats are a “bluff” or a “negotiating tactic”.

“It’s time for Congress to get its a** off the couch and do what it’s supposed to do,” Kaine said.

In an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash, US Senator Chris Murphy also agreed that it was “true” that Congress had become impotent on matters of war, a phenomenon that has spanned both Democratic and Republican administrations.

Bash pointed to former President Barack Obama’s 2011 military deployment to Libya, which went unchecked by Congress.

“Congress needs to own its own role in allowing a presidency to become this lawless,” Murphy responded.

Republicans ho-hum about resolutions

Under the US Constitution, only Congress can declare war, something it has not done since World War II.

Instead, lawmakers have historically passed Authorizations for Use of Military Force (AUMFs) to approve committing troops to recent wars, including the US invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and the strikes on alleged al-Qaeda affiliates across the Middle East, Africa and Asia.

No AUMFs have been passed that would relate to military action in Venezuela.

When lawmakers believe a president is acting beyond his constitutional power, they can pass a war powers resolution requiring Congressional approval for further actions.

Beyond their symbolism, such resolutions create a legal basis to challenge further presidential actions in the judiciary.

However, they carry a high bar for success, with a two-thirds majority in both chambers of Congress needed to override a presidential veto.

Given the current makeup of Congress, passage of a war powers resolution would likely require bipartisan support.

Republicans maintain narrow majorities in both the House and Senate, so it would be necessary for members of Trump’s own party to back a war powers resolution for it to be successful.

In November’s Senate vote, only two Republicans — co-sponsor Rand Paul of Kentucky, and Lisa Murkowski, of Alaska — split from their party to support the resolution. It failed by a margin of 51 to 49.

December’s vote on a parallel resolution in the House only earned 211 votes in favour, as opposed to 213 against. In that case, three Republicans broke from their party to support the resolution, and one Democrat opposed it.

But Trump’s abduction of Maduro has so far only received condemnation from a tiny fragment of his party.

Overall, the response from elected Republicans has been muted. Even regular critics of presidential adventurism have instead focused on praising the ouster of the longtime Venezuelan leader, who has been accused of numerous human rights abuses.

Senator Todd Young, a Republican considered on the fence ahead of November’s war powers vote, has praised Maduro’s arrest, even as he contended the Trump administration owed Congress more details.

“We still need more answers, especially to questions regarding the next steps in Venezuela’s transition,” Young said.

Some Democrats have also offered careful messaging in the wake of the operation.

That included Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Democrat who represents a large Venezuelan diaspora community in Florida.

In a statement on Saturday, Wasserman Schultz focused on the implications of Maduro’s removal, while avoiding any mention of the military operation that enabled it. Instead, she asserted that Trump owed Congress an explanation about next steps.

“He has failed to explain to Congress or the American people how he plans to prevent the regime from reconstituting itself under Maduro’s cronies or stop Venezuela from falling into chaos,” she wrote.

In December, however, Wasserman Schultz did join a group of Florida Democrats in calling for Congress to exercise its oversight authority as Trump built up military pressure on Venezuela.

What comes next?

For its part, the Trump administration has not eased up on its military threats against Venezuela, even as it has sought to send the message that Maduro’s abduction was a matter of law enforcement, not the start of a war.

Trump has also denied, once again, that he needed congressional approval for any further military action. Still, in a Monday interview with NBC News, he expressed optimism about having Congress’s backing.

“We have good support congressionally,” he told NBC. “Congress knew what we were doing all along, but we have good support congressionally. Why wouldn’t they support us?”

Since Saturday’s attack and abduction, Trump has warned that a “second wave” of military action could be on the horizon for Venezuela.

That threat has extended to the potential for the forced removal of Maduro’s deputy, Delcy Rodriguez, who was formally sworn in as the country’s interim president on Monday.

“If she doesn’t do what’s right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro,” Trump told The Atlantic magazine.

The administration has also said that strikes on alleged drug-smuggling boats near Venezuela will continue and that US military assets will remain deployed in the region.

Constitutional expert Janovsky, however, believes that this is a critical moment for Congress to act.

Failure to rein in Trump would only further reinforce a decades-long trend of lawmakers relinquishing their oversight authorities, he explained. That, in turn, offers tacit support for the presidency’s growing power over the military.

“To say this was a targeted law enforcement operation — and ignore the ongoing situation — would be a dangerous abdication of Congress as a central check on how the United States military is used,” Janovsky said.

“Continued congressional inaction does nothing but empower presidents to act however they want,” he added.

“To see Congress continue to step back ultimately just removes the American people even farther from where these decisions are actually being made.”

Jan. 6 (UPI) — Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado praised U.S. President Donald Trump for ousting former President Nicolas Maduro, calling it a giant achievement for humanity, for which Trump should rightly receive the Nobel Peace Prize.

“Jan. 3 will go down in history as the day justice defeated tyranny. It’s a milestone, and it’s not only huge for the Venezuelan people and our future, I think it’s a huge step for humanity, for freedom, and human dignity,” Machado told Fox News on Monday night.

She said Trump’s action to begin dismantling Maduro’s “narco-terrorist regime,” bringing him to justice, and with it, bringing democracy within reach for 30 million Venezuelans, proved beyond doubt that he deserved the Nobel Peace Prize, said Machado, herself the recipient of this year’s peace prize.

However, she issued a warning to the Trump administration that the woman who was sworn in as Maduro’s replacement, interim president Delcy Rodriguez, was not to be trusted, accusing her of being “one of the main architects of torture, persecution, corruption, narco-trafficking,” in Venezuela.

“She’s a main ally and liaison of Russia, China, Iran, certainly not an individual who could be trusted by international investors and she’s really rejected by the Venezuelan people.”

Trump said Monday night that Rodriguez was cooperating with his administration but insisted there had been no deal with any individuals or group inside Venezuelan to take down Maduro.

He said there was no communication with Rodríguez prior to Friday night’s military operation to capture Maduro, adding that a decision was imminent on whether earlier sanctions imposed on her would remain in place.

He also strongly denied that his preference for Rodriguez had anything to do with the fact he beleived the peace prize should have gone to him, rather than Machado.

The Wall Street Journal repored Monday that Trump determined Rodriguez and other members of Maduro’s inner circle were best placed to head a transition administration and keep stability in Venezuela in the event Maduro lost power, based on a CIA intelligence assessment of various scenarios.

The classified report was, in part, responsible for Trump’s decision to support Maduro’s vice president over Machado.

Publicly, he has said she lacked sufficient “support” and “respect” in her home country, despite the fact that Machado won the presidential primary in December 2023, but was barred from running by Maduro.

Machado was replaced on the ballot by Edmundo Gonzales, who is widely regarded to have won the presidency by most Western countries.

Machado, who is in Norway after being smuggled out of Venezuela in December to travel to Oslo to collect her award, vowed to return to Venezuela as soon as possible and that her opposition movement, which had the 2024 election stolen from it by Maduro, wanted the transition to democracy to move forward.

“We won an election by a landslide under fraudulent conditions. In free and fair elections, we will win over 90% of the votes, I have no doubt about it,” said Machado.

However, Trump quashed speculation that elections could be held as soon as next month, saying Venezuela had to be fixed first.

“You can’t have an election. There’s no way the people could even vote. No, it’s going to take a period of time. We have — we have to nurse the country back to health,” said Trump.

There were no stars in the October sky. No moon that 64-year-old Masuma Khan could see from the narrow window of the California City Immigration Processing Center.

“No planes,” she said, recalling her confinement.

Once a prison, the facility in the Mojave Desert, located 67 miles east of Bakersfield, reopened in April to hold people in removal proceedings, including Khan.

It was not the kind of place where she imagined ending up — not after living in the country for 28 years, caring for her daughter and surviving one of California’s deadliest wildfires, the Eaton fire.

Khan was fortunate not to have lost her west Altadena home to the Jan. 7 fire, which destroyed more than 9,000 structures and killed 19 people.

But in the months that followed, Khan faced another threat — deportation.

As fire recovery efforts were underway in Los Angeles, the Trump administration launched immigration raids in the city, hampering recovery efforts and creating more distress for immigrants after the fires.

