WASHINGTON — Top Trump administration officials briefed both the House and Senate in separate meetings on Capitol Hill to detail the weekend strikes and capture of the Venezuelan president — which some lawmakers say left them with more questions than answers on what comes next.
Lawmakers heard from Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine as they walked through the operational details and justification for the seizure of Venezuela. Republican leaders in Congress praised the administration for the successful mission, but stopped short of providing clarity on what plans are for the country after President Donald Trump announced this week he would seize its oil and sell it off to other countries.
“We are going to take between 30 million and 50 million barrels of oil. We’re going to sell it in the marketplace at market rates, not at the discounts Venezuela was getting,” Rubio said after the Senate briefing. “That money will then be handled in such a way that we will control how it is disbursed in a way that benefits the Venezuelan people, not corruption, not the regime, so we have a lot of leverage to move on the stabilization front.”
Energy Secretary Chris Wright separately said on Wednesday that the U.S. would control those oil sales “indefinitely,” raising questions about how much authority the Trump administration will have in the South American country.
Those details, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said on Wednesday, were still being sorted out.
“It’s sanctioned oil and I’m not going to get up here and tell you all the details because it’s still being developed,” he told reporters on Wednesday.
Several Republican lawmakers emerged from the meeting with positive reviews, telling reporters that the administration officials sufficiently answered their questions about whether the strikes were constitutional.
Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, told the Deseret News he believes the action falls under the president’s Article II authority to protect the country from “actual or imminent attack,” a position he has held since speaking with Rubio at 3 a.m. on the morning of the attacks.
Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., praised the informational session as the “best bipartisan briefing” he has received since being in Congress.
“While I can’t get into operational details, we should be VERY proud of our American military for bringing a drug trafficking killer like Nicolas Maduro to justice,” he said in a post on X.
But Democrats and some Republicans criticized the lack of clarity on what the U.S. plans to do next, especially as Trump publicly muses doing the same to other countries — especially in terms of acquiring oil.
“It is insane they are talking about stealing the Venezuelan oil at gunpoint for a period of time, undefined as leverage to micromanage the country,” Sen Chris Murphy, D-Conn., a frequent critic of the Trump administration, told reporters. “Their plan seems to be to steal the oil and use the leverage over the oil to try to micromanage the country on a day-to-day basis. That sounds like it was just slightly different than the mistakes we made in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
Several of those concerns especially stem from suggestions from the president and administration officials that Greenland could be the next U.S. target, something that Trump has hinted at for months.
A growing number of Republicans have come out against any military action or seizure of Greenland, painting the country as an important NATO ally.
“I hate the rhetoric around either acquiring Greenland by purchase or by force,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, said. “You know, I don’t use the word ‘hate’ very often, but I think that it is very, very unsettling.”
Rep. Blake Moore, R-Utah, told the Deseret News that Greenland did not come up in the House briefing with administration officials, but he said he does not find the threat of military action to be serious. Moore opposed annexation of the territory in a bipartisan statement earlier this week, suggesting such a move would be “needlessly dangerous.”
“We want to make sure that we have a safe and secure region,” Moore said after the briefing. “The Arctic region is becoming more and more important with the aggression from Russia and, you know, strategically China, just because that’s more of a global issue.”
Johnson brushed off questions about whether the U.S. should consider military action in Greenland, telling reporters on Wednesday he doesn’t “think anybody is seriously considering that. And in the Congress, we’re certainly not.”
Senate Democrats plan to move forward with a war powers resolution this week to limit what military action Trump can order “within or against Venezuela” without congressional approval. Only Congress can approve an act of war under the Constitution.
That resolution would require at least three Republicans to support it, and a number have said they are considering it. Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky is a co-sponsor.
“I think it’s one of the most important things that we debate in Congress: When do we initiate war, and who has the power to initiate war?” Paul said on Wednesday.