A major escalation in U.S.–Venezuela relations unfolded this weekend following U.S. military action in the country and the detention of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Independent Political Report has compiled statements from various national political parties in response.
On January 3, reports came out that the United States conducted military operations in Venezuela as part of Operation Absolute Resolve. Tensions between the two countries have recently escalated in response to disputes over Venezuela’s elections, U.S. sanctions targeting the Venezuelan government and oil sector, and U.S. criminal cases brought against Maduro and other senior state officials.
President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, were detained during the operation and transported to New York in connection with U.S. indictments alleging drug trafficking and narco-terrorism offenses. In remarks delivered Saturday, President Donald Trump said the United States would run Venezuela until what he described as a “safe, proper and judicious transition” could take place. Maduro is expected to appear in federal court on Monday in relation to those offenses.
The following statements were issued by national political parties in the aftermath of Saturday’s events. They are presented in alphabetical order by party name and are quoted as originally released. Statements were shared on various platforms, including social media, party websites, and direct communications to Independent Political Report. Representatives of parties not listed, or readers aware of additional statements, are invited to submit them to the IPR editorial team for inclusion.
The American Solidarity Party shared the following statement from National Committee Chair Jack Ternan on social media:
“A statement on the United States’ Kidnapping of President Maduro and Attack On Venezuela:
Among our core principles are the beliefs that ‘diplomatic and nonviolent means of resolution must be exhausted before violent means are considered’ and that ‘military action must strictly adhere to just-war principles’. Our platform states: ‘Military interventions by the United States have rarely complied with just war principles and have usually been counterproductive. We call for an end of the exertion of military hegemony over the world.’ Furthermore, ‘We insist that the United States must end unilateral military intervention in foreign countries.’
In accordance with this principles and positions, I once again condemn President Trump and his administration for unilateral, unjustified, unconstitutional, and unnecessary military action. The kidnapping of a head of state, an unprovoked military attack on a sovereign nation, and assertions of authority over the resources of others reflects a return to thievery and barbarism that must be rejected by all men and women of goodwill. Once again, President Trump has betrayed those who follow the Prince of Peace, and the American Solidarity Party welcomes our fellow citizens looking for an alternative to the warmongering of the major political parties.”
The Communist Party USA issued the following statement on its national website:
“Kidnapping and an act of war. That’s the only way to describe the attack on Venezuela and President Nicolás Maduro’s removal by U.S. military forces. It’s unjust, illegal, and it’s yet another act of state terror against not only Venezuela but any country that refuses to submit to the Trump Doctrine.
All of this comes from an administration that not only sees itself as above the law but has been granted carte blanche, or immunity, from prosecution by the fascist-minded ‘Justices’ of the U.S. Supreme Court.
Let’s be clear: The bombings and special forces operations — like the oil tanker seizures before them — have nothing to do with alleged drug trafficking but everything to do with the vast oil reserves that lie beneath Venezuela’s soil. And make no mistake, the oil corporations of the U.S. and other imperialist countries aim to seize that, too.
Yesterday it was Nigeria, today it’s Venezuela, and, if we’re not actively resisting, tomorrow it’ll be Cuba or Brazil.
Trump’s criminality will be rightly condemned, not only in the U.S. but all around the world. But at the end of the day, the path toward justice rests with us. And the first step is mass public protest. It’s time again to demonstrate, sit in, occupy, and put on our marching shoes. It’s also time to get ready to vote.
Trump and MAGA are growing weaker by the day. The administration, riven by splits and defections, has entered Lame Duck territory. But that makes it all the more dangerous.
But don’t despair, there’s a way towards justice. They might temporarily jail the Maduros, but you can’t jail the Venezuelan revolution. Nor can our right to put the U.S. on a different path be blocked.
Call Congress, hit the streets, protest in every way possible, today, tomorrow, until justice is done. Free the Maduros, end the U.S. intervention in Venezuela, impeach Donald Trump and his enablers now!”
The Forward Party shared the following statement on social media:
The capture of Nicolás Maduro raises serious questions about the limits of U.S. presidential authority, and likely violates international law.
The U.S. has lawful extradition processes, including for drug trafficking cases, but forcibly removing a sitting head of state—even one widely regarded as illegitimate—creates a dangerous precedent.
Maduro is a bad actor who caused great harm to the Venezuelan people and has well-documented ties to international drug networks, but unilateral regime change in an oil-rich country risks civil unrest, regional instability, and another open-ended U.S. foreign entanglement.
Statements by the President suggesting the United States will “run” Venezuela only deepen those concerns and point toward occupation, not lawful action.
When America ignores the rule of law, it gives cover to China and Russia to do the same and makes the world less stable. Congress must step in, put country and rule of law over party, and reassert its constitutional role before Presidential unilateral action becomes the norm.