Although Trump said the mass deportations would target criminals, news reports and court filings show the roundups ensnared immigrants with no criminal history, green card applicants, even American citizens.

Khan worried. She was in the process of adjusting her immigration status and was required to check in every year with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

An immigration attorney reassured her that there was no cause for concern: Her husband and daughter were citizens, she had no criminal record, and her case was still under review.

And so, on Oct. 6, Khan drove to downtown Los Angeles for her routine immigration check-in and found herself caught up in Trump’s deportation surge.

Eaton fire survivor Masuma Khan, 64, right, with her daughter Riya Khan and husband Isteak Khan after bring released in December.

(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)

Khan was taken into custody by ICE agents and kept in a cold room for almost an entire day. She said agents denied her access to a lawyer and a phone until she signed deportation papers. Khan resisted but later signed.

She was placed in a van with other detainees and driven three hours north to the detention center in California City. She said there was no air conditioning in the van and she became nauseous and started to experience hypertension symptoms.

At the facility she was denied access to medications for high blood pressure, asthma, peripheral arterial disease, general anxiety and hypothyroidism, she said.

Khan, who is also prediabetic, said she struggled to maintain her health at the facility. Her blood pressure spiked and she began to experience stroke-like symptoms. Her legs swelled up and she became weak.

She said the facility was so cold that people often became ill, including staff. She and other women used socks as scarves, sleeves and mittens but were threatened with fines if they continued to misuse the garments.

She said she became sick and her vision got blurry without her prescribed eye drops. Her Halal meals shifted to a medical diet that included pork, which she cannot eat because she is Muslim.

Khan’s experience at the facility was similar to that of other detainees who filed a federal class-action lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security and ICE. They alleged inhumane conditions at the facility that included inadequate food, water and medical care, frigid cells and lack of access to medications and lawyers.

The California City Immigration Processing Center in Kern County, where Masuma Khan was held.

(Patrick T. Fallon/AFP/Getty Images)

In an email response, Tricia McLaughlin, a DHS spokesperson, said any claims about “subprime conditions at ICE detention facilities are false.”

“All detainees are provided with proper meals, certified by dietitians, medical treatment and have the opportunities to communicate with lawyers and family members.”

Khan said she spent most days in her cell crying.

“I missed my family, I missed everything,” she said “I was frustrated.”

She often thought of home: her husband and daughter, her small garden and the birds she fed daily with seeds and oranges from her balcony.

It would be weeks before she could see her family again, before she could gaze at the mountains and hear the symphony of wildlife.

‘Like an inferno’

The Eaton fire had been raging for hours in west Altadena when Khan and her husband were awakened by evacuation alerts on their phones at 3:30 a.m.

Khan got out of bed and from her bedroom window could see flames raging in the mountains.

Khan hadn’t seen anything like it. Four years before she arrived, the Kinneloa fire, sparked by a campfire, erupted in the same mountains. It fed on dry and flammable vegetation and was driven by Santa Ana winds. It was a destructive fire.

But the Eaton fire was different. Hurricane-force winds helped spread the embers and flames deep into the town’s heart — destroying homes, schools and countless structures.

A business and vehicle are a total loss as the Eaton fire rages along Lake Avenue in Altadena on January 8, 2025.

(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)

Khan and her husband, Isteak, didn’t have time to grab much before fleeing in their car that evening.

“It was like an inferno,” Isteak Khan, 66, recalled. “You could see the embers flying everywhere. It was very chaotic.”

The couple drove about three miles south to a supermarket in Pasadena. For a month they lived at a hotel until they were allowed to return home.

When they got back the surrounding neighborhoods were in ruins: Trees were charred, cars were stripped down to metal frames and homes were gutted or left in ash.

The couple’s apartment still was standing but had suffered smoke damage and there was no electricity, no safe water to use. The couple depended on water bottles and showered at the homes of relatives.

Khan never thought she would experience such a disaster in the U.S. Then again, she didn’t journey here for her own reasons. She came to save her daughter.

‘Incredibly traumatized’

In August 1997, Khan was living in Bangladesh with her husband and their 9-year-old daughter, Riya. That month Riya had traveled with her grandparents to the U.S. to see relatives when she fell seriously ill. Doctors determined she was suffering from kidney failure and needed ongoing treatment including chemotherapy and peritoneal dialysis.

Khan traveled to the U.S. on a visitor’s visa to be with Riya. For more than a decade her daughter received treatment at the Children’s Hospital in Los Angeles.

Khan became her daughter’s primary caretaker and did not return to Bangladesh as her visa was expiring. Her husband joined her in 1999 after obtaining a visa. He and Riya eventually received green cards and became citizens.

The following year, as Khan looked for legal ways to adjust her immigration status, she met a man at a Bangladeshi grocery store who befriended her and offered to help her obtain a green card, according to court records. Little did Khan know that this man — who spoke her language and was well known in the Bangladeshi community — was a scammer, one of many who prey on South Asians migrating to the U.S.

At the time Khan did not speak, read or write English well, and this man told her he could file an asylum application on her behalf, for a fee amounting to several thousand dollars.

But Khan was unaware this man had filed the application for her using a false name and listed his own address for future correspondence from immigration authorities, according to court documents.

All this came to light when she showed up for an asylum hearing in Anaheim in 1999 and responded to the questions of an asylum officer who noticed the information did not match what was in the application.

The officer denied the application, and later she was unaware of a notice to appear before an immigration court, since it had been sent to the scammer’s address.

Her absence at the hearing prompted an immigration judge to order her to be deported. Khan did not find out about the court’s action until 2015, when her husband petitioned to adjust her status so she could obtain a green card.

After the petition was denied and her case was closed because of the deportation order, Khan hired an immigration attorney who sought to reopen the case. But a judge denied it, and her appeal also was rejected by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

In February 2020, Khan was detained by ICE but released and required to check in with immigration officials. That year she hired an immigration attorney who submitted paperwork to let her stay in the U.S. The application was pending when ICE took her into custody on Oct. 6.

McLaughlin, the DHS spokesperson, said there was no reason for the government to reconsider her case, since Khan had a final removal order since 1999 and had exhausted all appeals.

“She has no legal right to be in our country,” McLaughlin said. “DHS law enforcement lawfully arrested her on Oct. 6.”

Yet Khan caught a break in early November when a federal judge ordered her released. The judge ruled the government cannot detain Khan without giving her a hearing and explaining why it needs to detain her.

It was a victory for her legal team, made up of a law firm and two nonprofit groups — the South Asian Network and Public Counsel and Hoq Law APC.

Laboni Hoq, a chief attorney on the case, said the goal is to keep Khan out of detention while the team seeks to adjust her status.

“We’re feeling like she has a shot to pursue that process … given her long history in the country and that she is law-abiding and has met all the requirements to deal with her case through the court system and immigration system,” Hoq said.

Khan’s predicament has drawn the attention of numerous Southern California politicians, including U.S. Rep. Judy Chu and U.S. Sen. Adam Schiff. Much of it had to do with Khan’s 38-year-old daughter, Riya, who reached out to the lawmakers and also took to social media to bring her mother’s case to the public’s attention.

Still, it is unclear what will happen next.

As Khan’s legal fight proceeds, she must check in regularly with immigration authorities, as she did in downtown L.A. on Dec. 19, accompanied by Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez (D-Alhambra), who also became aware of her case from Riya’s efforts.

“She’s incredibly traumatized by what’s happened to her,” Pérez said of Khan. “She’s scared to even participate in the community events that we have during the holidays … it’s painful, it makes me angry, it makes me sad and I just wanted to be here with her.”

At their Altadena home one recent evening, the Khans sat in their living room. Riya said the hope was that the case will be reopened so her mother can obtain a green card.

“We’re going to stay together,” Isteak said.

Not far from Masuma, old “welcome home” balloons hovered. As she sat next to her daughter, she could express only two things: “I cannot leave this country. This is my home.”

One in three Americans opposes the Venezuelan leader’s abduction by US forces, a poll shows, while others are unsure.

Americans are evenly split in their support for the US military operation to abduct Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, an opinion poll has found.

Thirty-three percent of Americans support Maduro’s abduction, compared with 34 percent who are against it and 32 percent who are not sure, the Reuters/Ipsos poll showed on Monday.

