Senate Democrats ramp up pressure campaign for public hearings on war with Iran : NPR

Senate Democrats are demanding public hearings with testimony from top Trump administration officials as the White House offers mixed messaging on the war’s central objectives and timeline.

White House officials, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, have held a series of classified briefings with lawmakers since the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran on Feb. 28.

Following a closed-door briefing of the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday morning, Democrats said the classified nature of these briefings hamstrings lawmakers from being transparent with their constituents about key components of the war.

“Here we are well into the second week, and it is still the case that the Trump administration cannot explain the reasons that we entered this war, the goals we’re trying to accomplish, and the methods for doing that,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., upon leaving the briefing.

Administration officials have offered various — and sometimes conflicting — justifications for the war, referencing Iran’s growing ballistic missile program, its naval fleet, its network of terror proxy groups across the Middle East, and its nuclear ambitions.

Overall, congressional Republicans have publicly supported the war. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., told reporters in the Capitol on Tuesday the war could be “generational in terms of its impact.”

“Not only for that region, but for the entire world, because they continued — Iran — to be the largest state sponsor of terrorism in the world. They are on the way to nuclear capability, and they’re holding that entire region hostage and American interests as well,” he said at a weekly press conference. “So I think this was an important mission to accomplish, and hopefully it’ll be accomplished soon.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., also defended the war while speaking with reporters at an annual GOP retreat at Trump’s Doral resort.

“I think that this current operation was by design limited in scope and in mission,” Johnson said. “I think the mission is being achieved, is nearly completed, and the commander in chief himself said in the last 24 hours it will come to a close.”

Despite comments from Trump that the war could be nearing a close, lawmakers are anticipating a request from the White House for more funding. There are no details yet on an exact timeframe or dollar amount.

Warren said she currently would not support a measure to provide supplemental funding for the war, adding she’s heard “no logical estimates about when [the war] will be over.”

Sen. Jacky Rosen, D-Nev., told reporters what she heard in the briefing “is not just concerning, it is disturbing.”

“I’m not sure what the end game is or what their plans are,” she said. “[President Trump has] not shown us any plans for what he wants to do for the day after, let’s put it that way. That’s as much as I can say.”

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has said public hearings are essential since “the story from the administration changes by the hour.”

“When it comes to sending our servicemembers into harm’s way, the American people need to understand why. But right now, they don’t even have a ‘why,'” he said on the Senate floor Tuesday morning. “That needs to change. We need testimony. We need accountability.”

At his first press conference since the beginning of the war on Monday, Trump said the U.S. is “achieving major strides toward completing our military objective.”

“Some people could say that we’re pretty well complete,” he said. “We’ve wiped every single force in Iran out, very completely, most of Iran’s naval powers have been sunk.”

Lawmakers continue to debate war powers and the role of Congress

A day earlier, a group of Senate Democrats shared plans to trigger a series of regular war powers votes until Republicans hold public hearings on the Iran war.

Democrats filed several war powers resolutions last week to require President Trump to withdraw U.S. forces from the war against Iran without congressional authorization. The resolutions are unlikely to pass, but Democrats said it would keep the issue front and center on the Senate floor over the next several weeks. The votes are part of an effort to force Republicans to be on the record with their support for the war.

“We are not going to let business as usual go on in the Senate,” said Sen. Cory Booker D-N.J., a member of the group of Democrats pushing the effort. “It is time for the Senate to do its job, and we are demanding that the Republican leadership of the Senate hold the adequate hearings and oversight, as well as to allow a debate that brings transparency to this onto the Senate floor.”

The group also includes Sens. Tim Kaine, D-Va., Chris Murphy, D-Conn., Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., Tammy Baldwin, D-Wisc., and Adam Schiff, D-Calif.

This comes after both the Senate and the House voted down resolutions curbing Trump’s war powers last week. The votes were mostly along party lines, with some defections on both sides.

Senate Democrats argued those votes and the debates around them weren’t enough to address the ongoing war, its justification and potential off-ramps. They said they want to hear more from Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

“I don’t know how we put this genie back in the bottle,” Murphy said. “I don’t know how we don’t become a nation in which one person, one man, one woman, decides whether the entire country goes to war.”

Senate Democrats declined to share their timeline, and how often they would trigger the votes.

“We hope we don’t have to force these votes because Leader Thune and the chairs of the respective committees do their jobs. And I hope that they’re not just hearing from us about doing that, that they are hearing from the American people, their constituents and their states, that this is their duty,” Baldwin said. “But we intend to use every lever that we can in order to get those hearings.”

Congress awaits a war funding request from the White House

So far, many lawmakers are relying on estimates from think tank groups to estimate how much the war is costing. For example, the Center for Strategic and International Studies estimated the first 100 hours of the Iran will cost American taxpayers $3.7 billion.

On Tuesday, Speaker Johnson told reporters the military was in need of a new infusion of cash even before the Iran war. He argued a partisan legislative vehicle, known as reconciliation, could be used for this funding as part of a larger GOP plan to address fraud and affordability issues.

Reconciliation would allow Republicans to pass the bill with a simple majority in the Senate, rather than the usual 60 votes needed for more legislation, and avoid the need for any support from Democrats.

“Some of these things we have to do on our own, so to speak, as a partisan priority and reconciliation is the vehicle to do that,” Johnson said at a press conference at the ongoing GOP annual retreat.

Republicans used reconciliation to approve their massive tax and spending bill last year. It remains unclear if they can muster enough of their own support to pass such a plan this year under tight margins.

But Thune told reporters that the military is currently well positioned with fundin. But he avoided taking any position on a spending request