Senate Democrats were excluded from a classified briefing held Wednesday by the Trump administration regarding U.S. military strikes on alleged Venezuelan drug traffickers.
The session, attended by about a dozen Republican senators, focused on the legal rationale behind the strikes, which have reportedly killed nearly 60 people across the Caribbean and Pacific over the past two months.
The White House organized the meeting and extended invitations solely to Republican senators—an unprecedented move that many lawmakers and analysts view as a major break from the long-standing bipartisan tradition of equal congressional access to national security briefings.
Sources familiar with the matter said the senators invited were believed to be potential swing votes for any forthcoming legislation should the Trump administration seek formal authorization for continued operations in Venezuelan waters.
According to reports in U.S. media, the White House coordinated directly with Republican leadership to schedule the classified meeting, while Democratic senators were only made aware of it after it had concluded. Witnesses also noted a visible security presence outside the Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF) in the Capitol where the briefing was held—allegedly to ensure that uninvited lawmakers were kept out.
The ongoing maritime strikes, carried out by U.S. forces in both the Caribbean and Pacific, have drawn criticism from legal experts and Democratic lawmakers who argue that such actions exceed presidential authority and violate the War Powers Resolution.
Senate Democrats have also expressed concern over the administration’s lack of transparency, claiming it has failed to provide sufficient evidence that the targeted vessels were engaged in narcotics trafficking or that if the ships were carrying drugs, if they were intending to go to the U.S. as some experts have contended that many of the ships that have been targeted were too small to have been capable of reaching the shores of the U.S. if they were carrying drugs.
President Donald Trump and his allies in Congress have countered those claims, asserting that the President possesses the constitutional authority to act without congressional approval, citing past U.S. military invasions of Panama and Grenada during the 1980s as precedent.