Supporters of President Donald Trump’s Republican Party are much more likely to support the military operation, with 65 percent in favour, compared with 11 percent of Democrats and 23 percent of independents.

On the question of who should govern Venezuela, Americans lean against Washington taking control of the country, according to the poll.

Forty-three percent oppose Washington governing Venezuela until a new government is established in Caracas, compared with 34 percent in favour and 20 percent who are unsure.

Americans lean against the US stationing troops in Venezuela – 47 percent to 30 percent – according to the poll.

More Americans than not also oppose the Trump administration taking control of Venezuela’s oil fields, with 46 percent against the idea and 30 percent in favour.

On the question of whether the US could become “too involved” in the Latin American country, 72 percent are very or somewhat concerned.

Trump said on Saturday that the US would “run” Venezuela, though officials in his administration have sought to downplay the prospect of Washington occupying the country.

On Sunday, Trump threatened further military action against Venezuela if it “doesn’t behave”.

Maduro, who was abducted in a raid by US special forces over the weekend, on Monday made his first court appearance to face charges related to “narcoterrorism”, drug trafficking and weapons possession.

Maduro pleaded not guilty to all charges, declaring himself the victim of a kidnapping and a “decent man”.

“I am still president of my country,” Maduro told a US federal court in New York through an interpreter.

Maduro, his wife, Cilia Flores, son Nicolás Ernesto Maduro Guerra, and three others face the possibility of life in prison if convicted.

On Monday, Maduro’s deputy, Vice President Delcy Rodríguez, was sworn in as Venezuela’s interim president.

“I come with pain over the kidnapping of two heroes who are being held hostage: President Nicolás Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores,” Rodriguez said during a swearing-in ceremony at Venezuela’s National Assembly.

The administration of United States President Donald Trump is planning to meet with executives from US oil companies later this week to discuss boosting Venezuelan oil production after US forces abducted its leader, Nicolas Maduro, the Reuters news agency has reported, citing unnamed sources.

The meetings are crucial to the administration’s hopes of getting top US oil companies back into the South American nation after its government, nearly two decades ago, took control of US-led energy operations there, the Reuters news agency report said on Monday.

The three biggest US oil companies – Exxon Mobil, ConocoPhillips and Chevron – have not yet had any conversations with the Trump administration about Maduro’s ouster, according to four oil industry executives familiar with the matter, contradicting Trump’s statements over the weekend that he had already held meetings with “all” the US oil companies, both before and since Maduro was abducted.

“Nobody in those three companies has had conversations with the White House about operating in Venezuela, pre-removal or post-removal, to this point,” one of the sources said on Monday.

The upcoming meetings will be crucial to the administration’s hopes to boost crude oil production and exports from Venezuela, a former OPEC nation that sits atop the world’s largest reserves, and whose crude oil can be refined by specially designed US refineries. Achieving that goal will require years of work and billions of dollars of investment, analysts say.

It is unclear what executives will be attending the upcoming meetings, and whether oil companies will be attending individually or collectively.

The White House did not comment on the meetings, but said it believed the US oil industry was ready to flood into Venezuela.

“All of our oil companies are ready and willing to make big investments in Venezuela that will rebuild their oil infrastructure, which was destroyed by the illegitimate Maduro regime,” said White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers.

Exxon, Chevron and ConocoPhillips did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Reuters.

One oil industry executive told Reuters the companies would be reluctant to talk about potential Venezuela operations in group settings with the White House, citing antitrust concerns that limit collective discussions among competitors about investment plans, timing and production levels.

Political risks, low oil prices

US forces on Saturday conducted a raid on Venezuela’s capital, arresting Maduro in the dead of night and sending him back to the US to face narcoterrorism charges.

Hours after Maduro’s abduction, Trump said he expects the biggest US oil companies to spend billions of dollars boosting Venezuela’s oil production, after it dropped to about a third of its peak over the past two decades due to underinvestment and sanctions.

But those plans will be hindered by a lack of infrastructure, along with deep uncertainty over the country’s political future, legal framework and long-term US policy, according to industry analysts.

“While the Trump administration has suggested large US oil companies will go into Venezuela and spend billions to fix infrastructure, we believe political and other risks, along with current relatively low oil prices, could prevent this from happening anytime soon,” wrote Neal Dingmann of William Blair in a note.

Material change to Venezuelan production will take a lot of time and millions of dollars of infrastructure improvement, he said.

And any investment in Venezuelan infrastructure right now would take place in a weakened global energy market. Crude prices in the US are down by 20 percent compared with last year. The price for a barrel of benchmark US crude has not been above $70 since June, and has not touched $80 per barrel since June of 2024.

A barrel of oil cost more than $130 in the leadup to the US housing crisis in 2008.

Chevron is the only US major currently operating in Venezuela’s oil fields.

Exxon and ConocoPhillips, meanwhile, had storied histories in the country before their projects were nationalised nearly two decades ago by former Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

Conoco has been seeking billions of dollars in restitution for the takeover of three oil projects in Venezuela under Chavez. Exxon was involved in lengthy arbitration cases against Venezuela after it exited the country in 2007.

Chevron, which exports about 150,000 barrels per day of crude from Venezuela to the US Gulf Coast, meanwhile, has had to carefully manoeuvre with the Trump administration in an effort to maintain its presence in the country in recent years.

A US embargo on Venezuelan oil remained in full effect, Trump has said.

The S&P 500 energy index rose to its highest since March 2025, with heavyweights Exxon Mobil rising by 2.2 percent and Chevron jumping by 5.1 percent.

WASHINGTON — Venezuela risks “a second strike” if its interim government doesn’t acquiesce to U.S. demands. Cuba is “ready to fall,” and Colombia is “very sick, too.”

Iran may get “hit very hard” if its government cracks down on protesters. And Denmark risks U.S. intervention, as well, because “we need Greenland,” President Trump said.

In just 37 minutes while speaking with reporters Sunday aboard Air Force One, Trump threatened to attack five countries, both allies and adversaries, with the might of the U.S. military — an extraordinary turn for a president who built his political career rejecting traditional conservative views on the exercise of American power and vowing to put America first.

The president’s threats come as a third of the U.S. naval fleet remains stationed in the Caribbean, after Trump launched a daring attack on Venezuela that seized its president, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife over the weekend.

The goal, U.S. officials said, was to show the Venezuelan government and the wider world what the American military is capable of — and to compel partners and foes alike to adhere to Trump’s demands through intimidation, rather than commit the U.S. military to more complex, conventional, long-term engagements.

It is the deployment of overwhelming and spectacular force in surgical military operations — Maduro’s capture, last year’s strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities, assassinations of Islamic State leadership and Iran’s top general in Iraq — that demonstrate Trump as a brazen leader willing to risk war, thereby effectively avoiding it, one Trump administration official said, explaining the president’s strategic thinking.

Yet experts and former Trump aides warn the president’s approach risks miscalculation, alienating vital allies and emboldening U.S. competitors.

At a Security Council meeting Monday at the United Nations in New York — called by Colombia, a long-standing and major non-North Atlantic Treaty Oranization ally to the United States — Trump’s moves were widely condemned. “Violations of the U.N. Charter,” a French diplomat told the council, “chips away at the very foundation of international order.”

Even the envoy from Russia, which has cultivated historically strong ties with the Trump administration, said the White House operation was an act of “banditry,” marking “a return to the era of illegality and American dominance through force, chaos and lawlessness.”

Trump’s threats to annex Greenland, an autonomous territory of the Kingdom of Denmark with vast natural resources, drew particular concern across Europe on Monday, with leaders across the continent warning the United States against an attack that would violate the sovereignty of a NATO ally and European Union member state.

“That’s enough now,” Greenland’s prime minister, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, said after Trump told reporters that his attention would turn to the world’s largest island in a matter of weeks.

“If the United States decides to militarily attack another NATO country, then everything would stop,” Denmark’s prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, told local press. “That includes NATO, and therefore, post-World War II security.”

Trump also threatened to strike Iran, where anti-government protests have spread throughout the country in recent days. Trump had previously said the U.S. military was “locked and loaded” if Iranian security forces begin firing on protesters, “which is their custom.”

