Senate Republicans blocked a resolution that sought to force President Trump to seek congressional approval for any U.S. military action related to Venezuela, the New York Times reports.
Republican leaders garnered enough support for a procedural maneuver to kill the resolution after Sens. Josh Hawley and Todd Young flipped their position and joined the effort to stop it from coming up for a vote.
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“The Trump administration’s first sale of Venezuelan oil is valued at $500 million,” Semafor reports.
“The sale marks an initial milestone in the administration’s stewardship of Venezuela after the U.S. ouster of its former leader Nicolás Maduro 11 days ago. President Donald Trump has indicated that the U.S. would effectively run Venezuela for an indeterminable amount of time and take control of up to 50 million barrels of its oil — marketing and selling it while distributing the proceeds back to Venezuela in an arrangement with little precedent.”
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A new AtlasIntel poll finds a majority of Venezuelans want María Corina Machado to lead their country, contradicting Donald Trump’s claim that the opposition leader doesn’t have the support to rule.
More than half of Venezuelans living in their homeland — 51.6% — say Machado should take over, compared with 14% who endorse Delcy Rodríguez, who assumed the presidency this month following Trump’s military intervention.
A new Economist poll finds Venezuelans are pretty pleased with the ousting of Nicolas Maduro, even if their vision for its future differs from that of Trump….
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New York Times: “Mr. Trump appears newly emboldened, buoyed by the seeming success of striking Iran’s nuclear sites and sending an Army Delta Force team in to seize Nicolás Maduro from his bed. If Mr. Trump is successful — and if his luck holds — the world may look back at these remarkable few months as a burst of American interventionism and say that Mr. Trump managed to bury Iran’s nuclear program in rubble and oversaw the fall of repressive regimes in Venezuela, Iran and Cuba.”
“Of course, wiping out repressive regimes and ushering in a new era of freedom for people in different parts of the world are not part of Mr. Trump’s national security strategy…”
“Nonetheless, there is a new argument brewing among some Republicans in Washington. They say that despite the MAGA credo that Washington should avoid foreign entanglements, an exception can be carved out for getting rid of repressive leaders who once shouted, ‘Death to America.’”
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