At least a half-dozen Senate Democrats are threatening to force repetitive votes on war powers resolutions and use other tools of the minority party to gum up the works in the chamber until Republicans schedule public hearings on the Iran war.
The Democrats, led by Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, want Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio to testify publicly to the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees as soon as possible to explain the Trump administration’s rationale for the war and its objectives in Iran.
“The only thing necessary for Donald Trump to be able to continue to violate the Constitution in this matter is for the Senate to roll over and do nothing,” Mr. Booker said. “We are planning to use our powers as individual senators and as an allied group to force this debate and to force, to the best of our ability, the hearings to take place.”
Other Democrats involved include Sens. Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, Tim Kaine of Virginia, Chris Murphy of Connecticut and Adam Schiff of California.
War powers resolutions are privileged, so any senator can file one and force a vote on it after a 15-day waiting period for committees to act.
The Senate already rejected Mr. Kaine’s war powers resolution to prevent further military hostilities against Iran without congressional approval in a 47-53 vote last week that mostly followed party lines.
Democrats say they plan to keep forcing similar votes so long as Republicans refuse to hold public hearings on the war.
“I think the salience of these resolutions is tragically going to increase the longer this drags on – the more the costs are apparent to the American people in every respect: the cost of lives, the cost at the pump, the cost of their food,” Mr. Schiff said.
Ms. Duckworth, a veteran who lost her legs in the war in Iraq, said she did not agree with President George W. Bush’s decision to start that war, but she volunteered to serve because the American people’s representatives in Congress voted to authorize it.
“I fully believe that the military is subservient to the civilians under our Constitution, and I was proud to go,” she said. “The problem we have right now is a president who uses some military men and women as cannon fodder for his own wars of choice, and then hides behind them when we try to get more information.”
Mr. Murphy said Mr. Trump’s rationale for going to war against Iran, even on Monday, has changed multiple times and the American people deserve clear answers.
“The president has announced at 3 p.m. that this war would be short, perhaps over in days, and then within hours, clarified that we’re going to continue to hunt Iranian political leaders without end,” he said. “Clearly, this is the most incoherent, confusing rationale for war that anyone alive today has heard from an administration.”
