A group of Senate Democrats on Monday laid out a plan to potentially force a series of war powers votes unless Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio testify about the U.S. military activity in Iran.
“We’re trying to force the Senate to do its job,” Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., told reporters at a briefing on Monday. “We are going to use every lever that we have to stop business as usual and force the Senate to do what it should have done already.”
Booker was joined by Sens. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., Tim Kaine, D-Va., Chris Murphy, D-Conn., and Adam Schiff, D-Calif., who are part of a group that introduced a series of war powers resolutions at the end of last week intended to block further military action in Iran without congressional approval.
It is an escalation by a group of Democrats hoping to check President Donald Trump, who they say requires congressional approval to continue the war. The Trump administration has not provided a sufficient explanation for the strikes, they argued.
“A president can engage military action without coming to us for two reasons: defense from ongoing or imminent attack. Or Congress already passed an authorization,” Kaine said.
