Rubio, Hegseth brief congressional leaders as questions mount over next steps in Venezuela

WASHINGTON (AP) — Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other top officials briefed leaders in Congress late Monday on the striking military operation in Venezuela amid mounting concerns that President Donald Trump is embarking on a new era of U.S. expansionism without consultation of lawmakers or a clear vision for running the South American country.

Republican leaders entered the closed-door session at the Capitol largely supportive of Trump's decision to forcibly remove Venezuela's president Nicolás Maduro from power, but many Democrats emerged with more questions as Trump maintains a fleet of naval vessels off the Venezuelan coast and urges U.S. companies to reinvest in the country's underperforming oil industry.

A war powers resolution that would prohibit U.S. military action in Venezuela without approval from Congress is heading for a vote this week in the Senate.

“We don't expect troops on the ground,” said House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said afterward.

He said Venezuela's new leadership cannot be allowed to engage in narcoterrorism or the trafficking of drugs into the U.S., which sparked Trump's initial campaign of deadly boat strikes that have killed more than 115 people.

“This is not a regime change. This is demand for a change in behavior,” Johnson said. "We don't expect direct involvement in any other way beyond just coercing the new, the interim government, to get that going.”

Johnson added, "We have a way of persuasion — because their oil exports as you know have been seized, and I think that will bring the country to a new governance in very short order,” he said.

But Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, emerged saying, “There are still many more questions that need to be answered.”

“What is the cost? How much is this going to cost the United States of America?” Rep. Gregory Meeks of New York, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said afterward.

The briefing, which stretched for two hours, came days after the surprise military action that few, if any, of the congressional leaders, knew about until after it was underway — a remarkable delay in informing Congress, which has ultimate say over matters of war.

Administration officials fielded a range of questions — from further involvement of U.S. troops on the ground to the role of the Venezuelan opposition leadership that appeared to have been sidelined by the Trump administration as the country’s vice president, Maduro ally Delcy Rodriguez, swiftly became the country’s interim president.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Air Force Gen. Dan Caine and Attorney General Pam Bondi, who brought drug trafficking charges against Maduro, all joined the classified session. It was intended for the so-called “gang of eight” leaders, which includes Intelligence committee leadership as well as the chairmen and ranking lawmakers on the national security committees.

Asked afterward if he had any more clarity about who is actually running Venezuela, Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, said, “I wish I could tell you yes, but I can’t.”

Leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee — Republican chairman Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and ranking Democrat Sen. Richard Durbin of Illinois — said they should have been included in the classified briefing, arguing they have oversight of the Justice Department under Bondi.

Earlier in the day, Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer warned that Trump’s action in Venezuela is only the beginning of a dangerous approach to foreign policy as the president publicly signals his interests in Colombia, Cuba and Greenland.

“The American people did not sign up for another round of endless wars,” Schumer said.

Afterward, Schumer said the briefing, “while extensive and long, posed far more questions than it answered.”

Republicans hold mixed views reflective of the deepening schism within Trump's “Make America Great Again” movement as the president, who vowed to put America first, ventures toward overseas entanglements many lawmakers in both parties want to avoid — particularly after the long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Next steps in the country, and calls for elections in Venezuela, are uncertain.

The Trump administration had been in talks with Rodríguez, who took the place of her ally Maduro and offered “to collaborate” with the Trump administration. Meanwhile, Trump has been dismissive of Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, who last month won the Nobel Peace Prize for her struggle to achieve a democratic transition in her nation. Trump has said Machado lacks the “support” or “respect” to run the country.

But Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., a staunch Trump ally, said he plans to speak soon with Machado, and called her “very popular if you look at what happened in the last election.”

“She eventually, I think, will be the president of Venezuela," Scott said. "You know, this is going to be a process to get to a democracy. It’s not easy. There’s a lot of bad people still there, so it’s going to take time. They are going to have an election and I think she will get elected.”

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who has been a leading critic of the Trump campaign of boat strikes against suspected drug smugglers, said there are probably a dozen leaders around the world who the U.S. could say are in violation of an international law or human rights law.

