• Senators vote 52 to 47 to advance war powers resolution.
• Republicans blocked last resolution by just two votes.
• Maduro’s capture led to fears of prolonged Venezuela campaign.

WASHINGTON: The US Senate advanced a resolution on Thursday that would bar President Donald Trump from further military action against Venezuela without congressional authorization, a rare rebuke of the Republican leader.

The vote on a procedural measure to advance the war powers resolution was 52 to 47, as five of Trump’s Republicans voted with every Democrat in favour of moving ahead. One Republican senator did not vote.

The vote took place days after US forces captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in a dramatic military raid in Caracas on Saturday. The rebuke for Trump, a day after senior cabinet members briefed every member of Congress about its Venezuela policy, marked a shift in the 100-member Senate.

It was a significant victory for lawmakers who have been arguing that Congress, not the president, should have the power to send troops to war, as spelled out in the Constitution.

However, the resolution faces steep hurdles before going into effect.

Even if it passes the Senate, the resolution must also pass the Republican-led House of Representatives and garner two-thirds majorities in both the House and Senate to survive an expected Trump veto.

Trump’s Republicans had blocked two previous attempts to advance similar resolutions in the Senate last year, as the administration ramped up military pressure on Venezuela with attacks on boats in the southern Caribbean and eastern Pacific.

However, the vote blocking the last resolution in November was only 51-49, just after top Trump advisors told lawmakers they did not plan to change the government or conduct strikes on Venezuelan territory.

After Maduro’s capture, some lawmakers accused the administration of misleading Congress, including Democrats publicly and some Republicans behind the scenes. Maduro’s capture and Trump’s rhetoric have also raised concerns of military action to capture Greenland, an Arctic island that is a territory of Denmark, or against Colombia, Cuba or Iran.

Thursday’s vote paved the way for Senate debate and a vote on final passage in the Senate next week.

Republican misgivings

Senator Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican who co-sponsored the resolution, had said some of his fellow Republicans were considering supporting the measure.

“I can’t guarantee you how they vote, but at least two are thinking about it, and some of them are talking publicly about their misgivings over this,” Paul told a press conference on Wednesday with Democratic Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia, another co-sponsor.

Both senators are members of the Foreign Relations Committee.

After the vote, Kaine said it was a “big victory,” telling reporters: “None of us should want this president, or any president, to take our sons and daughters to war without notice, consultation, debate and vote in Congress.”

The five Republicans who voted to move ahead were Paul, Susan Collins of Maine, Josh Hawley of Missouri, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Todd Young of Indiana. Trump’s party holds a 53-47 majority in the Senate.

Trump said the five “should never be elected to office again.” He said on his Truth Social website: “Republicans should be ashamed of the Senators that just voted with Democrats attempting to take away our Powers to fight and defend the United States of America.”

‘Endless war’

Backers acknowledge the hurdles facing the measure, but said many Republicans may be wary of a prolonged and expensive campaign of government change in Venezuela, as the U.S. faces vast budget deficits.

Trump on Wednesday called for a huge increase in US military spending, to $1.5 trillion from $1 trillion.

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York noted months of US strikes on Venezuelan boats, and Trump’s statement in a New York Times interview that the US would be involved in Venezuela for more than a year.

“The president is openly signaling a long-term military and financial commitment abroad with no authorisation, with no plan, another endless war,” Schumer told a press conference.

Senators who opposed the resolution said Maduro’s seizure was a law enforcement operation, not a military action. Maduro faces trial in a US court on drug and gun charges, to which he has pleaded not guilty.

Opponents also said Trump is within his rights as commander-in-chief to launch limited military actions.

“The purpose of this resolution is to slap the president in the face. It will do nothing that it purports to do because it can’t stop something that isn’t going on right now,” Senator Jim Risch of Idaho, the Republican foreign relations chairman, said in a Senate speech before the vote.

• Federal officers jostled with large crowd of protesters.
• Several detained including one who struck agent with cardboard.
• Protests grew after Governor Walz called it “patriotic duty”.

Protesters clashed with law enforcement officers in Minneapolis on Thursday after the fatal shooting of a woman by an immigration agent triggered outrage fueled by the Trump administration’s insistence she was guilty of “domestic terrorism.”

Federal officers armed with pepperball guns and teargas jostled with a large crowd of protesters beside a government facility in Fort Snelling just outside Minneapolis, an AFP photographer saw.

The noisy crowd chanted slogans attacking the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency as officers pushed against protesters, detaining several including one who struck an agent with a cardboard sign.

The victim of Wednesday’s shooting, identified as 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good, was hit at point-blank range as she apparently tried to drive away from agents who were crowding around her car, which they said was blocking their way.

Footage of the incident shows a masked ICE agent attempt to open the woman’s car door before another masked agent fired three times into the Honda SUV.

The vehicle then hurtled out of control and smashed into stationary vehicles, as horrified onlookers hurled abuse at the federal officers.

Her bloodied body is then seen slumped in the crashed vehicle.

President Donald Trump and senior officials quickly claimed Good was trying to kill the agents, an assertion Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey called “bullshit.”

“I want to see nobody get shot. I want to see nobody screaming and trying to run over policemen either,” Trump said in an interview with The New York Times.

He earlier said that the shooting was self-defence.

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) chief Kristi Noem called the incident “domestic terrorism.”

