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.