Hakeem Jeffries Whipping Votes Against Trump’s So-Far-Unbridled War on Iran
The House is tentatively scheduled to vote on a War Powers Resolution on Thursday.
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries will whip votes in support of the War Powers Resolution this week, multiple Democratic sources told Drop Site News.
Whipping the vote means that Democratic leaders will apply pressure to colleagues to vote in support of the resolution to constrain Trump’s war ambitions, making defections more costly internally. The whip team is run by the party’s number two in the House, Rep. Katherine Clark of Massachusetts.
The decision comes after a group of progressive Democrats urged leadership to break with their recent practice of allowing Democrats freely to back Trump administration policies, which began when 46 Democrats broke ranks to support the Laken Riley Act and set the stage for Trump’s mass deportation.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal, former chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC), told Drop Site that leadership should not allow the WPR to be “a vote of conscience”—a term used to describe a vote that isn’t whipped in the House—because it goes to the core of the powers of Congress. “This is not a vote of conscience, this is a vote about the Constitution and Article 1 responsibilities for members of Congress,” she said.
The House is tentatively scheduled to begin debate on Wednesday and vote on Thursday.
On Saturday, CPC members were briefed privately on Iran by Ben Rhodes, formerly the national security adviser for President Barack Obama, and a host on the popular Pod Save America, according to a CPC source.
The resolution from Democratic Reps. Ro Khanna and Republican Thomas Massie is being publicly opposed by at least four Democrats: Jared Moskowitz of southeastern Florida, Josh Gottheimer of northern New Jersey, Tom Suozzi of Long Island, and Greg Landsman of Cincinnati. Republican Warren Davidson, also of Ohio, however, has signaled he may break ranks and support it.
Moskowitz is facing a primary challenge and Gottheimer may also face one if he bucks his party on the war resolution; the deadline to file as a challenger to him is March 23.
Democratic Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia, a co-author of the parallel War Powers Resolution in the Senate, said that none of the classified intelligence he’s received as a senior member of both the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Senate Armed Services committee has revealed an imminent threat to the United States that would justify the war President Trump started in Iran.
After Secretary of State Marco Rubio briefed lawmakers on Monday, Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) concurred with Kaine, saying there was no evidence that Iran was going to strike the U.S. first. Warner, one of the most pro-Israel Democrats, said that “there was a threat to Israel” and so “we were in uncharted territory.”
Pentagon officials within the Trump administration have, per Reuters, privately corroborated Kaine’s assertion, acknowledging in closed-door briefings with congressional staff that there was no intelligence suggesting Iran planned to attack U.S. forces first.
Nevertheless, Sen. John Fetterman, the Pennsylvania Democrat who has become notorious in Washington for bucking his party on foreign policy, has joined the aforementioned war supporters in the House in also publicly announcing his intention to oppose the War Powers Resolution. He appears to be alone among Democrats in the Senate.
Fetterman baselessly asserted in a Sunday appearance on CNN that Trump exhausted diplomatic efforts to arrive at firm agreements barring Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons, despite Omani Foreign Minister Badr bin Hamad Albusaidi, who was mediating negotiations with Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, suggesting a peace agreement was within reach when the U.S. struck Iran.
“They could have possibly acquired a [nuclear] bomb if we weren’t [to] bomb back in June,” Fetterman said. “So yeah there is a threat. It’s not imminent that could happen right now but it’s one that I think it’s entirely appropriate to deal with it.”
Prominent anti-war progressives in Congress have issued scathing criticisms of the American-Israeli joint operation and both called upon Congress to reconvene and assert its war powers to end Operation Epic Fury.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) called President Trump’s strikes “unlawful” and “unnecessary,” committing to vote “Yes” on the War Powers Resolution, while Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) said these actions constitute an “illegal war of aggression,” emphasizing that the Trump administration has already killed children and risks igniting a catastrophic regional conflict.
Tlaib, the only Palestinian-American member of Congress, also issued a more sweeping condemnation of U.S. foreign policy, rejecting the framing of the war as an effort to usher in democracy, attacking U.S. sanction policy, chiding President Trump for ignoring public opposition to a new war, and saying “you cannot ‘free’ people by killing them.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) told Drop Site on Monday, “Israel should not be directing American war policy. That’s something the American Congress should be doing.” Rubio on Monday claimed that Israel had indeed forced the U.S. to attack. “We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action, we knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces,” said Rubio. That left Trump no choice, he said, but to join Israel in the attack.
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Equality for all on the global stage is not likely, possible, or even achievable, the best we can hope for is the opportunity to push for radical reforms that eventually get pushed back to where there is a balance between the elites and the populace that is acceptable for all parties involved.
Congress will be forced to deploy boots on the ground because like I said in my longer post on a article from yesterday the western financial future has been mischievously tied to the outcome of this war. The Gulf states are our puppets. Western Europe are our puppets and their financial system is tied to this. The energy supply in Europe and in east Asia are tied to the outcome of this war and come hell or highwater Iran will be pummeled. Congresses hand has been forced deviously to vote and to pass the war powers act and we will have to deploy ground troops to keep the gulf puppets in line and to keep those petrodollars flowing back into our financial system. Without that money the dollar collapses. Treasury rates spike and the USA can no longer deficit spend to the high heavens without dramatic consequences. We have a slow if not moderate decrease in the quality of life especially since covid where US debt exploded, but if we are no longer able to extract petrodollars there will be a depression. I hope every reader keeps that in mind when they say we need to leave the region. It won't happen, it cannot happen in the eyes of our elites. It will take a crisis to break this system up. We would need the right people in the right place at the right time. Think of the Progressive Era. Very few reforms were enacted before 1929 and the election of Roosevelt. Sure the FDA and minor reforms happened. Social Security, unemployment, FDIC, unions, all had to forced onto the elite during a crisis. What we need is the right crisis to come along with the right people in place with the right knowledge to enact reforms for the better. Obama was the last one who had that opportunity and it was squandered because he had Larry Summers, Ben Bernanke, Timothy Geithner and the military industrial complex along with the CIA/ Epstein class pushing him forward. We need to spread this info of how the world works to enough people in order to bring the leash tight enough on our elites to where we are able to enact reforms like those that occurred in Germany after the Franco Prussian war or the Great Depression in the United States. The reforms will not come through Congress because they are so crooked they wouldn't know what reform would even look like. It will take a crisis and the right people with the right ideology and so we need to grow this movement and manage the expectations of the reforms that we can actually pass.