“And we have never gone in and plucked them out the country. So it sets a very bad precedent for doing this and it’s unconstitutional,” Paul told reporters. “There’s no way you can say bombing a capital and removing the president of a foreign country is not an initiation of war.”

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Associated Press writer Kevin Freking contributed to this story.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., speaks to reporters after a closed-door briefing on Capitol Hill, Monday, Jan. 5, 2026, in Washington, after the U.S. captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife in a military operation. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., answers questions from reporters following a closed-door briefing from Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and others about the U.S. military operation in Venezuela ordered by President Donald Trump, at the Capitol in Washington, Monday, Jan. 5, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth arrives at the U.S. Capitol Monday, Jan. 5, 2026, in Washington, to brief top lawmakers after President Donald Trump directed U.S. forces to capture Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Secretary of State Marco Rubio arrives at the U.S. Capitol Monday, Jan. 5, 2026, for a closed-door briefing with top lawmakers after President Donald Trump ordered U.S. forces to capture Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and bring him to New York to face federal drug trafficking charges. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Denmark and Greenland are seeking a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio after the Trump administration doubled down on its intention to take over the strategic Arctic island, a Danish territory.

Tensions escalated after the White House said Tuesday that the “U.S. military is always an option,” even as a series of European leaders rejected President Donald Trump’s renewed calls for the U.S. to take over Greenland, citing strategic reasons.

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen warned earlier this week that a U.S. takeover would amount to the end of the NATO military alliance. The leaders of France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain and the United Kingdom joined her in a statement Tuesday reaffirming that the mineral-rich island “belongs to its people.”

Their statement defended the sovereignty of Greenland, which is a self-governing territory of Denmark and thus part of NATO.

Trump has floated since his first term the idea of acquiring Greenland, arguing that the U.S. needs to control the world's largest island to ensure its own security in the face of rising threats from China and Russia in the Arctic.

This weekend’s U.S. military action in Venezuela has heightened fears across Europe, and Trump and his advisers in recent days have reiterated the U.S. leader's desire to take over the island, which guards the Arctic and North Atlantic approaches to North America.

“It’s so strategic right now,” Trump told reporters Sunday.

Danish Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen and his Greenlandic counterpart, Vivian Motzfeldt, have requested the meeting with Rubio in the near future, according to a statement posted Tuesday to Greenland's government website. Previous requests for a sit-down were not successful, the statement said.

While most U.S. Republicans have supported Trump's statement, Senators Jeanne Shaheen and Thom Tillis, the Democratic and Republican co-chairs of the bipartisan Senate NATO Observer Group, blasted Trump’s rhetoric in a statement Tuesday.

“When Denmark and Greenland make it clear that Greenland is not for sale, the United States must honor its treaty obligations and respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Kingdom of Denmark,” the statement said. “Any suggestion that our nation would subject a fellow NATO ally to coercion or external pressure undermines the very principles of self-determination that our Alliance exists to defend.”

French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said he spoke by phone Tuesday with Rubio, who dismissed the idea of a Venezuela-style operation in Greenland.

“In the United States, there is massive support for the country belonging to NATO – a membership that, from one day to the next, would be compromised by … any form of aggressiveness toward another member of NATO,” Barrot told France Inter radio Wednesday.

Asked if he has a plan in case Trump does claim Greenland, Barrot said he won’t engage in “fiction diplomacy.”

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Associated Press journalist Geir Moulson, in Berlin, contributed to this report.

FILE - Danish military forces participate in an exercise with hundreds of troops from several European NATO members in the Arctic Ocean in Nuuk, Greenland, Sept. 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi, File)

FILE - A plane carrying Donald Trump Jr. lands in Nuuk, Greenland, Jan. 7, 2025. (Emil Stach/Ritzau Scanpix via AP, file)

FILE - United States Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller reacts on the sidelines of the ASEAN Summit in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Sunday, Oct. 26, 2025. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein), File)

CORRECT THE ORDER OF SPEAKERS, FILE - Denmark's Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, right, and Greenland's Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen, left, speak on April 27, 2025, in Marienborg, Denmark. (Mads Claus Rasmussen/Ritzau Scanpix via AP, File)