House clears Trump to use full force against Venezuela, cartels

WASH­ING­TON — House Re­pub­li­cans re­ject­ed a pair of De­mo­c­ra­t­ic-backed res­o­lu­tions yes­ter­day that would have put a check on Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s pow­er to use mil­i­tary force against drug car­tels and the na­tion of Venezuela.

De­moc­rats forced the votes us­ing war pow­ers res­o­lu­tions, as Trump has stepped up his threats against the South Amer­i­can na­tion and Con­gress has ques­tioned how the US mil­i­tary is con­duct­ing a cam­paign that has de­stroyed 25 ves­sels al­leged­ly car­ry­ing drugs and killed at least 95 peo­ple.

The leg­is­la­tion would have forced the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion to seek au­tho­ri­sa­tion from Con­gress be­fore con­tin­u­ing at­tacks against car­tels that it deems to be ter­ror­ist or­gan­i­sa­tions in the West­ern Hemi­sphere or launch­ing an at­tack on Venezuela it­self.

Rep. Gre­go­ry Meeks, the top De­mo­c­rat on the House For­eign Af­fairs Com­mit­tee, ar­gued that Trump’s ag­gres­sions in the re­gion were re­al­ly be­cause “the pres­i­dent is cov­et­ing Venezue­lan oil.”

They were the first votes in the House on Trump’s mil­i­tary cam­paign in Cen­tral and South Amer­i­ca. A ma­jor­i­ty of Re­pub­li­cans in the Sen­ate had pre­vi­ous­ly vot­ed against sim­i­lar res­o­lu­tions, and Trump would al­most cer­tain­ly ve­to them if they were to pass Con­gress. But De­moc­rats forced the votes as a way to bring up a de­bate about the mil­i­tary cam­paign and force Re­pub­li­cans to go on the record about sup­port­ing it.

Re­pub­li­can lead­ers have in­creas­ing­ly ex­pressed sup­port for Trump’s cam­paign, even as it po­ten­tial­ly es­ca­lates in­to a di­rect con­fronta­tion with Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro.

Sen­ate Ma­jor­i­ty Leader John Thune said ear­li­er yes­ter­day that he didn’t know whether the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion had “pub­licly stat­ed” that they want­ed regime change, but “I would cer­tain­ly not have a prob­lem if that was their po­si­tion.”

“Maduro is a can­cer on that con­ti­nent,” added Thune.

Still, the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion has not sought con­gres­sion­al au­tho­ri­sa­tion for its re­cent ac­tions in the Caribbean, ar­gu­ing in­stead that it can de­stroy drug-car­ry­ing boats just as it would han­dle ter­ror­ist threats against the US. That ra­tio­nale, how­ev­er, has led to deep scruti­ny of the strikes, es­pe­cial­ly af­ter it was re­vealed that a Sep­tem­ber 2 op­er­a­tion killed two peo­ple who had sur­vived an ini­tial at­tack.

Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio, De­fence Sec­re­tary Pe­te Hegseth and oth­er top na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cials briefed mem­bers of Con­gress on Tues­day. They de­fend­ed the cam­paign as a suc­cess­ful counter-nar­cot­ic ef­fort that has cut in­to the drug sup­ply en­ter­ing the US, but did not clue in Con­gress about its ul­ti­mate goals when it comes to Venezuela. (AP)