Trump’s Lawless Venezuela Attack Rouses U.S. Senate to Advance War Powers Resolution

Interview with Marjorie Cohn, professor emerita,Thomas Jefferson School of Law and past president of the National Lawyers Guild, conducted by Scott Harris

Trump international law

In the aftermath of President Trump’s Jan. 3 order directing the U.S. military to deploy 150 aircraft to bomb army bases near Venezuela’s capital Caracas, and then to kidnap the nation’s President Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores, there’s a general consensus that these actions were unlawful under both U.S. and international law.

According to legal experts, the U.S. attack was illegal. Venezuela’s Interior Minister says 100 people, including 32 members of Cuba’s military and intelligence service, were killed. Venezuela posed no imminent armed threat, the assault wasn’t authorized by the UN Security Council and lacked any legitimate claim of self-defense. Instead, Trump has repeatedly asserted that the attack was driven by his goal of controlling Venezuela’s vast oil resources.

Trump’s lawless campaign targeting Venezuela began in early September when the U.S. military bombed small, open unarmed boats allegedly carrying illicit drugs in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean. On Sept. 2, 2025, the U.S. launched a double tap strike on a boat that intentionally killed two shipwrecked survivors of an initial attack, killing a total of 11 Venezuelans on board.

News reports say that attack was carried out by a military aircraft disguised as a civilian plane, a possible war crime under both international and U.S. military legal standards. Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Marjorie Cohn, professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and past president of the National Lawyers Guild. Here, she examines the illegality of the U.S. attack on Venezuela and a recent vote in the U.S. Senate to advance a war powers resolution to prevent Donald Trump from taking future military action against Venezuela without congressional authorization.

[Editor’s note: On Wednesday, Jan. 14, Sens. Josh Hawley and Todd Young flipped— after Trump lashed out at the five Republican senators who joined with Democrats to advance the resolution last week—and have received ‘assurances’ from the Trump administration, killing the bill in the Senate.]

MARJORIE COHN: If you go onto Truth Social, Trump has a big picture of himself there and it’s his official picture. And underneath, you know what it says? Acting president of Venezuela. He is illegally occupying Venezuela and if the Vice President Delcy Rodriguez, who was just sworn in as interim president, doesn’t do exactly what he wants, he said that the consequences for her will be worse than Maduro, who was kidnapped. He and his wife, the first lady of Venezuela, were kidnapped in this act of aggression in invading a sovereign country, killing upwards of 80 people. Highly illegal.
Now, let me say that the war powers resolution allows the president to introduce the U.S. armed forces into hostilities or imminent hostilities only after Congress has declared war or in a national emergency created by an attack on the U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine and some other senators introduced a war powers resolution. And it says that if it’s adopted, Congress hereby directs the president to terminate the use of U.S. armed forces for hostilities within or against Venezuela unless explicitly authorized by a declaration of war or specific authorization for the use of military force.
Well, on Thursday, the Senate advanced that resolution by a vote of 52 to 47, which means that it will be voted on this week by the full Senate. And five GOP senators joined all the Democrats to vote to advance this resolution. Well, those five GOP Sens. Collins, Murkowski, Paul, Hawley and Young—Trump is threatening them now. Basically, their re-election is not secure, but we’ll see what the Senate does. I mean, Congress has not really shown us much backbone at all in standing up to Trump, who’s running over the Constitution like a steamroller.
So we’ll see what happens.
SCOTT HARRIS: And it’s true that whether the House votes for this resolution or not, Trump can still veto it unless it’s overridden by a two-thirds roll call vote in both the House and Senate, which doesn’t seem likely, unfortunately. Trump has seemed greatly emboldened with his threats across the world since his invasion and kidnapping of Madera and Venezuela. He’s threatened Cuba, Colombia, Mexico, Panama, Canada, Greenland and Iran.
It seems like we have a megalomaniac in office who by his own words says, “I don’t need international law.” He says the only thing that could limit his power is his own “morality.” Well, we are in a bad situation if that’s what’s guiding U.S. policy right now, and it seems it is. What happens to the rules-based international order? International law has always been selectively enforced by the United States. They use the ala carte approach to international law.

But Marjorie, I would ask you, is Trump delivering a death knell to international law?

MARJORIE COHN: There is this democratic body in the UN. It’s called the General Assembly and there are 193 countries, and each country has a vote and they can convene under what’s called the Uniting for Peace Resolution, where if the Security Council is unable or unwilling to fulfill its duties under the UN Charter, the General Assembly can step in. And that’s what we should be pressuring countries to do—is to convene under Uniting for Peace. Now, I’m not saying that it’s a panacea or it would end things, but it would help things.

But there’s another concept, too, and it sounds kind of flaky, but it’s something that’s real and really does have some impact and it’s called the mobilization of shame. And that is that the United States, by really attacking and obstructing the international law is shamed in the eyes of the world. It’s true that our allies will walk in lockstep, but there are a lot of countries in the world that are just appalled at what the United States is doing.

Will that stop Trump? I don’t know. All bets are off. The Democrats should take back at least one House of Congress during the midterms this year, but the Trump administration is doing everything it can to change the rules and cheat. So I don’t even know if that would be a check on this out of control, autocratic power.

For more information, visit Marjorie Cohn’s website at marjoriecohn.com and her Truthout articles page at truthout.org/authors/marjorie-cohn.

Listen to Scott Harris’ in-depth interview with Marjorie Cohn (15:07) and see more articles and opinion pieces in the related links section of this page. See more articles and opinion pieces in the related links section of this page. For periodic updates on the Trump authoritarian playbook, subscribe here to our Between The Lines Radio Newsmagazine Substack newsletter to get updates to our “Hey AmeriKKKa, It’s Not Normal” compilation.

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