Maduro loyalists strip Venezuela's Juan Guaido of immunity

Maduro loyalists stripped Venezuela's Juan Guaid of immunity Tuesday, paving the way for the opposition leader's prosecution and potential arrest for supposedly violating the constitution when he declared himself interim president.

But whether the government of President Nicolas Maduro will take action against the 35-year-old lawmaker remains unclear. Guaid has embarked on an international campaign to topple the president's socialist administration amid deepening social unrest in the country plagued by nearly a month of power outages.

He declared himself Venezuela's interim president in January, and vowed to overthrow Maduro. So far, however, Maduro has avoided jailing the man that the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump and roughly 50 other nations recognize as Venezuela's legitimate leader.

The Trump administration has threatened the Maduro government with a strong response if Guaido is harmed and Florida Senator Marco Rubio who has Trump's ear on Venezuela policy said before the vote that nations recognizing Guaid as his country's legitimate leader should take any attempt by Maduro's government to "abduct" him as a coup.

"And anyone who cooperates with this should be treated as a coup plotter & dealt with accordingly," Rubio said on Twitter.

However, the vote against Guaido was unanimous, and Constituent Assembly president and socialist party boss Diosdado Cabello accused the opposition of naively inviting a foreign invasion and of inciting a civil war.

"They don't care about the deaths," Cabello said. "They don't have the slightest idea ??what the consequences of war are for a country."