House Democratic leaders threw their weight behind a vote to force President Donald Trump to make the case for war with Iran on Thursday, after concerns from advocates that they were slow-walking a war powers resolution.
In a joint statement, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and other top Democrats said they would force a vote as soon as Congress reconvenes next week.
The delay in forcing a vote means, however, that Trump or Israel could attack Iran before a vote even happens. No matter the timing, observers expect the war power resolution to fail due to scattered Democratic opposition.
Pro-Israel hard-liners Rep. Josh Gottheimer, D-N.J., and Jared Moskowitz, D-Fla., have both come out against the bill. They have taken the position that Trump should have a free hand — with Moskowitz even deriding the resolution as the “Ayatollah Protection Act.”
In Moskowitz’s case, his position is drawing fire from primary opponent Oliver Larkin, a Democratic Socialists of America member who said Moskowitz’s comments showed “unseriousness” about the looming war.
“He is ultimately willing to cede congressional war powers authority, which is required under the Constitution. He is willing to continue this failed, multiple decades of ceding congressional power to the president, to the executive, with catastrophic results,” Larkin said.
Moskowitz’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
Gottheimer and Moskowitz have taken a different public stance than Democratic leaders, who have generally expressed caution about the prospect of war with Iran.
It was only Thursday, however, that top Democrats including Jeffries gave a full-throated endorsement of a bipartisan war powers resolution from Reps. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., and Thomas Massie, R-Ky.
At a minimum, Democratic leaders could have been more aggressive in pursuing a vote on a possible U.S attack that Trump has floated for weeks, said Erik Sperling, the executive director of the nonprofit group Just Foreign Policy.
“What really counts is having the vote and having it before the war.”
“But what really counts is having the vote and having it before the war. If they’re willing to get behind Khanna–Massie and whip for it, then that’s what the Democratic base and the American people hope to get from them, so that would be very positive,” Sperling said Wednesday.
The exact timing of the House floor on the Khanna–Massie resolution remains unclear, but members are back in their districts until Monday. In the Senate, Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., said Wednesday that he will move to force a floor vote on his resolution “very soon.”
Gottheimer was the first Democrat to oppose the war powers. In a February 20 joint statement with Rep. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., Gottheimer said that Iran posed a “direct threat.”
“We respect and defend Congress’s constitutional role in matters of war. Oversight and debate are absolutely vital. However, this resolution would restrict the flexibility needed to respond to real and evolving threats and risks, signaling weakness at a dangerous moment,” the lawmakers said.
Moskowitz was even more blunt in his statement to the news outlet Jewish Insider last week.
“I am not willing to preemptively tell the supreme leader that he has nothing to worry about, no reason to negotiate because you are totally safe, and that the people of Iran can’t depend on us. They should just rename it the Ayatollah Protection Act because that’s what it does,” he said.
If Gottheimer and Moskowitz were hoping to lead a Democratic stampede, it hasn’t materialized yet. Still, their votes appear likely to block the resolution, since almost all the Republicans in the House are expected to vote against it.
A series of war powers resolutions in the House and Senate aimed at blocking strikes on Iran and Venezuela have failed since Trump took office for a second time, most recently when the president crushed a short GOP insurrection in the Senate over his attack on Venezuela.
Even if one of the measures were to pass, Trump could veto it. He has also argued that the 1973 law creating a process for Congress to pass the resolution is unconstitutional, a position that scholars have dismissed as wrong.
Still, advocates argue that there is still value in putting members of Congress on the record about a matter as weighty as war, if only so that voters in the next elections know where they stand on the issue.
Larkin, Moskowitz’s primary challenger in Florida, said Democrats have lost ground there because voters have been disillusioned by the party’s record on Israel and Gaza.
“The larger trend here, if we continue to nominate these neoconservative establishment Democrats, is that the Democratic Party is going to lose ground,” he said.
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