The Senate on Wednesday voted down a Democrat-led effort to restrict President Donald Trump from launching further military operations in Iran without congressional approval, the latest failure of such a measure and a sign of the Republican caucus’ continued loyalty to the White House.
One Democrat, Sen. John Fetterman, crossed party lines to defeat the measure, which needed 51 votes to pass the chamber. He announced last week that he would oppose this latest measure.
The Pennsylvania Democrat’s defection was not surprising, as he has largely backed the president and his administration through an increasingly volatile and contentious foreign policy atmosphere largely resulting from Trump’s rhetoric and threats of war. That support endured even through last week, as the president vowed to end Iranian “civilization” in a Truth Social post that horrified many Democrats and even some of Trump’s own supporters.
“A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will. However, now that we have Complete and Total Regime Change, where different, smarter, and less radicalized minds prevail, maybe something revolutionarily wonderful can happen, WHO KNOWS?,” Trump wrote on Truth Social last week.
That Truth Social post drew more than just calls for Congress to restrict the president’s warmaking capabilities; it reignited calls for impeachment and Trump’s removal via the 25th amendment from Democrats and even the likes of former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican. Many of Fetterman’s colleagues, who now describe the Democratic senator’s views as unrecognizable, said the president’s rhetoric was unhinged and evidence of erratic behavior.
“While Trump would rather the American people ignore what they’re seeing with their own eyes, it’s clear that none of this is making America safer, bringing prices down or ending wars like he promised. Americans are sick and tired of being lied to, and Republicans cannot continue to sit by and abdicate their responsibilities as Trump continues to spiral out of control at the expense of our national security,” Sen. Tammy Duckworth, the sponsor of Wednesday’s War Powers resolution, said in a statement.
Fetterman had earlier told Fox News on April 9: “We’re not even 40 days into this and now, now I’m reading that they’re now [going] to force another War Powers vote, and I will vote against that now, because we have to stand [with] our military to allow them to accomplish, you know, the goals of Epic Fury.”
It wasn’t the first time since the war began that the U.S. president directly threatened to attack civilian targets, which would constitute a war crime. Fetterman, during his Fox interview, countered that notion by suggesting that every action the Iranian regime had taken since the war began was, in fact, a “war crime”.
A shaky ceasefire continues to hold between U.S. and Iranian forces, brokered in the hours after Trump’s dire threat towards Iran’s civil populace. The U.S. and Iran sent official delegations, led by Vice President JD Vance, to Islamabad, Pakistan over the weekend for a session of talks aimed at brokering a longer peace agreement. Those talks failed to result in a deal, however, with Vance emerging afterwards and declaring that Iranian officials had declined the U.S.’s final offer.
Subsequent comments from the president and others have confirmed that the sticking point preventing an agreement from being reached was Iran’s nuclear program and the country’s future ambitions of harnessing nuclear energy. The Trump administration has demanded that Iran give up all current and future uranium enrichment capabilities, and surrender any remaining nuclear material. Iran has refused.
The fate of Iran’s nuclear program was a point that the president previously claimed (repeatedly) that Iran had ceded to American negotiators. The White House hasn’t cleared up that disrepancy.
Sen. Rand Paul, a Republican, was the only member of his party to switch sides and vote with Democrats on Wednesday. The final vote was 47-52, with Sen. Jim Justice of West Virginia absent.
His opposition was also unsurprising, given his past criticism of Trump’s military adventurism and his own publicly sour ties with the president. Other Republicans were in lockstep with the White House, even as reports suggest that the party knows the issue is driving a knife into their hopes of holding the House and possibly even the Senate during November’s midterm elections.
An NBC report published Wednesday revealed that a private House Republican groupchat made up of many moderate members of the caucus, including some swing-district Republicans, reacted with exasperation and anger to the threats Trump issued to Iran last week.
“The Iran war is affecting our prices. This is something that needs to be addressed,” one House Republican in a purple district told NBC News. “And when we’re talking about eliminating an entire civilization, or whatever other thing that they’re doing — that’s a lot of time we’re spending putting out fires.”
“The midterms are winnable, but the Republicans need a message and a strategy and right now, the voters don’t see a message or a strategy,” Trump pollster John McLaughlin added to NBC.
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