The Senate on Thursday agreed to debate a war powers resolution aimed at curbing President Trump’s use of military force in Venezuela, with five Republicans joining Democrats in a rare bipartisan rebuke of the White House.
The 52-to-47 vote set the stage for a vote now expected next week on a measure that would force Mr. Trump to seek congressional authorization for continued U.S. military operations in Venezuela.
While the resolution has little chance of being enacted or imposing any constraint on Mr. Trump, it was a rare assertion of congressional authority over the president’s war powers. It also reflected worries in Mr. Trump’s own party about his bellicose and seemingly open-ended action in Venezuela, undertaken with no consultation or authorization by Congress.
It came less than a week after he surprised Congress and the nation with a military raid that removed the country’s president, Nicolás Maduro, and as Mr. Trump and top administration officials have refused to rule out further military operations there, including American boots on the ground.
Democrats who for months have been pressing unsuccessfully for Republicans to join them in support of a war powers measure had hoped that the weekend raid inside Venezuela, a dramatic escalation from the strikes in international waters that the military had been carrying out, would persuade them to do so. That ended up being the case.
Senators Susan Collins of Maine, Todd Young of Indiana and Josh Hawley of Missouri — all of whom had opposed similar resolutions in the past — joined all Democrats in backing the measure. So did Senators Rand Paul of Kentucky and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who had previously backed war powers measures.
“The circumstances have now changed,” Ms. Collins said in a statement after voting in support of the measure. “While I support the operation to seize Nicolás Maduro, which was extraordinary in its precision and complexity, I do not support committing additional U.S. forces or entering into any long-term military involvement in Venezuela or Greenland without specific congressional authorization.”
Mr. Trump immediately attacked the Republicans who sided with Democrats on the measure, asserting that they were undermining national security. “Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Rand Paul, Josh Hawley, and Todd Young should never be elected to office again,” he wrote in a post on his social media site. Ms. Collins is the most vulnerable Senate Republican facing voters this year.
Mr. Trump’s own assertion in an interview with The New York Times that the United States may be involved in Venezuela for years to come may have been a factor in persuading Republicans to register their alarm by voting for the resolution, said Mr. Paul, the sole Republican sponsor. He said the vote gave “a clear signal” that only Congress could send the United States to war.
He and the Democratic leaders of the resolution, including Senators Tim Kaine of Virginia, Adam B. Schiff of California and Chuck Schumer of New York, the minority leader, argued that the scale of the operation constituted an act of war requiring congressional approval.
“Make no mistake: Bombing another nation’s capital and removing their president is an act of war, plain and simple,” Mr. Paul said before the vote.
The mission to oust Mr. Maduro and his wife, who were taken to New York for criminal prosecution, was carried out by elite Army Delta Force commandos and with more than 150 military aircraft, including drones, fighter planes and bombers, taking part in the mission to disable radar and air-defense systems. It was the largest American military action of its kind in years and resulted in more than 80 deaths, with U.S. service members injured.
Key members of Congress were not informed of the mission, a break with decades of tradition and statute that requires congressional notice for covert operations.
That has frustrated Democrats and a small group of Republicans who have raised concerns since Mr. Trump began authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean in early September.
Mr. Kaine rejected the claim by senior Trump administration officials that Saturday’s raid was a law enforcement operation and therefore required no consultation or authorization by Congress.
“This is not an arrest warrant. This is far bigger than that,” he said. “And it’s the kind of hostilities that Congress specifically had in mind when they wrote the War Powers Resolution of 1973.”
Senior Trump administration officials have given dozens of classified briefings to various groups of lawmakers about the operations, but no public hearings or formal debate over authorization have taken place.
“An embargo is an act of war,” Senator Christopher S. Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, argued before the vote. “Repeated military strikes followed on by an invasion is an act of war.” He also warned that the actions ran the risk of escalating tensions with global adversaries, namely China and Russia.
If the measure were to pass the Senate, a vote would be required in the House, which rejected two similar war powers resolutions last month. But even if the measure were to pass both chambers, Mr. Trump would be all but certain to veto it. And with a vast majority of Republicans strongly supporting Mr. Trump on Venezuela, overriding a presidential veto — which requires two-thirds votes in both chambers — is highly unlikely.
Many Republicans argued on Thursday that Congress had no role in the matter.
“Can you use military force as commander in chief without a declaration of war?” asked Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina. “The answer is yes.”
He and other Republicans have likened the intervention in Venezuela to operations directed by former presidents that were never authorized by Congress, including one by George H.W. Bush in Panama to capture Manuel Noriega, the dictator whose ties to drug trafficking led to his ouster in 1989.
“I don’t want to hear anybody tell me that this has never been done before,” Mr. Graham said. “It’s actually the norm. What’s odd in America is to declare war by the Congress.”
Senator Jim Risch of Idaho, the Republican chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee who has been an outspoken supporter of Mr. Trump’s actions to curb the influx of narcotics into the United States, said before the vote that lawmakers backing the measure were merely trying to “slap the president in the face.”
“This vote and similar votes before it are an abuse of the War Powers Act,” Mr. Risch said moments before the roll call. “The United States conducted a limited operation to remove an indicted narcoterrorist.”
Still, the vote reflected a notable shift after months in which many Republicans had privately expressed concern about the administration’s lack of consultation with lawmakers but declined to even allow a debate on imposing limits on Mr. Trump.
“President Trump campaigned against forever wars, and I strongly support him in that position,” Mr. Young said in a statement. “A drawn-out campaign in Venezuela involving the American military, even if unintended, would be the opposite of President Trump’s goal of ending foreign entanglements.”
Robert Jimison covers Congress for The Times, with a focus on defense issues and foreign policy.
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