“The United States of America will come to their rescue,” Trump wrote on social media on Jan. 2, hours before launching the Venezuela mission. “We are locked and loaded and ready to go. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”

In Colombia, there was widespread outrage after Trump threatened military action against leftist President Gustavo Petro, whom Trump accused, without evidence, of running “cocaine mills and cocaine factories.”

Petro is a frequent critic of the American president and has slammed as illegal a series of lethal U.S. airstrikes against alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific.

“Stop slandering me,” Petro wrote on X, warning that any U.S. attempts against his presidency “will unleash the people’s fury.”

Petro, a former leftist guerrilla, said he would go to war to defend Colombia.

“I swore not to touch a weapon again,” he said. “But for the homeland, I will take up arms.”

Trump’s threats have strained relations with Colombia, a devoted U.S. ally. For decades, the countries have shared military intelligence, a robust trade relationship and a multibillion-dollar fight against drug trafficking.

Even some of Petro’s domestic critics have comes to his defense. Presidential candidate Juan Manuel Galán, who opposes Petro’s rule, said Colombia’s sovereignty “must be defended.”

“Colombia is not Venezuela,” Galán wrote on X. “It is not a failed state, and we will not allow it to be treated as such. Here we have institutions, democracy and sovereignty that must be defended.”

The president of Mexico, another longtime U.S. ally and its largest trading partner, has also spoken out forcefully against the American operation in Caracas, and said the Trump administration’s aggressive foreign policy in Latin America threatens the stability of the region.

“We categorically reject intervention in the internal affairs of other countries,” President Claudia Sheinbaum said in her daily news conference Monday. “The history of Latin America is clear and compelling: Intervention has never brought democracy, has never generated well-being or lasting stability.”

She addressed Trump’s comments over the weekend that drugs were “pouring” through Mexico, and that the United States was “going to have to do something.”

Trump has been threatening action against cartels for months, with some members of his administration suggesting that the United States may soon carry out drone strikes on drug laboratories and other targets inside Mexican territory. Sheinbaum has repeatedly said such strikes would be a clear violation of Mexican sovereignty.

“Sovereignty and the self-determination of peoples are non-negotiable,” she said. “They are fundamental principles of international law and must always be respected without exception.”

Cuba also rejected Trump’s threat of a military intervention there, after Trump’s secretary of State, Marco Rubio, himself the descendant of Cuban immigrants, suggested that Havana may be next in Washington’s crosshairs.

“We call on the international community to stop this dangerous, aggressive escalation and to preserve peace,” Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel posted on social media.

The U.S. attacks on Venezuela, and Trump’s threats of additional military ventures, have caused deep unease in a relatively peaceful region that has seen fewer interstate wars in recent decades than Europe, Asia or Africa.

It also caused unease among some Trump supporters, who remembered his pledge to get the United States out of “endless” military conflicts for good.

“I was the first president in modern times,” Trump said, accepting the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, “to start no new wars.”

Wilner reported from Washington and Linthicum from Mexico City.

For many years before becoming president, Donald Trump publicly criticised the George W Bush administration over its decision to launch the war on Iraq. And yet, today, in his second term as president, he finds himself presiding over a military debacle that is quite reminiscent of Bush’s.

Trump ordered a military intervention to remove an antagonistic foreign leader, based on a flimsy argument of national security, with the goal of accessing that country’s oil. In both cases, we see a naive confidence that the United States can simply achieve its goals through regime change. US intervention into Venezuela reeks of the same hubris that surrounded the Iraq invasion two decades ago.

Yet there are also important differences to consider. The most important distinguishing feature of the operation in Venezuela is its lack of an overarching vision. On Saturday after Trump finished an hour-long news conference alongside his secretaries of defence and state, it was not clear what the plan was for Venezuela going forward, or if there was a plan at all. His statements threatening more attacks in the following days brought no clarity either.

Past instances of US-led regime change fit into the larger ideological visions of the incumbent US commander-in-chief. In 1823, President James Monroe declared the Western Hemisphere off-limits to European colonialism. As the United States spent the 20th century consolidating its sphere of influence across the Americas, the Monroe Doctrine would justify various interventions in Latin America and the Caribbean. The Cold War added new justifications for the United States to overthrow leftist regimes and install friendly governments in the Americas.

As the Cold War ended, President George HW Bush sought to serve as a caretaker for a “new world order” in which the US had emerged as the world’s lone superpower. When Bush sent troops to Somalia in 1992 and his successor Bill Clinton reversed a military coup in Haiti in 1994, they did so under the paradigm of “humanitarian intervention”. When George W Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq, it was done under the umbrella of the post-9/11 “war on terror”. When President Barack Obama intervened against the forces of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, he was guided by the “responsibility to protect” doctrine concerning civilians in danger.

But in the case of the US attack on Venezuela, there has been no ideological justification. Trump and his team have haphazardly thrown around references to humanitarianism, counterterrorism and more to justify the attack. The president even brought up the Monroe Doctrine. But just as it seemed that he was grounding his foreign policy in a larger ideology, albeit one borrowed from two centuries ago, he made a joke of the concept.

“The Monroe Doctrine is a big deal,” Trump explained on Saturday. “But we’ve superseded it by a lot, by a lot. They now call it the Donroe Doctrine.” Trump did not make up this pun; it was used by the New York Post a year ago to describe Trump’s aggressive foreign policy as he threatened to annex Canada, Greenland and the Panama Canal.

The president’s decision to embrace the tongue-in-cheek term illustrates a disturbing reality of his foreign policy: Any notion that he is promoting an ideological vision is a joke.

The truth is Trump is pursuing an increasingly aggressive and militaristic foreign policy in his second term, not because he wants to impose a grand vision, but because he has discovered he can get away with it.

Striking a variety of foreign “bad guys” who have little capacity to fight back – ISIL (ISIS) affiliates in Nigeria who are “persecuting” Christians and “narcoterrorists” in Latin America – appeals to members of Trump’s base.

After he mentioned the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua during Saturday’s news conference, he went on a minutes-long tangent to brag about his military interventions into US cities. While the president’s inability to stay on topic may be concerning for those questioning his health and mental fitness, this digression into domestic affairs had some relevance for his Venezuelan intervention, at least as far as he was concerned: His increasingly militarised war on drugs and crime abroad justifies an increasingly militarised war on drugs and crime at home.

Past presidents have used US power to pursue a wide variety of ideologies and principles. Trump appears to be paying lip service to past ideologies to justify the use of US power. Many times, the “good” intentions of previous  presidents paved the way to hellish outcomes for the peoples who found themselves on the receiving end of US intervention. But those intentions at least created a level of predictability and consistency for the foreign policies of various US administrations.

Trump, by contrast, seems driven solely by immediate political concerns and short-term prospects for glory and profit. If there is a saving grace of such an unprincipled foreign policy, it may be the ephemeral nature of interventions conducted without an overarching vision. An unprincipled approach to military intervention does not foster the kind of ideological commitment that has led other presidents to engage in long-term interventions like the Iraq occupation.

But it also means that Trump could conceivably use military intervention to settle any international dispute or to pursue any ostensibly profitable goal – say assuming control of Greenland from Denmark.

Last year, he decided tariffs were a potent tool for asserting his interests and started applying them almost indiscriminately on allies and adversaries alike. Now that Trump has grown comfortable using the US military to achieve a range of goals – profit, gunboat diplomacy, distraction from domestic scandals, etc – the danger is that he will grow similarly haphazard in his use of force.

That does not bode well for the US nor for the rest of the world. At a time when multiple global crises are overlapping – climate, conflict and impoverishment – the last thing the world needs is a trigger-happy superpower without a clear strategy or a day-after plan.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

Jan. 5 (UPI) — Greenland Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen has said “enough” on Monday to President Donald Trump‘s threats to take the country and urged him to let go of his “fantasies of annexation.”

Nielsen posted on Facebook that Trump should stop his claims that the United States will annex his country, which is a territory of Denmark, a member of NATO and the European Union.

“Alliances are built on trust. And trust requires respect,” Nielsen said in his post. “Threats, pressure and talk of annexation do not belong anywhere between friends. That’s not how you talk to a people who have repeatedly shown responsibility, stability and loyalty.”

