While Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, were in custody in New York Monday on federal drug charges, the congressman representing St. Louis was meeting with House colleagues in Washington to find a way through what has evolved into an international controversy.
At the center of the debate is President Donald Trump’s decision to order military action and the capture of Venezuela’s first couple over the weekend without authorization from Congress. Such authorization is required under the Constitution and the War Powers Act, U.S. Rep. Wesley Bell, told The St. Louis American.
Bell, who served as Prosecuting Attorney for St. Louis County for six years before joining Congress, said he and colleagues would be discussing the legal issues and potentially scheduling a Capitol Hill hearing.
“First and foremost, as a former prosecutor, I have no love for Maduro, and he is horrible. … I get that,” Bell, a Democratic member of the House Armed Services Committee and the House Oversight Committee, said of the Latin American dictator.
“The question is when we look at the president’s modus operandi of how he acts before thinking, how this administration does things, and then when they get in hot water they figure out it’s a lot more complicated. Then they start trying to think about it after the fact to try to dig themselves out of the mess that they made,” he said.
Bell also reacted to Trump’s insistence that the United States would now run Venezuela.
“I just find it odd that the president can’t run this country, when we look at housing costs and look at health care costs, the cost of living in general, but now wants to run Venezuela,” Bell said.
The move drew strong reaction from world leaders and in the St. Louis area, where at least two protests were held over the weekend and a press conference condemning the action was held Wednesday by the Universal African Peoples Organization and the African People’s Socialist Party. While some Venezuelan Americans nationally are celebrating Maduro’s capture, local feelings are more complicated, said Blake Hamilton, president and CEO of the International Institute of St. Louis.
“We do serve some Venezuelans and there is concern about the travel and safety of their loved ones,” Hamilton said. “Most folks are connected through WhatsApp. We’re just trying to help answer their questions about what they might be able to do from this side.”
The Venezuelan American community in St. Louis is small — between 600 and 700 people — but growing, according to the Institute and St. Louis Mosaic. It is also close-knit, Hamilton said, and moments like this heighten fear and uncertainty.
“It really is a case-by-case scenario,” Hamilton said. “Right now, there is not a U.S. diplomatic presence in Venezuela, so it becomes challenging for folks over there.”
Nationally, the response has largely fallen along political lines. Many Republicans have either backed the president or remained silent, while Democratic leaders have sharply criticized the move and questioned whether Trump exceeded presidential authority.
“This is not about drugs or democracy,” former Vice President Kamala Harris said in a statement. “It is about oil and Donald Trump’s desire to play the regional strongman. If he cared about either, he wouldn’t pardon a convicted drug trafficker or sideline Venezuela’s legitimate opposition while pursuing deals with Maduro’s cronies.”
U.S. Rep. Yvette Clarke, a Democrat from New York and chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus, called Trump’s action “a grave and illegal abuse of power,” referencing the widely challenged 2018 and 2024 Venezuelan elections.
“While Nicolás Maduro is, in fact, an illegitimate leader, the deployment of U.S. military power to impose political change in a sovereign nation — without the consent of Congress or a clear and defined plan of action — threatens to draw the United States into an indefinite conflict in Venezuela,” Clarke said in a CBC statement.
Democrats, including U.S. Rep. Emmanuel Cleaver of Kansas City, also criticized the administration for not briefing congressional leadership.
“As Congress returns to Washington, the administration must immediately brief the people’s elected representatives about the legal justifications of this attack, the short-term risks to our troops and civilians, and the long-term strategy to ensure the situation in Venezuela does not result in another quagmire that the American people do not support and cannot afford,” Cleaver said in a statement.
Republican U.S. Rep. Ann Wagner, who represents the St. Louis suburbs, listed Maduro’s alleged abuses in a statement, but did not explicitly endorse or condemn the president’s actions.
“As a Member of the House Intelligence Committee, I look forward to a full briefing on this strike when Congress returns this week,” she said.
Bell said Democrats want Republicans to take a more public stand.
“At the end of the day, I think that you need not just the Democrats to be the adults in the room — we need Republicans to also do their jobs,” Bell said.