A Florida Republican is arguing that Democrats’ largely negative response to the U.S. government’s operation in Venezuela is the ‘definition of Trump Derangement Syndrome.’

Rep. Mike Haridopolos, R-Fla., represents a part of Florida that includes a significant chunk of the state’s central coastline.

‘It doesn’t take much research to find speech after speech of Democrat House members and Senate members who said that this guy is a bad guy, he should be taken out of power,’ Haridopolos told Fox News Digital.

‘Sometimes in politics, you’ve just got to say to the other side, politically, ‘Hey, we’re all Americans. This is in the best interest, clearly, of the United States.’ But they’re in a position where they’re so afraid of a Democrat primary that they will say anything to avoid having the extreme left attack them.’

He pointed out that it was the previous Democratic commander-in-chief, President Joe Biden, who raised the federal government’s bounty for Maduro’s capture to $25 million.

‘What did they expect was then going to happen? You think this guy was just going to voluntarily give up? He clearly was not. He was getting into bed with the Cubans, the Russians, the Chinese, the Iranians, even Hezbollah, as I understand. I mean, this guy was trying to create a group of enemies in an oil-rich state at our footstep,’ Haridopolos said.

Democrats and Republicans have been largely divided in their responses to the strikes in Venezuela.

Lawmakers on the left have mostly criticized the president and his officials, accusing them of illegal actions that ran afoul of the U.S. Constitution. Some progressives have even said Trump could be guilty of impeachable offenses.

The majority of GOP lawmakers praised Trump’s move as a necessary law enforcement action to get rid of a hostile actor threatening both the U.S. and the region writ large.

Haridopolos is no different, pointing out that the operation was carried out with no U.S. fatalities and relatively few among Maduro supporters in Venezuela.

He said his district is home to a number of Venezuelan refugees who were elated by President Donald Trump’s decision to strike Caracas and capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

‘I have a large population of Venezuelans within my community, and they are absolutely overjoyed,’ the congressman said. ‘They were in essence kicked out of their own country or fled through fear … because they lost their ability to make a living, or they were being terrorized by the government because they were anti-Maduro.’

Following the U.S. strikes, Maduro and his wife were both taken to New York City, where they will be prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York.

Maduro pleaded not guilty during his first court appearance on Monday.

House Freedom Caucus leaders are drawing battle lines as lawmakers return to Capitol Hill for the second half of the 119th Congress.

The conservative group’s board of directors is sending a seven-page letter to Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., outlining proposed policy goals on a vast array of topics from American elections, to immigration, to federal spending, taking on ‘rogue’ judges, and housing affordability.

It comes ahead of a policy forum that Johnson is hosting on Tuesday to lay out the House GOP’s agenda for 2026. Republicans are expected to huddle from 9:30 am to 6 pm at the Trump Kennedy Center, where they’ll hear from committee leaders and President Donald Trump.

Trump’s remarks are expected to rally Republicans around passing their legislative goals for the year, but several people told Fox News Digital they also anticipate him focusing heavily on the U.S. government’s recent operation in Venezuela.

The first policy goal listed by the Freedom Caucus is forcing the Senate to take up the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, which passed the House early last year.

They’re also calling on Congress to pass legislation limiting early voting and reforming the census to only count American citizens.

On fiscal year (FY) 2026 appropriations, conservatives are calling on the House to ‘reduce or — at bare minimum keep flat total federal discretionary spending levels’ according to the document first obtained by Fox News Digital.

The recently released $174 billion spending bill that the House is expected to vote on this week would reduce current funding levels for the agencies it covers if were to pass.

Congress has yet to release information on six of its 12 remaining spending bills, however, while lawmakers face a Jan. 30 deadline to avert a government shutdown.

The Freedom Caucus is also urging Congress to crack down on the recent fraud scandal taking over Minnesota’s social programs by eliminating ‘all programs exposed as rampant with fraud and place punitive measures on states such as Minnesota that have allowed rampant fraud.’

