US Senate rebukes Trump on Venezuela in war powers vote

Washington: The US Senate took a major step Thursday toward passing a resolution to rein in President Donald Trump s military actions in Venezuela a...

Washington: The US Senate took a major step Thursday toward passing a resolution to rein in President Donald Trump's military actions in Venezuela - a rare bipartisan rebuke following alarm over the secretive capture of leader Nicolas Maduro.

The Democratic-led legislation, which bars further US hostilities against Venezuela without explicit congressional authorisation, got through a key procedural vote with support from five Republicans.

The vote on final passage, expected next week, is now seen as little more than a formality, and would mark one of Congress's most forceful assertions of its war-making authority in decades.

The effort is seen as largely symbolic however, as the resolution faces a steep climb in the US House and almost no prospect of surviving a likely veto by Trump. It followed a dramatic escalation in US action -including air and naval strikes and the nighttime seizure of Maduro in Caracas - that lawmakers from both parties said went beyond a limited law-enforcement operation and crossed unmistakably into war.

"Less than courageous members of Congress fall all over themselves to avoid taking responsibility, to avoid the momentous vote of declaring war," said Senator Rand Paul, the Kentucky Republican who broke with much of his party to co-sponsored the measure.