Protests in US cities over Trump's military intervention in Venezuela

Source: The Guardian

Mon 5 Jan 2026 03.25 EST
First published on Sun 4 Jan 2026 16.02 EST


Protests bubbled up in several US cities over the weekend as people demonstrated against the Trump administration’s unilateral military intervention in Venezuela – even as many in the diaspora publicly celebrated the forced removal of president Nicolás Maduro.

Gatherings took place as crowds expressed opposition to a potential war with Venezuela and to declare illegal the US operation to snatch Maduro early on Saturday and bring him to the US to face drug-trafficking charges in court. Maduro is due to appear in federal court in New York at noon local time on Monday. Hundreds of people came out to protest in large cities coast to coast, including Chicago, Dallas, New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, San Francisco and Seattle.

“Whether it’s Saddam Hussein’s Iraq or the Taliban in Afghanistan, Panama, Libya, you name it. Whenever the United States attacks another country like this, it’s the peoples of those countries who suffer the most,” Andy Thayer of the Chicago Committee Against War and Racism said to a local ABC affiliate at a protest that drew several hundred.

Others argued that Donald Trump did not have authority to launch such a strike on Venezuela, at least without approval from Congress. Senior Democrats on Sunday decried the US president’s bypassing his constitutional obligation to involve the congressional branch of government, as international leaders said the US had breached the United Nations charter.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jan/04/venezuela-trump-protests-us-cities