Dems Vow To Force Votes On Iran War Powers Next Week

Democrats in the House and Senate pledged Thursday to force votes next week on legislation to restrict President Donald Trump from attacking Iran without congressional approval — and the White House is already mobilizing to try and defeat it.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and his leadership team announced they will compel a vote when lawmakers return next week, followed by Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), who said he will similarly force the Senate to go on the record in the coming days.

The move will mark a pair of high stakes vote for the administration, which has gathered a massive military force in the Middle East in advance of potential strikes, even as U.S. officials conduct talks with Iran over its nuclear ambitions. The White House is already preparing to whip hard against the measure.

While Senate GOP leaders fended off a similar resolution last year, House Republicans are in a much trickier spot. Republican leadership can't afford any more defections as they seek to defeat the House Democratic-led effort. The president’s allies want to avoid a politically embarrassing loss on the House floor as Trump is putting the squeeze on Tehran. At the same time, the GOP could win a reprieve if just a few Democrats oppose the measure.

The sponsors of the war powers legislation, Reps. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), had initially planned to hold a vote this week.

Democratic leadership asked Khanna to hold off for several days so the party could discuss a way forward, given that several Democrats have come out in opposition to Khanna’s effort, according to four people with direct knowledge of the matter who were granted anonymity to discuss sensitive legislation.

Democrats vowed to force a vote "as soon as Congress reconvenes next week" according to a joint statement from Jeffries, Khanna, Minority Whip Katherine Clark (Mass.), Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar (Calif.), House Foreign Affairs ranking member Gregory Meeks (N.Y.), House Armed Services top Democrat Adam Smith (Wash.) and House Intelligence ranking member Jim Himes (Conn.).

Republicans have — so far — expressed few reservations about attacking Iran, and the handful of top GOP lawmakers who’ve been briefed by the administration have said the White House made a compelling argument in favor of military intervention.

But on Thursday, the top Democrats knocked Trump for taking the U.S. to the brink of war without fully explaining it to Congress or the public.

“Undertaking a war of choice in the Middle East, without a full understanding of all the attendant risks to our servicemembers and to escalation, is reckless,” the lawmakers said.

Trump, in his State of the Union address on Tuesday, accused Iran of restarting its nuclear weapons program and said Tehran must renounce its nuclear ambitions as part of a deal.

"We maintain that any such action would be unconstitutional without consultation with and authorization from Congress," they added. "Next week, every Member will have the opportunity to go on the record as to whether they support military action against Iran absent Congressional approval."

Most votes are inherently close in the narrowly divided House — where Democrats lost a tied war powers vote to rebuke Trump on Venezuela in January.

Massie, who has drawn the ire of his party for helping force the release of the Epstein files and other efforts that cross partisan lines, has supported other Democratic efforts to rein in Trump’s war powers. But so far, it's unclear if Republicans beyond Massie will opt to cross Trump on Iran after the GOP closed ranks around the president when he ordered airstrikes against its nuclear sites last year.

House GOP leadership and White House officials are already working to defeat the measure. They’re likely to schedule briefings with House members after Rep. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio) threatened Thursday morning to support the resolution, barring a classified briefing from the administration “defining the mission.” “War requires Congressional authorization,” Davidson said in a post on social media. “There are actions short of war, but no case has been made.”

Democratic and Republican leaders expect the House vote on Wednesday at this point, according to the four people familiar with the situation and three others, pending the final floor schedule getting locked in for next week.

Senior House Democrats still think there are some members of the party who will oppose the Iran resolution, unless Trump carries out strikes or the situation changes dramatically. But the vote will force all lawmakers, including Republicans, on the record.

Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.), for instance, announced last week that he'd oppose the legislation.

In the Senate, Kaine had teamed up with Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul for an attempted rebuke of Trump. But Republicans managed to defeat a similar measure last summer after airstrikes against Iranian nuclear sites, with Paul emerging as the only GOP senator to oppose the administration.

Kaine said the pair will likely call up their resolution next week. On the Senate floor, he called war a with Iran "unnecessary and dangerous" and urged lawmakers to assert itself as the only branch of government that can declare war.

"An optional war at the whim of a president ordering troops here and there around the globe as if they're a palace guard, for no articulate rationale, puts our kids at risk in a completely unacceptable way," Kaine said.