Senator Ruben Gallego is speaking out against the overthrow of Venezuela’s socialist president.
Gallego compared U.S. interventionism in Venezuela with the U.S. waging war in the Middle East, where Gallego deployed in the military.
“I lived through the consequences of an illegal war sold to the American people with lies,” said Gallego. “The American people did not ask for this, Congress did not authorize this, and our service members should not be sent into harm’s way for another unnecessary conflict.”
Gallego promised he would be introducing a bill to deny Trump the ability to intervene in foreign nations without congressional permission.
The senator also said in media interviews that it wasn’t up to the U.S. to determine who maintains power in Venezuela or other countries. Gallego predicted that Venezuelans would implement a more “leftist” government that’s more opposed to the U.S.
“This administration has zero clue what they’re doing. They’re basically following a really dumb man into a very dumb war potentially, and that creates very dumb outcomes,” said Gallego. “We’ve moved on from being the world cop to the world bully.”
Over the weekend the U.S. conducted a strike on Venezuela’s capital. Troops arrested Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife.
Maduro faces federal drug trafficking charges in New York: narco-terrorism conspiracy, cocaine importation conspiracy, possession of machine guns and destructive devices, and conspiracy to possess machine guns and destructive devices against the U.S. Maduro pleaded not guilty on Monday.
Contrary to what Gallego claimed, President Donald Trump hasn’t declared war in Venezuela. He confirmed as much in media interviews. Trump said he’s now in charge of Venezuela.
Despite corrections to his narrative, Gallego has continued to push the claim to the media that the U.S. declared war on Venezuela.
“When people are shooting and shooting back, that is war. That’s exactly what occurred here,” said Gallego. “They’re just trying to get people climatized to the idea of us going to war.”
Gallego said that while he believed it was “great” that Maduro was unseated, he doesn’t believe the U.S. had the right to interfere. The senator claimed that the Trump administration misled him in briefings by denying that the U.S. was conducting a regime change or declaring war on Venezuela.
“All this is one more excuse for us to either occupy Venezuela, take their oil, and more importantly you’re violating the Constitution of the United States,” said Gallego.
Gallego also did an interview in Spanish criticizing the Trump administration for providing Venezuela with a pathway to freedom.
La libertad de Venezuela tiene que venir de los venezolanos, no de los Estados Unidos. pic.twitter.com/Lrs8V3U2kC
Trump advised that Maduro’s successor, Delcy Rodriguez, will serve as interim president so long as she complies with his directives on running Venezuela.
“[I]f she doesn’t do what’s right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro,” the president said in an interview with The Atlantic on Sunday. “You know, rebuilding there and regime change, anything you want to call it, is better than what you have right now. Can’t get any worse.”
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Arizona’s elected officials are sharply divided following the U.S. military operation in Venezuela that resulted in the capture of President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, and their transfer to the United States to face federal criminal charges.
The dramatic action, announced by President Donald Trump, involved a precision military operation in Caracas and the extraction of Maduro to New York, where he is expected to appear in federal court on drug and narco-terrorism charges.
Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) condemned the raid in a statement posted to X, saying that while Maduro is a “brutal, illegitimate dictator” who deserves justice, the decision to overthrow a foreign ruler without broader planning undermines U.S. security and lacks a clear strategy for what comes next. Kelly said the operation doesn’t “make Americans any safer today than they were yesterday” and warned against repeating past foreign policy mistakes.
Rep. Adelita Grijalva (D-AZ-07) also criticized the operation in a statement posted to X, as “reckless, unconstitutional, and deeply destabilizing,” arguing that bypassing Congress for military action erodes democratic accountability and sets a dangerous precedent.
Rep. Greg Stanton (D-AZ-04) argued that while Maduro’s regime “shattered Venezuela,” the U.S. Constitution requires congressional authorization for acts of war — a threshold he argued was not met.
Support for the raid among Arizona Republicans centered on holding Maduro accountable for years of alleged narcotic trafficking and violence.
Rep. Juan Ciscomani (R-AZ-06) framed the action as a decisive strike against a “narco-terror regime” responsible for drug flows into the United States. He praised U.S. military personnel for executing the mission “with courage and precision” and said the operation sends a clear signal that the U.S. will confront threats in its hemisphere.
Earlier today, American service members carried out a decisive operation aimed at disrupting a narco-terror regime responsible for years of harm to the United States. Nicolás Maduro and the criminal network he leads have fueled the flow of illegal drugs into the United States,…
— Congressman Juan Ciscomani (@RepCiscomani) January 3, 2026
In a similar supporting statement, Rep. Abe Hamadeh (R-AZ-08) wrote, “I support President Donald Trump’s decisive actions to hold Nicolás Maduro accountable, a brutal oppressor who has led a drug cartel masquerading as a government and terrorized his own people. Maduro is an illegitimate ruler who lost at the ballot box and now clings to power through violence, corruption, and the narcotics trade that has poisoned American communities. This is peace through strength in action, defending our own backyard and stopping threats before they reach our borders. Reports that Chinese officials met with Maduro just yesterday and were still on the ground during the operation only underscore how urgent and necessary strong American leadership is. Peace through strength!”
Gubernatorial candidate Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ-05) characterized the raid as consistent with “America First” leadership and defended the legal grounding of the operation, noting that the indictments against Maduro formed the basis for a law-enforcement action with military support.