The Green Party of the United States shared the following statement in an email to supporters:
“The Green Party condemns the kidnapping of the Venezuelan President and his wife and demands their immediate release. We strongly oppose this illegal act of war which violates both the US Constitution and international law. Congress needs to immediately commence impeachment proceedings against Trump.
The Party also harshly reacted to the assertion by Trump that the United States will now be running Venezuela for the near term and if he faces any local opposition, he will send in a second wave of American military forces to subdue the population.
The Party urges the Senate to vote on the resolution scheduled for next week to halt military intervention. The bipartisan resolution only needs a majority to pass.
According to the CHARTER OF THE UNITED NATIONS, force is only permissible in response to an armed attack, or possibly to rescue a population facing an imminent threat of extermination.
‘Trump is primarily interested in seizing control of Venezuela’s oil and other natural resources. His pretext of seeking to protect Americans from drugs is ludicrous, especially in light of his pardon just a month ago of ex-Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who was serving a 45-year sentence for drug trafficking. Congress must immediately convene to finally reign in this President who is ripping to shreds the Constitution and American democracy,’ said Craig Cayetano, Co-Chair for the Green Party of the US.
‘The White House National Security Strategy document released in November 2025,outlined what Trump considers a priority – focus on the Western Hemisphere – which clearly looks like taking control of Venezuelan oil while at the same time attempting to thwart a socialist government,’ said Cassandra Lems, Co-chair for the Green Party of the US.
The Green Party is committed to join with other groups committed to peace, justice and the rule of law to organize nationwide protests to free Maduro and his family and to stop this illegal war.”
The Liberal Party USA shared the following response on social media:
“Can any country swoop in and kidnap the U.S. President and his wife and charge him criminally, then take over our country in the interim? Is that acceptable and legal?
Or is this only ‘allowed’ when the U.S. decides to do it to other countries?
We demand a reasonable, peaceful, diplomatic foreign policy that respects human rights, Constitutional law, and the sovereignty of people.
We reject the jingoistic, war-mongering, aggressive, international and Constitutional law violating foreign (and domestic) policy of the authoritarian Trump regime.
We the People demand compliance to the U.S. Constitution and the international treaties the U.S. signed and ratified through Congress and the Executive branch to protect peoples’ rights and freedoms from tyranny following WWII.
We will continue to hold politicians accountable to ideals they have certainly failed at over the years and willfully violated such as this case. We will continue to fight for a more humane tomorrow.
The Libertarian Party shared the following statement from Steven Nekhaila, chair of the Libertarian National Committee, on social media:
“Recent developments in Venezuela represent a serious and alarming escalation in U.S. foreign policy. Public statements and widespread reporting indicate that U.S. military action has intensified, accompanied by claims that Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro and his wife have been targeted for removal and prosecution.
Whether framed as enforcement or security, these actions mark a sharp turn toward direct intervention inside a sovereign nation without a declaration of war or clear congressional authorization.
What was initially presented as an anti-narcotics effort has rapidly evolved into something far broader. No clear evidence supports Venezuela being a major source of fentanyl entering the United States. What is clear is that Venezuela sits atop significant oil reserves and has aligned itself with Russia and China at a moment of rising global tension between East and West. That context cannot be ignored.
Open discussion of backing opposition figures such as María Corina Machado, combined with sanctions, asset seizures, and an expanded U.S. military posture, fits a familiar pattern. The rationale shifts, but the mechanism remains the same. Pressure, destabilization, and regime change pursued outside constitutional limits. This would not be the first time the United States has taken such an approach in Latin America, nor even the twentieth.
Venezuela must also be viewed alongside other active and escalating theaters. The United States remains deeply entangled in the war in Ukraine, continues to posture militarily in the Middle East, and maintains an increasingly confrontational stance toward China over Taiwan. Individually, each conflict is framed as ‘manageable’, but collectively they form a volatile landscape where a single miscalculation could ignite a global powder keg and draw the world into a wider global war.
Once again, Congress has been sidelined. War powers meant to restrain unilateral action have eroded into cheerleading and after-the-fact funding votes. Billions are spent, lives are placed at risk, and the American public is asked to accept escalation as inevitable while footing the bill through blood, inflation, and taxation.
Libertarians reject empire. We reject undeclared wars, regime change operations, and the use of American lives and resources as pieces on a global chessboard. The proper role of government is the protection of life, liberty, and property, not endless intervention abroad.
The Libertarian Party calls for an immediate halt to unconstitutional military actions, a return to a non-interventionist foreign policy, and for Congress to reclaim its constitutional authority over war powers before escalation gives way to a conflict no nation can control.
