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Senate Republicans again didn’t budge against Senate Democrats’ bid to handcuff President Donald Trump’s war powers in Iran.
Senate Democrats again forced a vote on a war powers resolution to rein in Trump’s military authority in Iran, which Senate Republicans again blocked. It’s also been less than a week since Democrats triggered a war powers resolution in their bid to force the Trump administration to publicly explain the ongoing conflict.
The resolution, this time from Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., was blocked on a largely party-line vote, save for Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who joined all Senate Democrats to advance the measure.
It’s part of a flood-the-zone strategy Senate Democrats are taking to force Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio to testify publicly before the Senate. Earlier this month, Murphy and a cohort of Senate Democrats unveiled their plan to force votes on five war powers resolutions.
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“We’re not going to let the Senate be silent until they make at the very least that commitment,” Murphy said at the time. “I don’t think they can defend this war.”
Whether either Hegseth or Rubio is forced to testify before the Senate Armed Services and Senate Foreign Relations panels, respectively, remains in the air, given that neither committee chair has made the move to request the administration officials appear.
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The latest attempt to cuff Trump’s war powers comes as his strategy in Iran dramatically shifted in a moment of whiplash from the weekend to Monday.
Over the weekend, Trump warned that unless Iran fully reopened the Strait of Hormuz, the U.S. would “hit and obliterate” the nation’s power plants.
But then Trump shifted gears Monday and announced that the U.S. and Iran had been engaged in “very good and productive conversations regarding a complete and total resolution of our hostilities in the Middle East,” which the Iranian government denied.
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Meanwhile, Congress is still awaiting a supplemental funding package from the administration that could be to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars. Some Republicans want to cram that funding, which could be as high as $200 billion, into another reconciliation package.
That vehicle could get busy fast, given that they are also eyeing reconciliation as a means to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and to pass portions of the Safeguarding American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act.
Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., who has led the charge on several war powers resolutions in the last several months, said that “the numbers that they’re talking about are pretty staggering in the sense of what they say about how this is going to go on.”
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And as far as letting up on war powers, Kaine said Democrats were ready to keep going round for round.
“But we’re going to keep forcing war powers resolution votes,” Kaine said. “Have you seen enough? Have you seen enough? Have you seen enough? … We’ll probably have at least one a week, and continue to ask our colleagues, ‘okay, have you seen enough yet?’”
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