Some Democratic lawmakers have condemned the administration’s actions.<\/p>\n
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said the secretive military operation, which was conducted without approval from Congress, “was not simply a narcotics operation”.<\/p>\n
“It was an act of war,” Jeffries told NBC’s Meet the Press. <\/p>\n
“This was a military action involving Delta Force, involving the army, apparently involving thousands of troops, involving at least 150 military aircraft, perhaps involving dozens of ships off the coast of Venezuela and South America.”<\/p>\n
Jim Himes, the most senior Democrat on the House intelligence committee, told CBS Face the Nation he had had “zero outreach” from the Trump administration, adding “no Democrat that I’m aware of has had any outreach”.<\/p>\n
In an interview with ABC This Week, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer questioned the legality of the US operation.<\/p>\n
Schumer said that while he believes Maduro is a horrible person, “You don’t treat lawlessness with other lawlessness”. <\/p>\n
“We have learned through the years when America tries to do regime change and nation building in this way, the American people pay the price in both blood and in dollars,” Schumer said. <\/p>\n
He added that Trump had abandoned his campaign promise of “no more endless wars”.<\/p>\n
Both Schumer and Jeffries vowed to support a resolution that, if passed in both houses, would prohibit Trump from taking any further action in Venezuela without Congressional approval. <\/p>\n
In a joint statement, the governments of Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Uruguay and Spain said the US’s military actions “constitute an extremely dangerous precedent for peace and regional security and endanger the civilian population”.<\/p>\n
They said they wanted a solution to the Venezuela situation to come from peaceful means such as dialogue and negotiation.<\/p>\n
They also expressed concern about external control that is “incompatible with international law” and “threatens the political, economic, and social stability of the region”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Some Democratic lawmakers have condemned the administration’s actions. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said the secretive military operation,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":352728,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-352727","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352727","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=352727"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352727\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/352728"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=352727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=352727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=352727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}