Venezuela Aftermath
Across Washington — in the administration, on Capitol Hill, in embassies — officials will be scrambling today to figure out what’s next after a special-ops strike by the US morphed Nicolás Maduro from president of Venezuela to a prisoner awaiting criminal arraignment in New York.
In Congress, the early response mostly divided along partisan lines, with all but a conspicuous couple of Republicans backing President Donald Trump’s actions, and Democrats calling the action illegal in the absence of congressional authorization as Lillianna Byington reported.
Breaking with past practice, Trump didn’t inform top congressional leaders until the strike was underway. Among the dynamics to watch today is whether GOP lawmakers try to reclaim some authority or continue to characterize the military’s action in law enforcement terms. “Congress doesn’t need to be notified every time the executive branch is making an arrest,” Sen. Tom Cotton(R-Ark.) said on Fox News.
Public reaction will take time to percolate, and the winner of the messaging war will have an advantage in the midterm elections this year, Greg Giroux writes in BGOV’s Congress Tracker this morning. The America First president said one benefit would be a US-led revival of Venezuela’s oil industry. But lifting output back to peak levels of the 1970s could cost upwards of $100 billion.
- Read Bloomberg’s Big Take: Trump’s Maduro Ouster Shows New World Order Is Here
Diplomats and world leaders will be watching the power transition and the stance of the Trump administration — especially Secretary of State Marco Rubio — toward Venezuela’s acting president, Delcy Rodríguez, amid uncertainty over new national elections.
At least for now, there’s no plan to deploy US troops or administrators, and Rodriguez struck a conciliatory tone last night with a statement inviting the US “to work together on a cooperation agenda, aimed at shared development, within the framework of international law."Trump had said Rodriguez would work with the US, but her initial statements denounced the raid and called for Maduro’s return.
Other countries to watch: Cuba, where Maduro has been a key benefactor, and China, where there’s chatter on social media about a template to follow in Taiwan. Trump on Sunday also re-upped criticisms of the governments of Colombia, Cuba, and Mexico. Of Venezuela, he said “we need total access. We need access to oil and to other things in their country that will allow us to rebuild their country.”
The next foot to fall, though, is in New York City, where Maduro’s due in court today. He’s charged with narco-terrorism conspiracy, cocaine importation conspiracy, possession of machine guns and destructive devices, and conspiracy to possess machine guns and destructive devices, in a superseding indictment made public over the weekend. Maduro and alleged co-conspirators are accused of partnering with groups including the Sinaloa Cartel and Tren de Aragua, which the US has designated as foreign terrorist organizations.
See Also:
- US Allies Offer Muted Response After Trump’s Raid in Venezuela
- Danish Prime Minister Tells Trump to Stop Threatening Greenland
Reconvening
Before the Maduro seizure shifted Washington’s attention, congressional leaders were gearing up for some intense weeks of negotiation over federal spending and Americans’ health care, beginning with senators returning to town today.
The Venezuela action immediately complicates the appropriations process for the entities that carried out the operation, as Zach C. Cohen explains in this morning’s BGOV Budget.
The Departments of Defense, State, and Justice are among those with temporary funding that expires Jan. 30. That deadline could give Democrats some leverage to force oversight. “I refuse to saddle our children with yet another costly war for no good reason,” Senate Appropriations Vice Chair Patty Murray (D-Wash.) said in a statement.
Lawmakers also had been talking about some kind of modified renewal of the expired Obamacare subsidies — an action that would require Trump’s blessing, Trump’s active involvement, or both. With the layers of debate about to happen over Venezuela, there’s no way to predict how much attention Congress or the administration will give to what had been the most pressing question of late 2025.
Though our legislative analysts can’t predict how many top-tier issues will be resolved before the two long recesses (in August and October), they can help you get ready for the ones that make it to the top of the stack with a new edition of BGOV Hill Watch.
See Also: Transportation’s Longtime Bipartisanship Shows Early Fault Lines
Eye on the Economy
Fresh data today will show how busy US factories were last month.
The direction of the Institute for Supply Management’s factory gauge will reveal whether last month’s improvement in new manufacturing orders has continued, suggesting that the sector may be stabilizing after a two-year downturn.
Last month’s gauge was at 48.4, with 50 as the dividing line between contracting and expanding. The information gatherers said they found a mix, with some of the categories that feed into the overall index showing improvement.
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