“This is enough.”

After the invasion of Venezuela on Saturday, Trump told The Atlantic on Sunday that the United States needs Greenland for national security. The operation in Venezuela also renewed fears that Trump may actually move to take Greenland.

“They are going to have to view it themselves. I really don’t know … But we do need Greenland, absolutely. We need it for defense,” Trump said when asked if the action in Venezuela should be interpreted by other nations as a signal that his administration might use military action to pursue more goals.

Nielsen’s post told Trump to let it go.

“No more pressure. No more hints. No more fantasies about annexation,” he said.

“We are open for dialogue. We are open to conversations. But it has to be through the right channels and with respect to international law. And the right channels are not random and disrespectful posts on social media. Greenland is our home and our territory. And that’s how it continues to be.”

The EU backs Nielsen and Denmark on the matter.

“The EU will continue to uphold the principles of national sovereignty, territorial integrity and the inviolability of borders,” EU foreign policy spokesperson Anitta Hipper told reporters. “These are universal principles, and we will not stop defending them, all the more so if the territorial integrity of a member state of the European Union is questioned.”

Denmark Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said it made “absolutely no sense to talk about the U.S. needing to take over Greenland.” She said the United States has “no right to annex any of the three countries in the Danish kingdom.”

The Danish Kingdom also includes the Faroe Islands.

“The principle of the inviolability of borders is enshrined in international law and is not up for negotiation,” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said in Berlin after a meeting with Frederiksen in June. “We stand firmly alongside our Danish friends on these issues and that will remain the case.”

On Air Force One, Trump told reporters he didn’t want to discuss Greenland saying he would talk about it “in 20 days.” He then mocked Greenland and Denmark.

“You know what Denmark did recently to boost security in Greenland? They added one more dog sled. It’s true. They thought that was a great move,” Trump said.

“Right now, Greenland is full of Chinese and Russian ships everywhere. We need Greenland for national security reasons. Denmark will not be able to handle the task.”

Sweden, Norway and Finland have all said they support Denmark.

“Only Denmark and Greenland have the right to decide on issues concerning Denmark and Greenland,” said Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson. “Sweden fully supports our neighboring country.”

Russia’s Defence Ministry had published a video of a downed drone it said Ukraine had launched at Putin’s residence, which Kyiv rejected.

United States President Donald Trump has dismissed claims that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s residence had been attacked by Ukraine as the war grinds on, saying he did not “believe that strike happened”, after having initially accepted the Kremlin’s version of events at face value.

On Sunday night, Trump, on board Air Force One, told reporters that “nobody knew at that moment” whether a report about the alleged incident was accurate. He added that “something” happened near Putin’s residence, but after US officials reviewed the evidence, they did not believe Ukraine targeted it.

Ukraine immediately denied its involvement, accusing Russia of a false-flag type operation to undermine peace negotiations. Moscow promptly said the incident would harden its peace talks stance.

Reports of the attack emerged last week after Russia’s Ministry of Defence published a video of a downed drone it said Kyiv had launched at Putin’s residence in the Novgorod region.

According to the ministry, the residence was not damaged, and Putin was elsewhere at the time.

Alongside Ukraine, its Western allies also heavily disputed that the attack had occurred at all.

The claim of the attack came as Russia and Ukraine work towards agreeing to a ceasefire deal to end the nearly four-year-long war.

European leaders are expected to meet in France on Tuesday for further talks on a US-backed ceasefire plan, which Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said was “90 percent ready”. Territorial issues over ceding land conquered in war or not remain at the heart of the matter.

First civilian deaths in Kyiv in 2026

Ukraine’s authorities reported on Monday morning that an overnight Russian attack on the Kyiv region had killed two people, in the first casualties in the capital in 2026.

According to the State Emergency Service of Ukraine, the Russian attack set a medical facility in the Obolonskyi district in Kyiv’s northern sector, where an inpatient ward was operating, on fire.

The service said once the fire was extinguished, a body was found inside. A woman was also injured, and 25 people were evacuated, the service added on Telegram.

Towns and villages across the Kyiv region were also damaged and critical infrastructure hit, leading to the killing of a man in his 70s in the Fastiv district, southwest of the capital, Governor Mykola Kalashnyk said on Telegram.

Kalashnyk added that small parts of the region were left without power.

Russia has not commented on the overnight strike yet.

UN Security Council to meet on Maduro’s abduction as Trump insists US in control of Venezuela.

DEVELOPING STORYDEVELOPING STORY,

US president says a military operation focused on Colombia’s government ‘sounds good’ to him.

United States President Donald Trump has threatened his Colombian counterpart, Gustavo Petro, in the wake of Washington’s abduction of Venezuela’s leader, and said he believed the government in Cuba, too, was likely to fall soon.

Trump made the comments late on Sunday while speaking to reporters on board Air Force One.

“Venezuela is very sick. Colombia is very sick too, run by a sick man who likes making cocaine and selling it to the United States. And he’s not going to be doing it very long. Let me tell you,” the US president said.

When asked if he meant an operation by the US on Colombia, Trump said: “Sounds good to me.”

He added that a US military intervention in Cuba is unlikely because the country appears to be ready to fall on its own.

“Cuba is ready to fall. Cuba, looks like it’s ready to fall. I don’t know how they , if they can hold that, but Cuba now has no income. They got all of their income from Venezuela, from the Venezuelan oil,” Trump said.

“They’re not getting any of it. Cuba literally is ready to fall. And you have a lot of great Cuban Americans that are going to be very happy about this.”

Trump’s comments come a day after US forces captured and detained Maduro and his wife in a surprise attack on Caracas. The Venezuelan leader and his wife, Cilia Flores, are due to appear in court on drug-related charges in New York later on Monday.

Speaking to reporters on Air Force One, Trump also insisted the US was ‘in charge’ of Venezuela, even though the country’s Supreme Court has appointed the country’s Vice President Delcy Rodriguez as interim leader.

He also reiterated a threat to send the US military back to Venezuela if it “doesn’t behave”.

Trump has made no secret of his ambitions to expand US presence in the Western hemisphere and revive the 19th century Monroe Doctrine that states Latin America falls under the US sphere of influence. Trump has called his 21st century version the “Don-roe Doctrine”.

The US president has also previously threatened both Colombia and Cuba. Over the weekend he said that Petro has to “watch his ass” and that the political situation in Cuba was “something we’ll end up talking about because Cuba is a failing nation”.

The US president’s latest threat comes a day after Washington bombed Venezuela and abducted its president.

Denmark’s prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, has ‍urged US President ‍Donald Trump to stop threatening to take over Greenland, after the latter reiterated his wish to do so following Washington’s abduction of the leader of Venezuela.

“It makes absolutely no sense to talk about the US needing ⁠to take over Greenland. The US has no right to annex any of ​the three countries in the Danish Kingdom,” Frederiksen said in ‍a statement on Sunday.

The comments followed an interview published by The Atlantic magazine, in which Trump said: “We do need Greenland, absolutely. We need it for defence.”

On Saturday, the United States bombed Venezuela and toppled President Nicolas Maduro, raising concerns in Denmark that the same could happen with Greenland, a Danish territory.

“I would therefore strongly urge the US to stop the threats against a historically close ally and against another country and another people who have very clearly said that they are not for sale,” Frederiksen said.

The Greenlandic prime minister’s office did not ​immediately comment on Trump’s latest remarks.

The US president has repeatedly called for Greenland, a self-governing Danish territory and NATO member, to become part of the US.

Last month, the Trump administration named Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry, who publicly supports annexation, as special envoy to the mineral-rich Arctic Island.

Greenland’s strategic position between Europe and ⁠North America makes it a key site for the US ballistic missile defence system, and its mineral wealth is attractive, as the US hopes to reduce its reliance on Chinese exports.

Katie Miller, the wife of Trump’s deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, posted on Saturday the contentious image of the Danish autonomous territory in the colours of the US flag on her X feed.

Her post had a single word above it: “SOON”.

Stephen Miller is widely seen as the architect of much of Trump’s policies, guiding the president on his hardline immigration and domestic agenda.

