WASHINGTON -- Speaker Nancy Pelosi will hold House votes this week to limit President Donald Trump's ability to engage Iran militarily after the surprise U.S. airstrike that killed Gen. Qassem Soleimani. A Senate vote is expected to soon follow.
Ahead of the attack that killed the Iranian general, the president did not consult with congressional leaders. In the aftermath, he refused to make public his justification for the airstrikes.
Facing an outcry, Trump said that his tweets should provide adequate updates to Congress.
Republicans have largely supported Trump's actions, saying that the president was well within his power to take out Iran's architect of proxy operations against Americans in the Middle East. The U.S. considered Soleimani a terrorist.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Monday that there's plenty of time for lawmakers to learn more about the president's reasoning for the attack. He said that Democrats "rushed to blame our own government before even knowing the facts ... rushed to downplay Soleimani's evil while presenting our own president as the villain."
But Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer said Monday, "It is essential for Congress to put a check on this president."
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Pelosi announced the House will vote this week on a resolution from Rep. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., a former CIA and Defense Department official, that would require an end to the action against Iran unless Congress votes to authorize it.
Similar legislation passed the House last year but failed in the Senate. Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., is pushing it again this year and plans to force a vote that could come as soon as next week.
"I think this president doesn't care about Congress," Kaine said. "But the president is deeply concerned and to the point of insecurity about his own personal popularity. And I think a vote by Congress on a matter like this is ultimately a demonstration -- well, what does the American public think? Should we be in another war in the Middle East?"
On Monday, Schumer and Sen. Robert Menendez, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, called on Trump to declassify "in full" his notification to Congress over the weekend justifying the strikes.
Under the War Powers Act, the White House has 48 hours to notify Congress of such actions. Pelosi said it was "highly unusual" for the information to be entirely classified and is demanding a full briefing for Congress.
Congress passed the Authorization for Use of Military Force in 2001 to fight terrorism after the Sept. 11 attacks, and passage of another authorization for the invasion of Iraq in 2002.
But debates have raged on and off Capitol Hill over whether the White House can continue to rely on nearly 20-year old authorizations for its actions abroad.
At the time of their passage, Congress resisted then-President George W. Bush's effort to secure an even broader authorization, clipping language that would have allowed for actions to deter future acts of terrorism against the U.S., according to a 2019 report from the Congressional Research Service.
"Because Congress did not accept this broader authorization language, it can be argued that Congress deliberately chose to limit presidential authority," the report said, adding that the debate about the authorities since then "calls for legislative clarification of such scope."
Texas GOP Sen. John Cornyn on Monday defended Trump, comparing the killing of the Iranian general to President Barack Obama's decision to target Osama bin Laden, even though that raid was more directly tied to the post-2001 war authorizations.
"The president not only has the authority under the Constitution, but the responsibility to defend the nation," Cornyn said. He also said Soleimani's death was not an assassination, as some have suggested.
"This was the president of the United States exercising his lawful authorities," he said.
Information for this article was contributed by Padmananda Rama of The Associated Press.
A Section on 01/07/2020