The Party for Socialism and Liberation shared the following statement in Liberation, its official newsletter:
The Trump administration has committed a historic and outrageous act of aggression with its assault on Venezuela to abduct the country’s head of state at gunpoint. In the process, the U.S. military bombarded civilian areas and massacred dozens of people. The PSL joins with the majority of people in this country in rejecting Trump’s war drive, and opposes the brazen, illegal kidnapping of Nicolás Maduro. We demand an end to all U.S. aggression – the blockade, sanctions, interference in internal politics and missile strikes on small boats must end now.
As he gave a press conference to disgustingly brag about the kidnapping, Trump said, “American dominance in the Western hemisphere will never be questioned again”. In one arrogant sentence, he summed up the fundamental goal driving U.S. policy in this situation. Venezuela is an independent country that has dared to use its natural wealth for the benefit of its own people, not U.S.-based corporations. It worked with like-minded governments in the region to assert independence from Washington. This is unacceptable to the elites who run the U.S. empire, who demand that everyone in the western hemisphere acquiesce to “American dominance”.
This is part of a broader “national security” strategy that was recently made public by The White House. It puts primacy on the Western Hemisphere and sets the goal of unchallenged dominance of Latin America and the Caribbean. The U.S. imperial establishment desperately wants to prevent countries from trading with China or developing positive diplomatic relations so that U.S. corporations and handpicked U.S. puppet leaders can reign supreme. This naked act of imperial aggression – accompanied by assertions that the U.S. will “run Venezuela” – is meant to be a signal of the Pentagon war machine’s resolve to implement this strategy. It has already been followed up with threats against Cuba, Colombia, Mexico and Greenland.
Trump claims to speak in the name of the entire people of the United States, but he exclusively pursues the interests of the billionaire class. It is not ordinary Americans who will “dominate” Venezuela’s resources. It’s oil corporations like ExxonMobil. Executives at LockheedMartin or Boeing cash in on selling weapons, but the people who would be sent to kill and die in Venezuela are the children of working people. The working class of this country has nothing to gain from Trump’s dreams of hegemony over Latin America.
Trump has shown an obsession with Venezuela’s oil, which he outrageously asserts “belongs” to the United States. U.S. oil refineries are largely set up to handle the type of oil that’s produced in Venezuela – a result of U.S. corporations’ historic dominance of the country’s resources since before the election of Hugo Chávez as president. Reasserting that domination would be a major boost for the U.S. capitalist class.
The kidnapping of President Maduro is one of the most blatant violations of international law in history. The U.S. government has no right to declare a foreign head of state a criminal, and then invade their country to carry out a so-called “arrest”. And the accusation that Maduro or any other top Venezuelan official leads a drug trafficking cartel is ridiculous and completely baseless – a cheap imitation of the Bush administration’s “weapons of mass destruction” lie. He should be immediately released from custody instead of being subjected to a fraudulent and illegitimate “legal” process in the United States.
While the Trump administration hoped it could cause the government of Venezuela to collapse, it is still intact and asserting the country’s national sovereignty. It remains the target of ongoing war threats, with Trump openly threatening to assassinate its leadership.
Immediately after the latest attack, demonstrators in over 100 cities across the United States took to the streets. These protests reflect the fact that the people of this country do not want a war with Venezuela. In the coming days and weeks, it’s crucial that people in the United States continue to mobilize and act against the illegal aggressions of the Trump regime.
The United States Pirate Party shared the following statement from Captain Jolly Mitch Davilo on its national website:
“In the middle of the night, while most U.S. citizens were sleeping and unable to be outraged, the United States invaded Venezuela and claims now to have captured Nicolás Maduro, President of Venezuela.
After promising peace, the Epstein files & fear mongering that their political opponents will start wars, they have taken upon themselves to invade Venezuela in the middle of the night without Congress’s permission, putting American lives on the line for oil & to distract you from the files.
This is what this administration thinks of you.
We have it in our platform explicitly that the U.S. must be a good neighbor and how we need to shift the dynamic in the New World from ‘a paradigm of United States dominance to genuine collaboration and friendship is essential. A more united American Continent will help each country become stronger and create a stronger bond between every American, from Greenland to Patagonia.’
Pan-American is essential to the Pirate foreign policy objectives. Our platform says we must ‘advocate for ending the Cuban embargo and lifting sanctions on Nicaragua and Venezuela.’
Not starting a new war with them.
Even if the administration sought permission to carry out such attacks, we (the United States) can not and should not be attacking our neighbor. This is ultimately another ‘blood-for-oil’ scheme that will lead to countless deaths, billions spent and hard feelings developed by neighbors who already had a hard time trusting us.
For any U.S. citizen that is thinking ‘Oh but they were sending drugs into the United States, something something nacroterrorists’, I counter with this: Trump pardoned Juan Orlando Hernández, the convicted drug trafficking former President of Honduras.