Greenland’s prime minister, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, called the post “disrespectful”.

“Relations between nations and peoples are built on mutual respect and international law – not on symbolic gestures that disregard our status and our rights,” he said on X.

But he also said that “there is neither reason for panic nor for concern. Our country is not for sale, and our future is not decided by social media posts”.

Denmark’s ambassador to the US, Jesper Moeller Soerensen, reacted to the post on Sunday by saying, “We expect full respect for the territorial integrity” of Denmark.

Soerensen gave a pointed “friendly reminder” that his country has “significantly boosted its Arctic security efforts” and had worked with the US on that.

“We are close allies, and should continue to work together as such,” he wrote.

WASHINGTON — Top officials in the Trump administration clarified their position on “running” Venezuela after seizing its president, Nicolás Maduro, over the weekend, pressuring the regime that remains in power there Sunday to acquiesce to U.S. demands on oil access and drug enforcement, or else face further military action.

Their goal appears to be the establishment of a pliant vassal state in Caracas that keeps the current government — led by Maduro for more than a decade — largely in place, but finally defers to the whims of Washington after turning away from the United States for a quarter century.

It leaves little room for the ascendance of Venezuela’s democratic opposition, which won the country’s last national election, according to the State Department, European capitals and international monitoring bodies.

Trump and his top aides said they would try to work with Maduro’s handpicked vice president and current interim president, Delcy Rodríguez, to run the country and its oil sector “until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition,” offering no time frame for proposed elections.

Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem underscored the strategy in a series of interviews Sunday morning.

“If she doesn’t do what’s right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro,” Trump told the Atlantic, referring to Rodríguez. “Rebuilding there and regime change, anything you want to call it, is better than what you have right now. Can’t get any worse.”

Rubio said that a U.S. naval quarantine of Venezuelan oil tankers would continue unless and until Rodríguez begins cooperating with the U.S. administration, referring to the blockade — and the lingering threat of additional military action from the fleet off Venezuela’s coast — as “leverage” over the remnants of Maduro’s regime.

“That’s the sort of control the president is pointing to when he says that,” Rubio told CBS News. “We continue with that quarantine, and we expect to see that there will be changes — not just in the way the oil industry is run for the benefit of the people, but also so that they stop the drug trafficking.”

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, told CNN that he had been in touch with the administration since the Saturday night operation that snatched Maduro and his wife from their bedroom, whisking them away to New York to face criminal charges.

Trump’s vow to “run” the country, Cotton said, “means the new leaders of Venezuela need to meet our demands.”

“Delcy Rodríguez, and the other ministers in Venezuela, understand now what the U.S. military is capable of,” Cotton said, while adding: “It is a fact that she and other indicted and sanctioned individuals are in Venezuela. They have control of the military and security forces. We have to deal with that fact. But that does not make them the legitimate leaders.”

“What we want is a future Venezuelan government that will be pro-American, that will contribute to stability, order and prosperity, not only in Venezuela but in our own backyard. That probably needs to include new elections,” Cotton added.

Whether Rodríguez will cooperate with the administration is an open question.

Trump said Saturday that she seemed amenable to making “Venezuela great again” in a conversation with Rubio. But the interim president delivered a speech hours later demanding Maduro’s return, and vowing that Venezuela would “never again be a colony of any empire.”

The developments have concerned senior figures in Venezuela’s democratic opposition, led by Maria Corina Machado, last year’s Nobel Peace Prize laureate, and Edmundo González Urrutia, the opposition candidate who won the 2024 presidential election that was ultimately stolen by Maduro.

In his Saturday news conference, Trump dismissed Machado, saying that the revered opposition leader was “a very nice woman,” but “doesn’t have the respect within the country” to lead.

Elliott Abrams, Trump’s special envoy to Venezuela in his first term, said he was skeptical that Rodríguez — an acolyte of Hugo Chávez and avowed supporter of Chavismo throughout the Maduro era — would betray the cause.

“The insult to Machado was bizarre, unfair — and simply ignorant,” Abrams told The Times. “Who told him that there was no respect for her?”

Maduro was booked in New York and flown by night over the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor to the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, where he is in federal custody at a notorious facility that has housed other famous inmates, including Sean “Diddy” Combs, Ghislaine Maxwell, Bernie Madoff and Sam Bankman-Fried.

He is expected to be arraigned on federal charges of narco-terrorism conspiracy, cocaine importation conspiracy, possession of machine guns and destructive devices, and conspiracy to possess machine guns and destructive devices as soon as Monday.

While few in Washington lamented Maduro’s ouster, Democratic lawmakers criticized the operation as another act of regime change by a Republican president that could have violated international law.

“The invasion of Venezuela has nothing to do with American security. Venezuela is not a security threat to the U.S.,” said Sen. Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut. “This is about making Trump’s oil industry and Wall Street friends rich. Trump’s foreign policy — the Middle East, Russia, Venezuela — is fundamentally corrupt.”

In their Saturday news conference, and in subsequent interviews, Trump and Rubio said that targeting Venezuela was in part about reestablishing U.S. dominance in the Western Hemisphere, reasserting the philosophy of President James Monroe as China and Russia work to enhance their presence in the region. The Trump administration’s national security strategy, published last month, previewed a renewed focus on Latin America after the region faced neglect from Washington over decades.

Trump left unclear whether his military actions in the region would end in Caracas, a longstanding U.S. adversary, or if he is willing to turn the U.S. armed forces on America’s allies.

In his interview with the Atlantic, Trump suggested that “individual countries” would be addressed on a case-by-case basis. On Saturday, he reiterated a threat to the president of Colombia, a major non-NATO ally, to “watch his ass,” over an ongoing dispute about Bogota’s cooperation on drug enforcement.

On Sunday morning, the United Nations Security Council was called for an urgent meeting to discuss the legality of the U.S. operation inside Venezuela.

It was not Russia or China — permanent members of the council and longstanding competitors — who called the session, nor France, whose government has questioned whether the operation violated international law, but Colombia, a non-permanent member who joined the council less than a week ago.

Jan. 4 (UPI) — President Donald Trump said in an interview published Sunday that the United States needs to annex Greenland “for defense,” while his deputy chief of staff’s wife was reproached by Denmark’s ambassador to the U.S. for a social media post about the possible move.

Trump has consistently discussed annexing Greenland since before retaking office in January 2025, but has also long been rebuffed on the idea by officials in both Denmark and Greenland.

But at a news conference on Saturday morning after the U.S. apprehension of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio both alluded to the potential of U.S. military action elsewhere in the Americas.

When asked on Sunday if Maduro’s apprehension should be interpreted by other nations — for instance, Greenland, which does not want to be annexed — as a signal that his administration might consider military action to pursue more goals, Trump demurred.

“They are going to have to view it themselves,” Trump told The Atlantic in an interview on Sunday. “I really don’t know … But we do need Greenland, absolutely. We need it for defense.”

He also noted that the NATO ally is “surrounded by Russian and Chinese ships.”

Trump previously has refused to rule out military action to annex Greenland, saying in May that he wouldn’t “say I’m not going to do it but I don’t rule out anything … We need Greenland very badly,” The Guardian reported.

Greenland, which is the world’s largest island, is a self-governing territory of Denmark. It is largely covered with ice, though it has oil, natural gas and mineral resources, and already is home to the United States’ northernmost military base.

Trump said in a nationally televised speech in March that his administration was “working with everybody involved to try and get it.”

“We need it really for international world security,” he said during the speech, adding that he thought “we’re going to get it, one way or the other.”

At the time, Greenland Prime Minister Mute Egede said in a Facebook post that Greenland would determine it’s own future and does not what to be Americans any more than they want to be Danish.

Trump’s recently named Greenland envoy, Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry, said in December that the United States is not going to “go in there trying to conquer anybody.”

Landry also said in December that he was thankful to Trump for the “honor to serve you in this volunteer position to make Greenland a part of the United States,” The Guardian reported.

Denmark’s ambassador to the United States, Jesper Moeller Soerensen, responded to a Saturday post on X by Katie Miller, wife of White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, that depicted Greenland with a U.S. map overlaid on it with the word “SOON,” the BBC reported.

