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Trump flips Josh Hawley, Todd Young back to his side after telling voters to never support them again
John Bowden in Washington, D.C. Thursday 15 January 2026 00:42 GMT- Bookmark
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Two Republicans rejoined the ranks of the GOP Senate caucus on Wednesday and voted to defeat a Democratic resolution aimed at constricting President Donald Trump from carrying out further military strikes within Venezuela.
Josh Hawley and Todd Young were two of five senators who broke with their party last week to support the resolution, but switched back on Wednesday after several days of intense lobbying that, according to multiple reports, lasted up until the very minute of the vote Wednesday evening.
Young and Hawley both told reporters that the keys to their votes being won by the White House were assurances from top officials that, despite the president’s threats to send in ground troops or carry out further strikes, the administration had no plans to do so. Vice President JD Vance cast the tiebreaking vote after the chamber was deadlocked at 50-50.
He added that Secretary of State Marco Rubio, one of the top Trump officials involved in the discussions related to Venezuela, would appear before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to testify on the matter.
The Senate delivered Donald Trump a symbolic defeat last week when he suffered a major defection on the initial vote to advance the War Powers resolution submitted by Sen. Tim Kaine out of committee, while Democrats voted in unison to support the measure.
While the actual consequences of the vote were minimal, it served as a shot across the bow for the president, who has spent weeks alarming the Hill with suggestions about future strikes in Venezuela or other countries and even possibly a military effort to seize Greenland.
open image in gallerySen. Josh Hawley was one of two Republican senators to be won over by the White House’s persuasive efforts over the past week (Getty Images)Trump himself reacted with fury after the votes were cast, labeling the five Republican senators (Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Todd Young, Rand Paul and Josh Hawley) disloyal and demanding that voters hand them defeats at the ballot box in the future. One of those senators, Collins, is facing a tight reelection battle this year in a crucial state for the Republican Senate majority.
“Republicans should be ashamed of the Senators that just voted with Democrats,” the president wrote on Truth Social. “Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Rand Paul, Josh Hawley, and Todd Young should never be elected to office again.”
Hawley responded, according to Huffpost: “I like the president. I feel like we've had a good relationship, and I support him. I take no offense to that.”
On Wednesday, he spoke on Fox News about his changing vote.
“Well, for me...this has always been about ground troops,” said Hawley. “Occupying Venezuela, that’s not something I think I would want to do.”
“I talked to the president, I talked to the Secretary of State, I talked to the Department of Justice,” Hawley said. “And what the Secretary of State said to me very clearly is, ‘We’re not doing that.’ We don’t have ground troops in Venezuela; this is not another Iraq, we’re not going to occupy Venezuela, and you know what? That’s good enough for me.”
Behind the scenes, Trump and his allies worked down to the wire to win those same senators back into the fold, according to several. They were successful after Rubio guaranteed in a letter to Hawley and Young that the White House would seek congressional authorization before deploying troops to the region.
open image in galleryPresident Donald Trump worked behind the scenes to win back Republicans onto his side after suffering one of his worst defeats in Congress (Getty)“I have received assurances that there are no American troops in Venezuela. I’ve also received a commitment that if President Trump were to determine American forces are needed in major military operations in Venezuela, the Administration will come to Congress in advance to ask for an authorization of force,” Young said in a statement.
Senators defeated the resolution on a point of order that questioned whether the situation in Venezuela amounted to ongoing hostilities with the United States. The president claimed on Wednesday that Nicolas Maduro’s number two, Delcy Rodriguez, was cooperating and said that he’d spoken with her on a phone call. Semafor reported on Wednesday that sales of Venezuelan oil by the U.S. government have officially begun.
Still, more than 200 people are dead between the stunning raid on Caracas, which led to Maduro’s capture two weeks ago and the months-long campaign of deadly airstrikes targeting small vessels in the Caribbean, the U.S. government says are ferrying drug traffickers. Maduro is now in New York along with his wife, where the pair is facing drug trafficking charges.
The DNC trashed the vote in a statement, writing: “Just last week, a handful of Senate Republicans were clear about putting guardrails on Trump. But after a few calls from their Dear Leader, Republicans folded — killing a bipartisan resolution to rein in Trump’s unconstitutional power grab. Americans have been unequivocal in their opposition to the U.S. indefinitely running a foreign country. Republicans had a chance to stand up for the American people, and instead they chose to cower to Trump.”
Wednesday’s vote could embolden the president, who saw representatives from Greenland and Denmark arrive at the White House earlier in the day to confront Rubio and Vice President JD Vance — Trump didn’t bother to attend.
The president has only somewhat backed off his assertion that the U.S. would be directly running Venezuela’s government and continues to insist that the U.S. “needs” Greenland. On Wednesday, he said that Rodriguez, Venezuela’s acting president and former vice president to Maduro, was a “terrific person”.
“We just had a great conversation today, and she's a terrific person. I think we’re getting along very well with Venezuela,” said the president.
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