Minneapolis police chief Brian O’Hara told CNN that Good was not the target of immigration enforcement action and that she was only suspected of blocking traffic.

Vice President JD Vance described the victim on social media as “a deranged leftist.”

Immigrant deportations

Protests grew after Minnesota’s Democratic Governor Tim Walz called it a “patriotic duty” to demonstrate for justice.

“But it needs to be done safely,” Walz said.

ICE federal agents have been at the forefront of the Trump administration’s immigrant deportation drive, despite the objections of some state officials.

DHS launched a recruitment campaign last summer to add 10,000 additional ICE agents to the existing 6,000-strong contingent.

That sparked criticism that new officers in the field were insufficiently trained.

Wednesday’s incident came during protest action against immigration enforcement in the southern part of Minneapolis.

Witness Brandon Hewitt said he heard three shots.

“I got a bunch of video of them carrying the body to the ambulance,” he told MS NOW.

Another witness interviewed by local station FOX9 described a grisly scene, saying “the surviving passenger got out of the car covered in blood.”

He recounted seeing a man who identified himself as a doctor attempting to reach Good but being refused access by officers.

There have been widespread protests against immigration operations of the Trump administration, which has vowed to arrest and deport what it says are “millions” of undocumented migrants.

The victim’s mother, Donna Ganger, told the Minnesota Star Tribune that her daughter “was probably terrified.” Good was “not part of anything like” challenging ICE officers, Ganger added.

Good was a mother and a poet who studied creative writing at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, US media reported.

US authorities said up to 2,000 officers were in Minneapolis for immigration sweeps.

An officer shot dead an undocumented immigrant in Chicago in September after authorities alleged the man tried to resist detention by driving his car into the official.

• Authorities blame unrest on “rioters”.
• Opposition parties call for general strike.
• At least 27 protesters killed in protests.

Security forces used tear gas and live fire to disperse protesters in Iran, rights groups said on Thursday, as people angered by economic crisis kept up their challenge to the authorities and exiled opposition groups urged new protests as well as strikes.

Twelve days of protests have shaken the clerical authorities under Ayatollah Ali Khamenei already battling economic crisis after years of sanctions and recovering from the June war against Israel.

The movement, which originated with a shutdown on the Tehran bazaar on December 28 after the rial plunged to record lows, has spread nationwide and is now being marked by larger scale demonstrations.

Authorities have blamed unrest on “rioters” and the judiciary chief has vowed there would be “no leniency” in bringing them to justice.

On Wednesday, an Iranian police officer was stabbed to death in west of Tehran “during efforts to control unrest”, the Iranian Fars news agency said.

Reza Pahlavi, the son of the shah ousted by the 1979 Islamic revolution and a key exiled opposition figure, said the turnout on Wednesday had been “unprecedented” in this wave of demonstrations and called for major new protests on Thursday evening.

He said in a message on social media he had received reports the “regime is deeply frightened and is attempting, once again, to cut off the internet” to thwart the protests.

Iraq-based Iranian Kurdish opposition parties, including the Komala party which is outlawed by Tehran, called for a general strike on Thursday in Kurdish-populated areas in western Iran which have seen intense protest activity.

Soleimani statues attacked

The HRANA monitor published a video of protesters in Kuhchenar in the southern Fars province cheering overnight as they pulled down a statue of the former foreign operations commander of the Revolutionary Guards Qassem Soleimani, who was killed in a US strike in January 2020 and is hailed as a national hero by the Islamic republic.

Persian-language TV channels based outside Iran also posted images of a statue of Soleimani in the central city of Kashan being set on fire. It was not immediately possible to verify the images.

HRANA said that according to its count, protests had taken place in 348 locations over the last 11 days in all of Iran’s 31 provinces.

It also published a video of people massing late at night in the Tehran satellite city of Karaj and lighting fires in the streets and also images of security forces using tear gas to disperse a protest in the Caspian Sea town of Tonekabon.

Images it said were taken on Wednesday in the western city of Abadan showing security forces firing on protesters.

The Norway-based Iran Human Rights group said security forces on Wednesday “opened fire on protesters, used tear gas and violently assaulted civilians” during a protest in the key southeastern hub of Kerman.

The Hengaw rights group, which focuses on Kurds and other ethnic minorities in western Iran, said the call for a strike had been widely followed in some 30 towns and cities, posting footage of shuttered shops in the western provinces of Ilam, Kermanshah and Lorestan.

‘Unlawful force’

The protests are being characterised by larger-scale demonstrations, with hundreds marching through a main avenue in the northeastern city of Bojnord on Wednesday in a video verified by AFP.

Demonstrators are repeating slogans against the clerical leadership including “this is the final battle, Pahlavi will return” and “Seyyed Ali will be toppled”, in reference to Khamenei.

IHR said on Tuesday at least 27 protesters including five teenagers under the age of 18, have been confirmed to have been killed in a crackdown on the protests, warning the death toll will climb as more killings are verified.

The protests are the biggest in Iran for three years after the last major protest wave in 2022-2023 which was sparked by the custody death of Mahsa Amini, who had been arrested for allegedly violating the strict dress code for women.

Rights groups have also accused authorities of resorting to tactics including raiding hospitals to detain wounded protesters.

“More than 10 days of protests have been met with unlawful force,” said Amnesty International. “Iran’s security forces have injured and killed both protesters and bystanders,” it added.