“Just a friendly reminder about the U.S. and Denmark: We are close allies and should continue to work together as such,” Soerensen said in a response on X.

“And yes, we expect full respect for the territorial integrity of the Kingdom of Denmark,” Soerensen added.

WASHINGTON — Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard had yet to weigh in on the U.S. operation to remove Nicolás Maduro from power in Caracas as of Saturday night, more than 24 hours since President Trump approved the audacious mission that captured the Venezuelan leader.

Her silence on the operation surprised some in the U.S. intelligence community, which laid the groundwork for the mission over several months, and which had assets in harm’s way on the ground in Venezuela as the operation unfolded.

CIA Director John Ratcliffe, by contrast, accompanied Trump in Mar-a-Lago throughout the night as the extraction was underway, and stood beside the president as he conducted a news conference announcing the results.

“Teamwork at its finest,” Ratcliffe wrote on social media, posted alongside photos of him with the president’s team in the temporary situation room set up at Trump’s Florida estate.

Gabbard, a native of Hawaii who, according to her X account, spent the holidays in her home state, made a name for herself as a member of Congress campaigning against “regime change wars,” particularly the U.S. war in Iraq that toppled Saddam Hussein.

In a speech at Turning Point USA’s annual conference last month, Gabbard criticized “warmongers” in the “deep state” of the intelligence community she leads trying to thwart Trump’s efforts to broker peace between Russia and Ukraine.

“Too often we, the American people, are told we must choose between liberty or security, and which side often wins out in that proposition,” she told the gathered crowd. “Liberty loses, and the warmongers claim that they are doing what they are doing for the sake of our security. It’s a lie.”

Outside of government, during Trump’s first term, Gabbard also criticized advocates for regime change in Venezuela, writing in 2019, “It’s about the oil … again.”

“The United States needs to stay out of Venezuela,” Gabbard wrote at the time. “Let the Venezuelan people determine their future.

“We don’t want other countries to choose our leaders,” she added, “so we have to stop trying to choose theirs.”

The image of abducted Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro bound and blindfolded aboard the USS Iwo Jima posted by Donald Trump prompted shock and condemnation.

Within hours of a massive operation of regime change in Venezuela, United States President Donald Trump revelled in his “success”. He posted a photo of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in handcuffs and then addressed the American public.

He praised the military for launching “one of the most stunning, effective and powerful displays of American military might” in US history, allegedly rendering Venezuelan forces “powerless”. He announced that Maduro and his wife would be indicted in New York for “narcoterrorism” and claimed – without evidence – that US operations have reduced maritime drug trafficking by 97 percent.

Trump went further, declaring that the US would “run the country” until an unspecified transition could be arranged, while openly threatening a “second and much larger attack”. Crucially, he framed these claims within a broader assertion of US “domination over the Western Hemisphere”, explicitly invoking the 1823 Monroe Doctrine.

The US military intervention in Venezuela represents something far more dangerous than a single act of aggression. It is the latest manifestation of a centuries-old pattern of US interference that has left Latin America scarred. The regime change operation in Caracas is a clear sign the Trump administration is embracing this old policy of interventionism with renewed fervour. And that bodes ill for the region.

That this attack targeted Maduro’s repressive and corrupt government, which was responsible for the immense suffering of many Venezuelans, makes the situation no less catastrophic. Washington’s long history of supporting brutal dictatorships across the region strips away any pretence of moral authority. Trump himself can hardly claim any moral high ground given that he is himself embroiled in a major political scandal due to his close ties with convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein and has maintained unconditional support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

The Trump administration’s attack on Venezuela solidifies a catastrophic pattern of violations of international law. If the US can unilaterally launch military strikes against sovereign nations at a whim, then the entire framework of international law becomes meaningless. This tells every nation that might and power trump legality and sovereignty.

For Latin America specifically, the implications are chilling. To understand why this attack reverberates so painfully across the region, one must take a quick look at its history. The US has orchestrated or supported coups and military dictatorships throughout the region with disturbing regularity.

In Guatemala in 1954, the CIA overthrew the democratically elected government of Jacobo Arbenz. In Chile in 1973, the US backed the coup that brought Augusto Pinochet to power and ushered in an era of unchecked political violence. In 1983, the US invaded and occupied the island of Grenada to overthrow its socialist government. In Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, and throughout Central America, Washington provided training, funding and political cover for military regimes that tortured dissidents and murdered civilians.

The new question now is, if the US carried out regime change in Venezuela so easily, who is next? Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro, who has been at odds with the Trump administration, was quick to react – and is right to be concerned, as in December, Trump threatened an intervention, saying “he’ll be next“. Others in the region are also nervous.

Beyond the looming threat of US intervention, Latin America now also faces the potential regional instability that a regime change in Caracas is likely to create. The political crisis under Maduro had already spilled beyond its borders into neighbouring Colombia and Brazil, where Venezuelans fled poverty and repression. One can only imagine the ripple effect the US-enacted regime change will have.

There are probably many Venezuelans who are celebrating Maduro’s ouster. However, the US intervention directly undermines the political opposition in Venezuela. It would allow the regime, which appears to retain power, to paint all opposition as foreign agents, eroding its legitimacy.

The Venezuelan people deserve democracy, but they have to achieve it themselves with international support, not to have it imposed at gunpoint by a foreign power with a documented history of caring more about resources and geopolitical dominance than human rights.

Latin Americans deserve better than to choose between homegrown authoritarianism and imported violence. What they need is not American bombs but genuine respect for self-determination.

The US has no moral authority to attack Venezuela, regardless of Maduro’s authoritarian nature. Both can be true: Maduro is a dictator who caused immense harm to his people, and US military intervention is an illegal act of aggression that will not resolve the crisis of democracy in Venezuela.

The region’s future must be determined by people themselves, free from the shadow of empire.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

United States President Donald Trump has said that Washington will “run” Venezuela until a political transition can take place, hours after US forces bombed the South American country and “captured” its president, Nicolas Maduro.

Speaking during a news conference on Saturday, Trump said the US would “run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition”.

“We don’t want to be involved with having somebody else get in, and we have the same situation that we had for the last long period of years,” he said.

The Trump administration launched attacks on Venezuela’s capital, Caracas, and seized Maduro and his wife in the early hours of Saturday.

A plane carrying the Venezuelan leader landed in New York state on Saturday evening, according to US media.

Footage broadcast by CNN, Fox News and MS Now showed US officials escorting a person they identified as Maduro off a plane at the Stewart international airport, about 97 kilometres (60 miles) northwest of New York City.

Maduro’s capture took place after a months-long US pressure campaign against his government, which included US seizures of oil tankers off the Venezuelan coast, as well as deadly attacks on alleged drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean. The attacks were widely denounced as extrajudicial killings.

Washington had accused the Venezuelan leader, who has been in power since 2013, of having ties to drug cartels. Maduro had rejected the claim, saying the US was working to depose him and take control of Venezuela’s vast oil reserves.

During Saturday’s news conference, Trump said that “very large United States oil companies” would move into Venezuela to “fix the badly broken… oil infrastructure and start making money for the country”.

He added that his administration’s actions “will make the people of Venezuela rich, independent and safe”.

The Trump administration has defended Maduro’s “capture, saying the left-wing leader faced drug-related charges in the US.

These charges include “narco-terrorism conspiracy, cocaine importation conspiracy, possession of machine guns and destructive devices, and conspiracy to possess machine guns and destructive devices against the United States”, US Attorney General Pam Bondi said.

“They will soon face the full wrath of American justice on American soil in American courts,” she added in a post on X.

A Justice Department official told the Reuters news agency that Maduro is expected to make an initial appearance in Manhattan federal court on Monday.

‘Illegal abduction’

But legal experts, world leaders and Democratic Party lawmakers in the US have condemned the administration’s actions as a violation of international law.

“Attacking countries, in flagrant violation of international law, is the first step towards a world of violence, chaos, and instability, where the law of the strongest prevails over multilateralism,” Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva wrote on X.

Ben Saul, the United Nations special rapporteur on human rights and counterterrorism, slammed what he called Washington’s “illegal abduction” of Maduro. “I condemn the US’ illegal aggression against Venezuela,” Saul wrote on social media.

