Six House Democrats are going against House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) and introducing different legislation that would give President Donald Trump 30 days to deal with the situation in Iran before he has to ask Congress for permission to use military force.
Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) is putting forward a war powers resolution that would give Trump “30 days to make the case to Congress [and the] American people for military action in Iran or end the operation.” Trump has said that the operation in Iran is “ahead of schedule” and will probably last four to five weeks.
“Iran is actively firing drones and ballistic missiles at U.S. troops, our embassies, allies, and is targeting civilians across the region,” Gottheimer wrote on X. “This new Democratic War Powers Resolution will uphold Congress’s constitutional authority — while also ensuring the U.S. can defend our troops, embassies, and allies from Iranian aggression. We must protect our troops and allies.”
Democratic lawmakers who support Gottheimer’s resolution are Jimmy Panetta (D-CA), Jared Golden (D-ME), Henry Cuellar (D-TX), Jim Costa (D-CA), and Greg Landsman (D-OH) are all Democrats. The resolution is a break with Jeffries.
The leader of the minority party backs a broad war powers resolution led by Reps. Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Ro Khanna (D-CA). The two’s bill would force Trump to stop the U.S. military from fighting Iran unless Congress votes to allow it.
The Gottheimer resolution stipulates that Trump can’t send ground troops into Iran without congressional authorization, “except for search and rescue missions.” It requires the administration to brief Congress on the “goals, objectives, and timeline of major military action.”
The bill also includes a provision, according to Gottheimer, saying the United States maintains the “right to defend itself, our armed forces, embassies, and allies from Iranian attacks.”
It addresses what Republicans and even Democrats like Landsman saw as deficiencies in the version drafted by Massie and Khanna.
“I don’t support the resolution, which would require us to completely abandon our allies. It calls for the immediate removal of defensive weapons in the region,” Landsman told the Washington Examiner last week. “The Administration returned to the practice of notifying Congress of a strike with Rubio briefing the Gang of 8 last week. The strikes are an attempt to prevent further war, not to start one.”
Despite the concerns, Jeffries and Democratic leadership have pushed for a vote on the Massie-Khanna bill this week.
Jeffries said on Tuesday during a press conference that “there is going to be very strong Democratic support” for the Massie and Khanna measure. When asked by reporters, the minority leader said he hadn’t seen Gottheimer’s alternative proposal.
Jeffries recently came under fire for saying the U.S. strikes on Iran are “not going to end well” for the American people and that more Americans will come home in body bags, comments which did not sit well with many.
“Article 1 of the Constitution explicitly provides Congress with the authority to declare war, period, full stop. And the framers of the Constitution made that decision because they were concerned about kings throughout time getting their people into unnecessary wars, impoverishing them or imperiling their very well-being by sending them off to a foreign conflict. And that’s why the power was given explicitly to the House and to the Senate,” Jeffries said during an interview on CNN.
“And Donald Trump chose intentionally not to come before Congress, which is why we’re going to force this vote on a war powers resolution and make sure that we do everything we can to constrain him at this point in time,” the New York Democrat added.