In today’s edition … What the special election in Tennessee means for Republicans … A succession kerfuffle prompts Democrats to run as independents … but first …
Trump breaks his peacemaker brand in Venezuela
President Theodore Roosevelt summed up his Latin America policy with the phrase, “Speak softly and carry a big stick.”
President Donald Trump is not speaking softly.
Since September, the U.S. military has carried out strikes on alleged drug trafficking boats around Venezuela that have killed more than 80 people. The president warned U.S. air carriers not to fly over the country, telling them to consider its airspace closed. Several ships, including the world’s premier aircraft carrier, and over 15,000 troops are now in the Caribbean as part of what the Pentagon is calling Operation Southern Spear.
It’s the biggest military escalation with Venezuela in modern U.S. history. And while the administration maintains the operation is focused on eliminating drugs flowing from the country, both Caracas and Washington are increasingly viewing the situation as teetering toward regime change to topple Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
“The Maduro regime … immediately assumed that the world was witnessing a regime change operation,” Patrick Duddy, who served as U.S. ambassador to Venezuela from 2007 to 2010, told us. “This seemed plausible to them and others, both inside and outside of Venezuela, as the forces marshaled off the coast of that country appeared to be significantly greater than would be necessary to counter drug trafficking cartels.”
Trump has long had an antagonistic stance toward Maduro. During his first term, Trump refused to recognize Maduro as the legitimately elected president of the country amid international criticism of the integrity of Venezuela’s 2018 election, recognizing instead opposition figure Juan Guaidó. James Story, who served as U.S. ambassador to Venezuela during the first Trump presidency, recalled to us that the administration would not even engage with Maduro at the time.
Still, Trump’s first term was largely defined by a far more conventional strategy for dealing with an antagonistic government. At the time, he implemented sanctions on Venezuela and worked with regional partners to find a lasting political solution.
Hawkish Republicans now cast Maduro less like a head of state and more like the head of a criminal organization. The Justice Department charged Maduro with narcoterrorism and drug trafficking in 2020, but the State Department took a step further this year when it designated the “Cartel de los Soles,” an amorphous grouping of top Venezuelan military and political officials accused of drug trafficking, as a foreign terrorist organization with Maduro as its leader.
“We’ve got to finish the job,” Rep. María Elvira Salazar (R-Florida), chair of the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere, told us. “We’re taking out a guy who is the head of a drug cartel, the guy who stole the election, the guy who is our number one enemy in the hemisphere.”
Salazar said operations in Venezuela are “not a war” but rather targeted strikes to take out an immediate terrorist threat, akin to the 2011 U.S. strikes in Libya.
Not everyone buys the argument. Trump’s base still has a sizable anti-intervention streak. A prolonged military operation or regime change would likely be an expensive and long commitment. Military strikes taken so far have already prompted backlash, including questions over their legality.
“People that are for regime change need to take up their musket, take up their rifle, and they can go down there,” Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) told our colleague Liz Goodwin. “But I’m not sending any of America’s kids down to Venezuela.”
Paul joined several Democrats in pushing a Senate resolution to rein in the president’s war powers if he conducts strikes on Venezuelan territory.
The president routinely casts himself as a peacemaker who swore to keep the country out of “forever wars.”
But to supporters of a hard-line approach to Venezuela, regime change could be the fulfillment of the president’s campaign promises of curbing drugs and illegal immigration.
Venezuela is the source of the biggest out-migration in the hemisphere, with millions of emigrants driven out by economic collapse and political persecution and seeking asylum in the United States. The Maduro regime has been deemed a threat to national security by each administration since Barack Obama’s in 2015.
“[Trump] ran in the last election on a crime and immigration platform, and it just so happens that the biggest out migration in the history of the Western Hemisphere is occurring from Venezuela,” Story told us. “The only way to fix that is to resolve the political problem in the country and to restore the institutions of the state, to restore the democracy.”
Maduro’s authoritarian leftist regime is also a major asset for Cuba, exporting oil from its cavernous reserves (the largest in the world) to the isolated island country. Cuba — widely considered to punch far above its weight in its intelligence operations — also provides intelligence to Maduro’s government to help maintain its grip on power.
Trump said this weekend that he had spoken to Maduro on the phone. The Miami Herald reported that Trump told Maduro he could save himself and his family if he left the country immediately.
Maduro apparently refused.
For a related read: Hegseth, citing ‘fog of war,’ says he learned of survivors hours after strike, from Tara Copp and Alex Horton.
Get ready with The Post
- How George Soros changed criminal justice in America, from Beth Reinhard.
