President Donald Trump announced on Truth Social on Saturday at 3:21 am, “The United States of America has successfully carried out a large scale strike against Venezuela and its leader, President Nicolas Maduro, who has been, along with his wife, captured and flown out of the Country. This operation was done in conjunction with U.S. Law Enforcement. Details to follow.”

Hours later, during a congratulatory press conference, Trump said that during a period of transition in Venezuela, “we’re going to run the country right.” But he gave only limited details of how the process would proceed, aside from saying, “We’re not afraid of boots on the ground.” Trump dwelt more on talk of prosecuting Maduro and his wife in a New York City courtroom.

US Attorney General Pam Bondi had already taken to social media earlier on Saturday morning with a message :“Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, have been indicted in the Southern District of New York. Nicolas Maduro has been charged with Narco-Terrorism Conspiracy, Cocaine Importation Conspiracy, Possession of Machineguns and Destructive Devices, and Conspiracy to Possess Machineguns and Destructive Devices against the United States. They will soon face the full wrath of American justice on American soil in American courts.”

But in a brief predawn call with a New York Times reporter, Trump refused to discuss whether “he had sought congressional authority for the operation or what is next for Venezuela.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio later acknowledged that there had been no pre-attack consultation.

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As it became clear that leaders of the Senate and House Armed Services committees had not been consulted on the regime-change attack and as confusion mounted about what would happen next in Venezuela, key members of Congress—who have the constitutionally defined authority to declare wars and to oversee major military actions—reacted angrily to what had transpired in the name of the United States but without the consent of the legislative branch.

“A US invasion of Venezuela to depose its president and arrest him is illegal,” Tim Kaine, a Democratic senator from Virginia, told NPR Saturday morning. Kaine promised to seek a Senate vote next week to declare that Trump should not be waging this “unilateral presidentially declared war against Venezuela” without congressional authorization.

Kaine, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, issued a statement arguing, “President Trump’s unauthorized military attack on Venezuela to arrest Maduro—however terrible he is—is a return to a day when the United States asserted a right to dominate the internal affairs of all nations in the Western Hemisphere. The history is replete with failures, and doubling down on it makes it difficult to the claim with a straight face to other countries should respect the United States’ sovereignty when we do not do the same.”

“Where will this go next?” asked Kaine. “Will the President deploy our troops to protect Iranian protesters? To enforce the fragile ceasefire in Gaza? To battle terrorists in Nigeria? To seize Greenland or the Panama Canal? To suppress Americans peacefully assembling to protest his policies? Trump has threatened to do all this and more and sees no need to seek legal authorization from people’s elected legislature before putting servicemembers at risk.”

Representative Mark Pocan, a Wisconsin Democrat who has been one of the House’s most consistent critics of undeclared wars, warned that Trump has disregarded the Constitution. “President Trump has repeatedly been told he must consult with and get authorization from Congress to go to war, per US law. While we are only seeing early public accounts of what happened, it is clear he acted without doing that,” Pocan said. “Trump not notifying Democratic leadership, much less rank-and-file members, continues the degradation of the rule of law.”

Representative James Walkinshaw, a Virginia Democrat who serves on the Military and Foreign Affairs Subcommittee of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Affairs, said, “Trump’s regime change war in Venezuela is flat out illegal and yet another betrayal of the commitments he made to the American people. He said he’d lower prices. He’s driving prices up. He said no ‘new stupid wars.’ He’s starting new stupid wars.”

Republican Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) initially went on social media and wrote, “I look forward to learning what, if anything, might constitutionally justify this action in the absence of a declaration of war or authorization for the use of military force.”

Later, after receiving a call from Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Lee made feeble excuses for the administration, claiming that the assault “likely” was justified by fears of “an actual or imminent attack.” But Washington Post national security analyst Josh Rogan wrote, “The United States has just kidnapped a foreign head of state and bombed a foreign capital using the justification of protecting U.S. personnel from an ‘actual or imminent attack’ according to Senator Lee. Make no mistake, President Trump just committed an act of war against Venezuela.”

The New York Times adopted a similar view in an editorial headlined “Trump’s Attack on Venezuela Is Illegal and Unwise.”

And Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) dismissed claims by the president and the attorney general about the reasons for the regime change. “It’s not about drugs. If it was, Trump wouldn’t have pardoned one of the largest narco traffickers in the world [former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández] last month. It’s about oil and regime change. And they need a trial now to pretend that it isn’t. Especially to distract from Epstein + skyrocketing healthcare costs.”

Representative Thomas Massie (R-KY) also expressed skepticism. “If this action were constitutionally sound,” Massie wrote on X, “the Attorney General wouldn’t be tweeting that they’ve arrested the President of a sovereign country and his wife for possessing guns in violation of a 1934 U.S. firearm law.”

Maduro, according to election observers, almost certainly lost the 2024 presidential election and then refused to step down. Yet he had recently signaled an openness to meeting with Trump to discuss US allegations about drug trafficking and other issues. Trump has now executed a secret plan to remove the Venezuelan leader, even after Trump’s aides had denied regime-change plans.

Senator Andy Kim, a New Jersey Democrat who served as a national security adviser under President Barack Obama, accused Trump’s secretaries of state and defense of lying to Congress about the administration’s intensions. “Secretaries Rubio and Hegseth looked every Senator in the eye a few weeks ago and said this wasn’t about regime change,” Kim said in a statement amid the first reports of US air strikes on Caracas. “I didn’t trust them then and we see now that they blatantly lied to Congress. Trump rejected our Constitutionally required approval process for armed conflict because the Administration knows the American people overwhelmingly reject risks pulling our nation into another war.”

Kim explained, “This strike doesn’t represent strength. It’s not sound foreign policy. It puts Americans at risk in Venezuela and the region, and it sends a horrible and disturbing signal to other powerful leaders across the globe that targeting a head of state is an acceptable policy for the U.S. government. This will further damage our reputation—already hurt by Trump’s policies around the world—and only isolate us in a time when we need our friends and allies more than ever.”

Senator Brian Schatz, a Hawaii Democrat who is a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said, “We have no vital national interests in Venezuela to justify war. We should have learned not to stumble into another stupid adventure by now.”

Senator Ruben Gallego, an Arizona Democrat who served in the US Marines from 2002 to 2006 and was deployed during the war in Iraq, bluntly declared, “This war is illegal.” “There is no justification for the United States to be at war with Venezuela. I lived through the consequences of an illegal war sold to the American people with lies,” explained Gallego. “We swore we would never repeat those mistakes. Yet here we are again. The American people did not ask for this, Congress did not authorize this, and our service members should not be sent into harm’s way for another unnecessary conflict.”