Sen. Warren Petersen (R-LD14) also praised the operation, highlighting Maduro’s status as an indicted narco-terrorist and emphasizing that Trump’s actions were necessary where previous administrations had failed.
He wrote, “Maduro murdered thousands, indicted twice on narco-terrorism charges, and has a $50M bounty on his head. Yet our classless Democrat Senators are sympathizing with him and crying over his arrest. Unreal. Prioritizing a brutal thug over justice and the Venezuelan people. The DOJ arrested him with assistance of the US Military. 100 percent constitutional under Article 2 powers. Biden said he would take care of Maduro but did not. Biden talked, Trump acted.”
Maduro murdered thousands, indicted twice on narco-terrorism charges, and has a $50M bounty on his head. Yet our classless Democrat Senators are sympathizing with him and crying over his arrest. Unreal. Prioritizing a brutal thug over justice and the Venezuelan people.
Karrin Taylor Robson, also a Republican gubernatorial contender, thanked U.S. troops for the successful mission and described Trump’s action as protecting American communities from drug-related harm.
The split in Arizona reflects a broader national debate over executive authority, constitutional war powers, and U.S. foreign intervention, and, more broadly, familiar partisan divisions over President Donald Trump. Democrats argue the military action lacked legal authorization and risks long-term entanglement abroad, while Republicans applaud the decisive removal of a hostile regime accused of narcotics trafficking and oppression.
As Maduro’s legal proceedings unfold in U.S. federal court, the divergent Arizona reactions illustrate how foreign policy flashpoints continue to break sharply along partisan lines.
Criminals posing as asylum seekers are turning American cities into war zones.
The Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, feared for how it tortures its victims, is setting up business in New York City, police sources reveal.
Gang members recruit migrants from shelters and as they come off buses from Texas, put them to work in retail theft rings or on mopeds, grabbing phones and handbags and roughing up pedestrians.
“This is organized crime. It’s just like the Mafia,” says Paul DiGiacomo, president of the NYC Detectives’ Endowment Association.
NYPD Commissioner Edward Caban warns of a “wave of migrant crime.” Democratic pols deny it. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul says migrants “are looking for a better life.” True for many, not all.
NYC Comptroller Brad Lander accuses Caban of “fear mongering” and using a “Republican talking point.”
Migrants in moped gangs and retail theft rings, some carrying guns, are terrorizing the Big Apple, Yonkers and New Jersey.
Two-man teams snatch pedestrians’ phones and deliver them to Tren de Aragua stash houses, where professional hackers make fraudulent banking transactions and drain cash from all accounts. Then the phones are wiped clean and shipped to South America for resale.
A 62-year-old woman was brutally dragged down a Brooklyn street by one of these moped thieves who made off with her purse. When you see mopeds, step back from the curb and hug the building — advice usually needed in a third-world city, not New York.
A shopper at JD Sports near Times Square was shot in the leg by baby-faced, 15-year-old migrant Jesus Alejandro Rivas-Figueroa when a security guard tried to stop him from robbing the store on Feb. 8. Figueroa whipped out a .45-caliber handgun and shot into the crowd. He has since been apprehended by police.
The next job is to track down the ringleaders who armed him and sent him into the store. The teen had been living in the Stratford Hotel, a city shelter, with his mother and attending school. He is also a suspect in a Jan. 25 incident in Midtown and a Jan. 27 robbery in the Bronx. After his first run-in with cops, the shelter system should have been notified and Figueroa should have been evicted.
Chicago is also being terrorized. There, professional criminals enlist migrants from the shelters to raid luxury stores at the suburban Oakbrook Center shopping mall, 5 miles west of the city. These migrants wouldn’t have a clue where Oak Brook, an upscale suburb, is, or how to get there without the criminal masterminds.
South American gangs are turning suburban malls into danger zones, explains retired Riverside, Illinois, Police Chief Tom Weitzel. “You’re at one of the suburban malls … pushing your kids in a stroller” and you can get caught in the violence, he said in an interview with Fox News.
“A lot more crossing the border are criminals or have criminal intent than is being publicly said,” Weitzel added.
Paul Mauro, a retired inspector of the NYPD, agrees. The claim that Venezuela is emptying its prisons is accurate, he suggested in a separate interview with Fox News.
Blame President Joe Biden’s open borders, but also the soft-on-crime Democrats in New York and Illinois, whose policies almost guarantee that migrant criminals can rob and assault without ever going to jail.
Hochul sweetens the attraction by guaranteeing asylum seekers cash welfare benefits — something the federal government bars so state and local taxpayers have to foot the entire bill.
On top of that, New York City is court-mandated to guarantee shelter to all, something Mayor Eric Adams should seek to overturn. NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny observed that “the network of thieves” lives mostly in the shelter system.
That includes the migrants who beat up two cops at Times Square on Jan. 27. They had a string of previous arrests but were still living in shelters, courtesy of N.Y. taxpayers.
Adams is imposing an 11 p.m. curfew at some shelters. That’s window dressing.
Providing room and board to the same people who rob and threaten us makes no sense. Once migrants get in trouble with the law, the shelter system should be notified and they should be evicted. The only shelter they get should be at Rikers.
The Statue of Liberty says, “Give me your tired, your poor.” It doesn’t say your lawbreakers, brutes and gang leaders.
Betsy McCaughey is a contributor to The Daily Caller News Foundation and a former lieutenant governor of New York and chairman of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths. Follow her on Twitter @Betsy_McCaughey. To find out more about Betsy McCaughey and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