- Trump rails against Somali migrants: ‘I don’t want them in our country,’ from Amy B Wang and Caroline O’Donovan.
- Pope Leo, leaving Beirut, calls for peace in Middle East and Venezuela, from Anthony Faiola, Mohamad El Chamaa and Suzan Haidamous.
- Ex-Honduras president, convicted of drug trafficking, freed on Trump pardon, from Tobi Raji, Shayna Jacobs, Samantha Schmidt and Derek Hawkins.
- Supreme Court sympathetic to antiabortion center in fight over donor names, from Justin Jouvenal and Praveena Somasundaram.
- Trump administration will block SNAP management funds for blue states, from Mariana Alfaro and Jacob Bogage.
What we’re watching
Is it possible for a loss to actually be a win?
That is the question on the minds of Democrats this Wednesday morning, after Republican Matt Van Epps defeated Democrat Aftyn Behn in last night’s surprisingly competitive special House election in Middle Tennessee.
To be clear, a win is a win, and Van Epps will be the next congressman from Tennessee’s 7th Congressional District. But the reason for the Democratic hopefulness is Behn’s margin: The progressive Democrat, who certainly gave Republicans a lot to work with as they looked to nationalize this race in the closing weeks, kept the contest in the single digits, far closer than the 22-point edge Trump had in the district last year and the 21-point win Republican former representative Mark Green — who resigned from Congress in July — secured the same day.
The race is the latest example of Democrats overperforming in off-year elections — tackled in this piece on the results — and has led Democrats to argue that if this is the kind of electorate that shows up at the ballot box in 2026, it could spell disaster for Trump and Republicans.
That’s a big if, however. Special elections are a unique beast, and Democrats have consistently done better in these races than in more traditionally timed contests. If Republicans on Capitol Hill start to think that will carry over to less ruby-red districts in 2026, you could expect to see Republicans grow more worried — and possibly some GOP retirements.
“Tonight’s results make it clear: No House Republican’s reelection should be considered safe next November,” said CJ Warnke, a top spokesperson at House Majority PAC, a group that budgeted $1 million for the Tennessee race. “This should be a five alarm fire for the GOP.”
For a related read from our Capitol Hill guru Paul Kane: Surprisingly tough Tennessee election reveals House GOP has base problem.
In the campaigns
Democrats are signing up as independents to run for Illinois’s 4th Congressional District after Rep. Jesús “Chuy” García (D) maneuvered the timing of his retirement to keep the field of opposition limited for his handpicked successor: his chief of staff Patty Garcia. You may recall the maneuver caused a bit of a crisis among House Democrats when Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-Washington) forced a vote on a measure disapproving of García’s decision not to announce his retirement until after the deadline to enter the race passed, ensuring most potential candidates chose not to enter the Democratic primary.
Among the challengers is Mayra Macías, a former teacher and district native who on Tuesday told The Post that she’s running to ensure that people in her district “actually have a choice in who represents them.” While Macías said she has a lot of respect for García, noting that she volunteered for his campaigns, she noted that it was disappointing “the way the process played out.”
“We are at a time when Trump is eroding democracy and we cannot effectively fight Trump’s anti-democratic actions if we are turning a blind eye” to Democratic actions that also prevent the people from having a say, she said. Protecting democracy, she added, “begins by having open and fair elections.”
Macías, the daughter of Mexican immigrants, said she’ll focus her campaign on the rising cost of living and on the Trump administration’s ongoing campaign targeting undocumented immigrants in Chicago. The administration has particularly targeted immigrants in portions of the 4th District, including the neighborhood where Macías grew up.
“Under Trump we are seeing a lot of this progress that we’ve made as a country being rolled back. Here in Chicago in particular, community members are being abducted by ICE,” she told us. “Women are losing the right to an abortion nationally, and our democracy is slowly being dismantled, all the while, people are dealing with the prices of everyday goods being too high, like rent, groceries and health care.”
Macías is jumping into the race after helping lead Building Back Together, a lobbying and advocacy group tied to the Biden-Harris administration.
— Mariana Alfaro
In your local paper
CalMatters (California): Here’s a look at the candidates for California’s gubernatorial election next year.
The Texas Tribune: Faculty at Texas Tech face new restrictions on how they can teach race, gender and sexuality, and can be disciplined for not complying.
The Boston Globe: Much of New England got hit by the region’s first major snowstorm of the season as a cold spell sweeps across the East Coast.
Send us a reply
What are your thoughts on the administration’s current posture toward Venezuela? Do you feel it is a legitimate target or do you think the administration is going too far? Let us and your fellow Early Brief readers know at [email protected].
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The post Why Venezuela is different for Trump appeared first on Washington Post.