‘Federal prosecutors have estimated that widespread fraud in Minnesota tied to Somali day care centers, COVID-era meal programs, housing, and special needs assistance programs alone could exceed $9 billion,’ the document said. ‘These revelations are startling, but just a drop in the bucket for a federal government that’s estimated to lose between $233 and $521 billion annually to fraud, according to government watchdog agencies.’

The document called for the denaturalization and deportation of ‘anyone who has committed fraud against the American taxpayer,’ specifically naming Minnesota’s Somali community, though doing so would likely require court intervention.

Conservatives’ policy roadmap also called on Congress to ‘freeze all immigration to the U.S., except for (very) temporary tourist visas’ for a temporary amount of time in order to revamp the U.S. immigration system as a whole.

In a section called ‘Stop Rogue, Activist Judges,’ the House Freedom Caucus urged the House to move forward on impeaching U.S. federal Judge James Boasberg ‘such as Judge Deborah Boardman, for reducing the sentence of a man who plotted and took steps to kill a Supreme Court Justice due to her indefensible views about transgenderism.’

An earlier push by conservatives to impeach Boasberg failed to gain traction among the wider House GOP conference, though the chamber passed ‘The No Rogue Rulings Act’ to limit the ability of district judges like Boasberg to issue nationwide injunctions.

The policy roadmap also called to radically shift America’s global priorities by completely removing the U.S. from the United Nations and halting all funding to the international body.

‘The UN is openly hostile to the United States, yet we remain its biggest source of funding. President Trump has significantly reduced wasteful spending on dangerous UN entities like UNRWA, and now Congress should go even further by enacting legislation such as H.R. 1498, the DEFUND Act, to completely withdraw the United States from the United Nations (UN) and end all funding and participation,’ the passage read.

Another section calls for banning stock trading for members of Congress, which Johnson said he would be in favor of last year.

The push to ban stock trading has gained rare bipartisan support among both Republicans and Democrats, but no such bill has yet seen a House floor vote.

Banning Sharia Law in the U.S. is also listed as one of the group’s policy goals, an effort that’s been led by Texas-based Freedom Caucus members like Reps. Chip Roy, R-Texas, and Keith Self, R-Texas, so far this Congress.

While it was founded as a group that was frequently adversarial to Republican leaders for not being conservative enough, the House Freedom Caucus has gradually gained influence within the House GOP during the 119th Congress.

Its chairman, Rep. Andy Harris, R-Md., has frequently stood alongside Johnson in his push for conservative legislative goals.

Johnson notably spoke at the group’s 10th anniversary celebration late last year. Harris and Roy also made a public show of unity alongside House GOP leaders during the recent government shutdown.

Republicans are going into this year, however, grappling with a razor-thin House majority and what’s expected to be a tough November election cycle.

Switzerland announced Monday that it has frozen assets held in the country tied to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his associates following the U.S. capture of the leader in Caracas. 

‘On 5 January 2026, the Federal Council decided to freeze any assets held in Switzerland by Nicolás Maduro and other persons associated with him with immediate effect,’ the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA) said. 

The decision, which will remain in effect for four years, aims to prevent the transfer of assets amid concerns that the funds were acquired illegally through a regime long accused of widespread corruption, according to the agency. The freeze does not apply to members of the current government, and Reuters reported that the order will affect 37 people. 

Should future legal proceedings ‘reveal that the funds were illicitly acquired, Switzerland will endeavour to use them for the benefit of the Venezuelan people,’ the FDFA said.

The council added that the asset freeze builds on existing sanctions against Venezuela, first imposed in 2018 under the Embargo Act, which includes restrictions on economic resources, travel, and specific goods. 

The new measure, enacted under the Foreign Illicit Assets Act (FIAA), now targets prominent individuals who were not covered in previous Swiss sanctions and are perceived as supporting the Venezuelan regime.

According to the FDFA, the decision was not made based on Maduro’s capture nor the legitimacy of his removal but amid concerns that his home country or others could launch legal action later to recover the potentially illegally acquired assets. 

