US politics live: Member of Congress claims America is ‘about to go into’ Venezuela

The United States is poised to “go into” a country and depose its leader in a move already being compared to a war from decades ago.

Welcome to our coverage of US politics on Tuesday, Australia time. For Wednesday’s US blog click here.

The United States is “about to go in” to Venezuela in an effort to depose its dictator, Nicolas Maduro, according to a member of Congress.

Republican Congresswoman Maria Salazar, who is on the House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Committee and is also Chairwoman of the Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere, made the striking claim during a TV interview today.

She said Maduro understands “that we are about to go in”, adding that “we need to” for economic, security and political reasons.

“We’re going to be doing a favour to us, to our children, to our economy, to our oil companies, to be able to liberate, and to the Venezuelans,” she told Fox Business.

“This is going to be very similar to Panama.”

The US invaded Panama in 1989 to unseat dictator Manuel Noriega. The operation took just over five weeks, and resulted in the deaths of about 500 Panamanians, plus 23 US soldiers.

“He is the head of a terrorist organisation, which according to our United States laws puts him right in the crosshairs, and we can take him out,” Ms Salazar said.

“We can extradite him, or we can go in and try to finish his regime.”

Meanwhile the Trump administration, specifically the recently renamed Department of War, has announced an investigation into Democratic Senator Mark Kelly, a former astronaut and US Navy pilot, over a video he made telling the military it can ignore illegal orders.

Mr Kelly was one of six Democrats to participate in the video, five of them former military officers and one a former intelligence analyst. President Trump reacted by accusing them of “seditious behaviour, punishable by death”, and reposting a call for them to be “hanged”.

This blog has now closed, but read on for all the news from today.

Originally published as US politics live: Member of Congress claims America is ‘about to go into’ Venezuela