President Donald Trump won broad approval for his strike on Venezuela from hawkish Republicans who have sparred with the White House over Ukraine and other foreign policies throughout Trump’s first year back in office.

Saturday’s attack and the arrest of Venezuela’s president, Nicolas Maduro, rallied the party around the president, a far cry from the bruising intra-Republican battles over health care and affordability in recent weeks.

Isolationists within the party, like Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene and Thomas Massie, balked at the strike, but were in the minority. Senator Rand Paul, a libertarian-leaning Republican who frequently battles with Trump, was uncharacteristically tempered in his criticism, even as he bristled at the administration’s decision to bypass Congress on the strike.

The result in the hours after Maduro’s ouster was a united GOP front rallying behind the commander-in-chief just 10 months before midterm elections for which Trump’s sinking popularity had become a major concern for Republicans.

“A free, democratic, and stable Venezuela, led by Venezuelans, is in America’s national security interests,” Senator Mitch McConnell, the former Republican leader who has a testy relationship with Trump, said Saturday.

There’s also at least the potential for Venezuela’s oil to play a role in the midterms, too.

While many Democrats blasted what they called a war for oil, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent suggested last year that resolutions to conflicts with Venezuela and Russia could result in significantly lower oil prices.

That would help Republicans counter concerns about the cost of living, which fueled big Democratic wins in off-year elections, although analysts aren’t expecting a big impact on oil prices anytime soon. Venezuela’s oil output has plunged to about 1% of global supplies and rebuilding its infrastructure will take time, money and political stability.

Democratic dissent

Democratic leaders threaded a careful political needle Saturday, condemning Maduro as a thug and a dictator while also demanding briefings on what they called an “unauthorized” attack undertaken without consulting Congress.

In particular, they pounced on Trump’s stated claim that he would “run” Venezuela and seize the country’s oil, a strong indication that U.S. commitment will extend beyond Saturday’s strike.

Democratic Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia told reporters he would force votes this week to end the conflict. He also said he’d insist on a vote later this month to block funding for military action in Venezuela.

“There is no legal justification” for Trump to attack Venezuela, run it or seize its oil without an act of Congress, Kaine told reporters. “The only way that this can be stopped is for Congress to stop it,” he added.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said on Sunday that to get congressional approval, the administration would need to satisfactorily answer questions such as how long the U.S. presence would last, how many troops would be involved, how much is it going to cost, and what are the limitations to U.S. action.

“This is the very thing Trump campaigned against, endless wars, and right now we’re headed right into another one,” Schumer said on ABC’s "This Week."

Those votes will put senators on the record, but they’re extremely unlikely to pass the Republican-led Congress, let alone get the two-thirds vote needed in both chambers to override a presidential veto.

Paul, who has backed Kaine’s efforts to assert Congress’s constitutional responsibility to authorize the commitment of US forces abroad, voiced concerns that “a leader who monopolized central power is removed in an action that monopolizes central power.” But the Kentucky Republican is an outlier in the party with few allies.

Senator Susan Collins of Maine, the moderate Republican who leads the committee that appropriates military and other federal funding, only mildly admonished the administration for not informing Congress earlier and said lawmakers need to be involved “as this situation evolves.”

Even as Democrats raised questions about the legalities of Trump’s attack, the politics for the minority party are complicated.

Maduro’s capture could have an impact on politics in places like Florida, home to many Americans of Venezuelan descent.

Florida Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the former Democratic Party chair, called the capture of Maduro “welcome news for my friends and neighbors who fled his violent, lawless, and disastrous rule” in a statement.

She said she’ll “demand answers as to why Congress and the American people were bypassed in this effort.”

_____

(With assistance from Erik Wasson and Jamie Tarabay.)

_____

©2026 Bloomberg L.P. Visit bloomberg.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.