A spokesperson for UN chief Antonio Guterres said he was “deeply alarmed” by the situation, describing the US’s actions as setting “a dangerous precedent”.

“The Secretary-General continues to emphasize the importance of full respect – by all – of international law, including the UN Charter. He’s deeply concerned that the rules of international law have not been respected,” Guterres’s office said in a statement.

Earlier on Saturday, Venezuela’s defence minister released a defiant statement in response to the US attacks, urging people to remain united.

“We will not negotiate; we will not give up,” Vladimir Padrino Lopez said, stressing that Venezuela’s independence is not up for negotiation. “We must maintain calm and [be] united in order to prevail in these dire moments.”

Uncertainty prevails

It remains unclear how exactly the US plans to “run” Venezuela, and how long the purported transitional period will last.

During Saturday’s news conference, Trump said that US Secretary of State Marco Rubio had spoken with Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodriguez.

“She was sworn in as president just a little while ago,” Trump told reporters. “She had a long conversation with [Rubio], and she said, ‘We’ll do whatever you need’. I think she was quite gracious, but she really doesn’t have a choice.”

Rodriguez appeared to contradict that in a news conference in Caracas later in the day.

“We demand the immediate release of President Nicolas Maduro and his wife. The only president of Venezuela is President Nicolas Maduro,” she said.

“We are ready to defend Venezuela. We are ready to defend our natural resources, which should be for national development,” she added.

Al Jazeera’s Latin America editor Lucia Newman, reporting from Chile, said that, if Rodriguez is “on board” with the US plan for Venezuela, as Trump and Rubio have suggested, “she certainly didn’t sound like it” during her address.

“She sounded like her typical, fiery self, very much on the side of… Maduro, demanding that he be released and saying that Venezuela would not be a colony of the United States,” Newman said.

The events of the day have brought “a rollercoaster of emotions” to “Venezuelans both inside and outside of the country”, said Caracas-based journalist Sissi de Flaviis.

“When we first heard that Maduro was taken out of the country, there was a mix of reactions,” she said. “A lot of people couldn’t believe it. Other people were pretty much celebrating. Other people were kind of on standby, waiting.”

After Trump’s news conference announcing US plans to run Venezuela, “there’s been a shock”, de Flaviis added.

“People are a bit concerned about what this will actually mean for us, what this will mean for the government and who is going to lead us in the next few days, months and years.”

Meanwhile, Harlan Ullman, a former US naval officer, told Al Jazeera that “the notion of America taking over Venezuela is going to explode in our faces”.

“When Trump says, ‘We’re going to run the country’: We’re not capable of running America, how are we going to be able to run Venezuela?” Ullman said.

“I do not believe that we have a plan for dealing with Venezuela,” he added. “A country is extraordinarily complex. We lack the knowledge, understanding and all the logistics to do this.”

Since coming down the escalator in 2015 to announce his first presidential run, Donald Trump has presented himself as a break from the traditional hawkish foreign policy in the United States.

The US president has even criticised some of his political rivals as “warmongers” and “war hawks”.

But Trump’s move to abduct Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and announce that the US will “run” the Latin American country has drawn comparisons with the regime change wars that he built a political career rejecting.

Some critics from Trump’s Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement, who backed his message of focusing on the country’s own issues instead of conflicts abroad, are criticising Washington’s march to war with Venezuela.

Still, Trump’s grip on Republican politics appears to remain firm, with most legislators from the party praising Trump’s actions.

“To President Trump and his team, you should take great pride in setting in motion the liberation of Venezuela,” Senator Lindsey Graham wrote in a social media post.

“As I have often said, it is in America’s national security interest to deal with the drug caliphate in our backyard, the centrepiece of which is Venezuela.”

Graham’s reference to a “drug caliphate” seems to play on Islamophobic tropes and promote the push to liken the US attacks on alleged drug traffickers in Latin America to the so-called “war on terror”.

The US senator heaped praise on the winner of the FIFA Peace Prize – handed to Trump by the association’s chief, Gianni Infantino, in December – and called him “the GOAT of the American presidency”, which stands for “the greatest of all time”.

Muted criticism

While it was expected that Graham and other foreign policy hawks in Trump’s orbit would back the moves against Venezuela, even some of the Republican sceptics of foreign interventions cheered the abduction of Maduro.

Former Congressman Matt Gaetz, one of the most vocal critics of hawkish foreign policy on the right, poked fun at the “capture” of the Venezuelan president.

“Maduro is gonna hate CECOT,” he wrote on X, referring to the notorious prison in El Salvador where the Trump administration sent hundreds of suspected gang members without due process.

Libertarian Senator Rand Paul, who has been a leading voice in decrying Congress’s war-making power, only expressed muted disapproval of Trump’s failure to seek lawmakers’ authorisation for military action in Venezuela.

“Time will tell if regime change in Venezuela is successful without significant monetary or human cost,” he wrote in a lengthy statement that mostly argued against bringing “socialism” to the US.

“Best though, not to forget, that our founders limited the executive’s power to go to war without Congressional authorisation for a reason – to limit the horror of war and limit war to acts of defence. Let’s hope those precepts of peace are not forgotten in our justified relief that Maduro is gone and the Venezuelan people will have a second chance.”

Early on Saturday morning, Republican Senator Mike Lee questioned the legality of the attack. “I look forward to learning what, if anything, might constitutionally justify this action in the absence of a declaration of war or authorisation for the use of military force,” he wrote on X.

Lee later said that Secretary of State Marco Rubio told him that US troops were executing a legal arrest warrant against Maduro.

“This action likely falls within the president’s inherent authority under Article II of the Constitution to protect US personnel from an actual or imminent attack,” the senator said.

Dissent

Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene was one of the few dissenting voices.

“Americans’ disgust with our own government’s never-ending military aggression and support of foreign wars is justified because we are forced to pay for it and both parties, Republicans and Democrats, always keep the Washington military machine funded and going,”  Greene wrote on X.

Greene, a former Trump ally who fell out with the US president and is leaving Congress next week, rejected the argument that Trump ordered Maduro’s “capture” because of the Venezuelan president’s alleged involvement in the drug trade.

She noted that Venezuela is not a major exporter of fentanyl, the leading cause of overdose deaths in the US.

She also underscored that, last month, Trump pardoned former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez, a convicted drug trafficker who was serving a 45-year sentence in a US jail.

“Regime change, funding foreign wars, and American’s [sic] tax dollars being consistently funneled to foreign causes, foreigners both home and abroad, and foreign governments while Americans are consistently facing increasing cost of living, housing, healthcare, and learn about scams and fraud of their tax dollars is what has most Americans enraged,” Greene said.

Congressman Tomas Massie, another Republican, shared a speech he delivered in the House of Representatives earlier this month, warning that attacking Venezuela is about “oil and regime change”.

“Are we prepared to receive swarms of the 25 million Venezuelans, who will likely become refugees, and billions in American treasure that will be used to destroy and inevitably rebuild that nation? Do we want a miniature Afghanistan in the Western Hemisphere?” Massie said in the remarks.

“If that cost is acceptable to this Congress, then we should vote on it as a voice of the people and in accordance with our Constitution.”

While Massie and Greene are outliers in their party, Trump’s risky moves in Venezuela were a success in the short term: Maduro is in US custody at a minimal cost to Washington.

Similarly, few Republicans opposed the US war in Iraq when then-President George W Bush stood under the “mission accomplished” sign on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln after toppling Iraq’s leader, Saddam Hussein, in 2003.

But there is now a near consensus across the political spectrum that the Iraq invasion was a geopolitical disaster.

The fog of war continues to hang over Venezuela, and it is unclear who is in charge of the country, or how Trump will “run” it.

The US president has not ruled out deploying “boots on the ground” to Venezuela, raising the prospect of a US occupation and the possibility of another Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan.

“Do we truly believe that Nicolas Maduro will be replaced by a modern-day George Washington? How did that work out in… Libya, Iraq or Syria?” Massie warned in his Congress speech.

“Previous presidents told us to go to war over WMDs, weapons of mass destruction, that did not exist. Now, it’s the same playbook, except we’re told that drugs are the WMDs.”