No one should mourn the plight of Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro. For more than a decade, he has oppressed the people of his nation through authoritarian rule and the misery of socialism. However, we in America should question the wisdom of allowing any president to unilaterally commit acts of war without explicit authorization from Congress.
In November, amid Senate debate over whether to block United States actions in Venezuela, the Washington Post reported on a briefing by Secretary of State Marco Rubio in which he “indicated that the administration is not currently preparing to target Venezuela directly and didn’t have a proper legal argument for doing so.”
Fast forward to Jan. 3, 2026 and the U.S. not only entered Venezuela, killing about 80 people, but took Venezuela’s president and wife into custody. Fortunately, only two American service members were injured, according to the president.
Justifications and rationalizations of the U.S. action have been quite underwhelming, with Rubio saying congressional approval wasn’t needed after all. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth explained that Maduro “f’d around and found out,” showing the level of sophistication of the Trump administration.
The president, who once upon a time railed against American interventionism abroad, initially said the United States would now “run” Venezuela as well as denigrating pro-democracy activist María Corina Machado. And after first praising Maduro’s vice president, Delcy Rodriguez, he said, “If she doesn’t do what’s right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro.”
His interest, mainly, is in Venezuela’s oil. “We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country,” Trump said.
He has also variously threatened Colombia and Cuba, among others.
These are clearly times when reading the Constitution would do the American people and their elected representatives well. Article I, Section 8 is unambiguous: Congress has the power “to declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water.” Not the president. Congress.
Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky is one of the few Republicans left who understands this. “Time will tell if regime change in Venezuela is successful without significant monetary or human cost,” he wrote over the weekend. “Best though, not to forget, that our founders limited the executive’s power to go to war without Congressional authorization for a reason — to limit the horror of war and limit war to acts of defense.”
Beyond arguments of process, however, it’s difficult to see how the president’s embrace of regime change interventionism is in the best interests of the American people. For a president who once campaigned on putting America first and rebuilding our country, he seems awfully preoccupied with meddling in the affairs of other countries.
Again, Maduro is a socialist thug. But the future of Venezuela must be up to the people of Venezuela, not a handful of politicians in Washington, D.C. who want to remake the world to their liking. Given the president’s fixation on oil, it’s clear the best interests of Venezuelans aren’t even top of mind; rather, his focus is on what he thinks are the best interests of American oil companies.
Putting America first would mean putting the American Constitution above the interests of Big Oil and the imperial ambitions of Trump and Rubio.