Freezing the assets now acts as a ‘precautionary measure’ meant to preserve them for potential future proceedings, according to the Swiss authorities. 

‘The reasons behind Mr Maduro’s fall from power do not play a decisive role in asset freezes under the FIAA,’ the Federal Council said in a statement. 

‘Nor does the question of whether the fall from power occurred lawfully or in violation of international law. The decisive factor is that a fall from power has occurred and that it is now possible that the country of origin will initiate legal proceedings in the future with regard to illicitly acquired assets.’

Authorities added that the government is monitoring the situation closely and is calling for the peaceful de-escalation of the ‘volatile’ situation.

‘The situation is volatile, and several scenarios are possible in the coming days and weeks,’ the FDFA said. ‘Switzerland is closely monitoring the situation in Venezuela. It has called for de-escalation, restraint and compliance with international law, including the prohibition of the use of force and the principle of respect for territorial integrity. Switzerland has also repeatedly offered its good offices to all sides in order to find a peaceful solution to the situation.’

A select group of lawmakers received their first closed-door briefing on Capitol Hill on Monday following the Trump administration’s weekend military strikes in Venezuela and the capture of President Nicolás Maduro — a meeting that quickly divided along political lines.

The roughly two-hour meeting deep in the bowels of Congress featured top administration officials providing a classified briefing to congressional leaders and the chairs and ranking members of the armed services, intelligence and foreign relations committees. 

None of the Trump officials, who included Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Attorney General Pam Bondi, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair Gen. Dan ‘Raizin’ Caine and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, spoke after the meeting. 

But a handful of lawmakers did, and questions still lingered about what exactly would come next for U.S. involvement in the country, if other similar operations would be carried out across the globe, and who exactly was running Venezuela.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said that there was no expectation that the U.S. would be on the ground, nor would there be any ‘direct involvement in any other way beyond just coercing the interim government to to get that going.’

‘We are not at war,’ Johnson said. ‘We do not have U.S. armed forces in Venezuela, and we are not occupying that country.’

‘This is not a regime change,’ he continued. ‘This is a demand for change of behavior by a regime. The interim government is stood up now, and we are hopeful that they will be able to correct their action.’

House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Brian Mast, R-Fl., echoed Johnson, and reiterated that the operation was a ‘specific law enforcement function that took place that took a significant obstacle out of the way for the Venezuelan people to go chart a new future.’ 

He didn’t expect further military action from the Trump administration in the country, either. 

‘These things are done before breakfast,’ Mast said. ‘They don’t do protracted war operations.’

However, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., countered that the lengthy meeting ‘posed far more questions than it ever answered.’ 

One growing point of contention among lawmakers is just how directly involved the U.S. will be, given that Trump said that the U.S. would govern the country until a proper transition of power happened. 

Schumer said that the plan presented behind closed doors or the U.S. running Venezuela ‘is vague, based on wishful thinking and unsatisfying.’

‘I did not receive any assurances that we would not try to do the same thing in other countries,’ he said. ‘And in conclusion, when the United States engages in this kind of regime change and so called nation building, it always ends up hurting the United States. I left the briefing feeling that it would again.’

Schumer, along with Sens. Tim Kaine, D-Va., Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and Rand Paul, R-Ky., plan to force a vote later in the week on a war powers resolution that, if passed, would require the administration to get congressional approval before taking further military action in Venezuela. 

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said that he was satisfied with the briefing and that ‘it was a very comprehensive discussion.’

Lawmakers will get another bite at the apple later in the week when Trump officials again return to Congress to provide a full briefing to lawmakers on Operation Absolute Resolve. 

Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., and the top-ranking Democrat on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, lauded the military for a ‘brilliant execution’ of the mission, and noted that the region was better off without Maduro.

But, like Schumer, he was still searching for the next step. 

‘The question becomes, as policymakers, what happens the day after,’ Warner said.