This has little to do with drugs and everything to do with oil and a distraction from the Epstein files. This has to do with a government unfriendly to U.S. hegemony that the U.S. has tried like hell for years to be rid of, only to lead to this, the most brazen and obvious attempt.
The United States Pirate Party condemns these actions. Secretary Hegseth said Maduro ‘fucked around and found out’, but empires fall. When we no longer hold dominance over the New World, a fact which most certainly will one day come, our neighbors will remember how we treated them as the most powerful nation in the world. This is just one of many things I believe the United States, not Maduro, will have fucked around and for which they will find out. Not via immediate retaliation, not via the refugee crisis this will certainly exacerbate, but through the lingering memories of the world and especially our neighbors, we will find out.
No war with Venezuela. Ending war is possible.”
The Reform Party National Committee shared the following remark on social media:
“The Reform Party does not support nation building, there should be no repeat of Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan. The United States should never take ‘ownership’ of another country.”
The Socialist Party USA shared the following resolution adopted by its National Executive Committee on its website:
“Early on January 3, 2026, the U.S. military launched a brazen act of aggression against Venezuela, forcibly abducting President Nicolás Maduro and his wife and illegally transporting them to the United States. Accompanied by airstrikes that killed and injured civilians and left widespread destruction across northern Venezuela, including Caracas, this assault is an unmistakable violation of international law and a direct attack on Venezuelan sovereignty. It is a clear act of war – unprovoked, unlawful, and intolerable.
The Trump Administration claims this operation targeted ‘drug trafficking.’ Yet it has presented no credible evidence, only political pretexts. The truth is clear: Washington seeks to dominate Venezuela’s vast oil and mineral wealth and crush a government that dares to resist U.S. capitalist interests. This is imperialism in its crudest form.
The Socialist Party USA condemns this grotesque violation of international law and demands the immediate and unconditional ceasefire of all U.S. military operations in Venezuela. We demand the safe return of President Maduro and his wife to Venezuela, and full accountability under international law for those responsible for this invasion.
We stand firmly for peace, sovereignty, and the rights of nations to self-determination. We implore the American people to rise in outrage. Protest, organize, and reject this reckless use of our public resources to finance illegal wars abroad. Let our voices make clear: the U.S. must respect the law, not break it; build peace, not destruction; and serve humanity, not profit.
Passed by the SPUSA National Executive Committee January 3, 2026″
Well said, Mr. Seebeck. Well said indeed.
Nobody seems to be touching upon the elephant in the room, which is that Venezuela, like Libya and Iraq before it and Russia now, have moved away from the dollar and into the yuan and other currencies for selling oil, not to mention away from the Eurocentric central banks that inflate and launder the dollar, which undermines the petrodollar and by extension the government’s ability to keep printing money. This isn’t and never has been about the absurd issue of “narcoterrorism,” oil reserves are the MacGuffin, but its really about trying to cripple BRICS and save the dollar for those bankers
If it were really about drugs, the invasion targets would be Mexico (cannabis and fentanyl), Colombia (cocaine), Afghanistan again (opium and heroin), and China (fentanyl). Venezuela is just a transit route, not a producer–it makes no sense to invade the port while production continues, equivalent to cutting off the leaves of a weed while the root remains.
The other problem is that the bullet that clipped Trump’s ear also has driven him insane. He’s not the same man he was his first term. Giving a narcissist like him an “ordained -by-God” complex on top of it is what is driving him right now: he dodged his own mortality close enough to be bluntly reminded of it, and instead of turning himself around by reflecting on it and humbling himself, he’s doubled down on the narcissism, and gone completely irrational, nonsensical, inconsistent, and shortsighted. He either doesn’t understand or refuses to understand the big picture and long-term ramifications of his actions, to everyone else’s extreme detriment–he only sees money and personal glory. He certainly doesn’t understand diplomacy and only sees other nations and their resources as assets to be obtained by any means possible, including the military which he didn’t have in the private sector. He sure as hell doesn’t truly understand what makes America great, which is attitude, not assets. He only taps into it superficially to appease his angry MAGA cult.
It’s extremely scary, because he is in the position to destroy us all economically while “Making America Great Again,” assuming he doesn’t plunge the world into a nuclear war along the way. The signs are all there, and none of them are anything close to good.
Question is, do any of the political parties, including the Democrats and Republicans, understand this?
Co-founder of the Libertarian party, D. Frank Robinson says, this is another example of Deep State fascist imperialism.
Walter: Nothing institutionally, at least. There are more than a few statements and comments from lawmakers, but I haven’t found anything from the party itself. Same with the Republicans.
Well geez… isn’t anybody out there all giddy about what was done?
Nothing from the Democrats?