Trump did not have congressional approval to capture Maduro in Venezuela

The U.S. military strikes that targeted Venezuela on Saturday morning and the subsequent capture of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro and his wife may turn out to be popular or defensible, given Maduro's history of despotism and the legal indictments awaiting him in federal court.

What they were not, however, is legal.

The U.S. Constitution gives Congress the sole authority to approve military strikes against foreign countries. Federal laws, like the War Powers Resolution, allow for unilateral executive action only in response to an imminent threat against Americans or U.S. troops. That separation of powers is fundamental to American democracy—not an optional arrangement for presidents to discard when it is politically or logistically inconvenient.

At a press conference on Saturday morning, President Donald Trump termed the attack an "extraordinary military operation," which he claimed was unlike anything seen since World War II. Therefore, there should be no debate about what this was: a military strike, one that utterly lacked congressional authorization.

Vice President J.D. Vance tried a different line of argument earlier on Saturday, when he claimed on X that Trump did not need congressional authorization for the attack on Venezuela because "Maduro has multiple indictments in the United States for narcoterrorism. You don't get to avoid justice for drug trafficking in the United States because you live in a palace in Caracas."

That argument, however, shreds the concept of separation of powers. The executive branch makes indictments. If it is also allowed to use the existence of those indictments to authorize military strikes in foreign nations, then there is no need for Congress to be involved at all.

Indeed, if Vance's argument were correct, why did President George W. Bush bother going to Congress for an Authorization for the Use of Military Force to invade Iraq? It would have been much easier to simply have the attorney general indict Saddam Hussein, then send in in the troops.

Is any nation justified in seizing another nation's leader—even a nasty, illegal one like Maduro—for any alleged crimes? Does the existence of an indictment allow for "extraordinary military operations" anywhere, at any time? That's a framework that seems certain to create more international chaos, not more stability.

The Trump administration claims Maduro was violating the law, but the U.S. loses its moral high ground by acting illegally to remove him. If Trump is doing the right thing by taking Maduro out, then it should have been easy to make that case to Congress.