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jared golden
Competing Dem War Powers Resolution Would Give Trump a Monthlong Free Pass in Iran
"The American people are firmly against this war and will see straight through this ruse," said one campaigner.
Mar 03, 2026
As the House of Representatives faces mounting pressure to pass Congressmen Ro Khanna and Thomas Massie's war powers resolution to end the US-Israeli assault on Iran, six right-wing Democrats on Tuesday introduced a competing bill that would give President Donald Trump a green light to keep waging war in the Middle East for the next month.
Khanna (D-Calif.) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) have been pushing for their H.Con.Res.38 since shortly before Trump bombed Iranian nuclear facilities last June. Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Saturday attack has ramped up demands for Congress to pass that resolution, along with S.J.Res.59, introduced last year by Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.).
Those resolutions, expected to receive votes this week, were already facing uphill battles in both Republican-controlled chambers, and all-but-certain vetoes if they ever made it to Trump, whose administration claims "Operation Epic Fury" is about preventing a nuclear-armed Iran, while critics around the world accuse him and Netanyahu of engaging in an illegal regime change war.
At least six US service members and hundreds of Iranians are now dead. Despite the rising death toll, the Democrats behind the new proposal—Reps. Jim Costa (Calif.), Henry Cuellar (Texas), Jared Golden (Maine), Josh Gottheimer (NJ), Greg Landsman (Ohio), and Jimmy Panetta (Calif.)—made clear that they oppose a swift end to the conflict.
"There is a concern that the Khanna-Massie war powers resolution currently requires the immediate withdrawal of US forces, even while Iran is actively targeting American troops, assets, embassies, and our allies across the region," they said in a statement. "It is vital that we allow for a safe transition, that protects our service members, embassies, and allies, not a potentially precarious withdrawal."
While proposing a 30-day window for ending the conflict—absent an authorization for the use of military force or a formal declaration of war from Congress—the six Democrats also said that "an open-ended commitment by the administration and the recent implication from the secretary of defense that ground troops may be engaged are both unacceptable."
Politico called the new measure "a sign of how some Democrats are struggling to reconcile their opposition to the Trump administration's military action with a desire to appear hawkish on national security—even in a largely symbolic capacity."
The outlet also noted that when asked about the latest proposal during a Tuesday news conference, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) said that "our focus is on the resolution that will be on the floor this week."
"We'll continue to make the strongest possible case," Jeffries added. "There is going to be very strong Democratic support for the war powers resolution across the ideological spectrum."
Cavan Kharrazian, a senior policy adviser at the grassroots group Demand Progress, was far more critical, declaring that "of course Democrats who raced to applaud Trump's illegal war in Iran, and in one case was pardoned by him, would draft a pro-war war powers resolution meant to sabotage the real war powers resolution receiving a vote this week."
"This Trojan horse resolution attempts to give Trump a free pass to continue waging an unauthorized war in Iran for a whole month—exactly the amount of time that Trump has said he expects the war to last," he warned. "The American people are firmly against this war and will see straight through this ruse."
"Representatives need to ignore this bad-faith distraction," Kharrazian argued, "and vote for the bipartisan Khanna-Massie resolution that will actually stop this illegal war and bring our troops home."
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Federal Agent Tells Maine ICE Observer She's Going in 'Nice Little Database' for 'Domestic Terrorists'
"Ironically these kinds of threats do more to radicalize opposition to ICE," said one observer.
Jan 23, 2026
A masked federal immigration enforcement agent was caught on camera this week telling a legal observer in Maine that she was being put in a database for purported "domestic terrorists."
At the start of a video that spread across social media on Friday, the masked agent appears to be scanning a license plate number before walking toward the woman recording him.
The woman informs the agent that it's legal for her to record and then asks him why he's trying to gather information on her.
"Because we have a nice little database, and now you're considered a domestic terrorist," the agent responds.
At this point the woman starts laughing incredulously at him.
"For videotaping you?!" she asks him. "Are you crazy?!"
ICE agent in Portland, Maine tells legal observer she is a domestic terrorist for peacefully recording him, adds her to "nice little database" pic.twitter.com/6miHpXUdT7
— Nathan Bernard (@nathanTbernard) January 23, 2026
Democrats on the US House Homeland Security Committee were quick to denounce the actions of the agent on the video.
"Big government Republicans have unleashed a secret police state on peaceful American citizens," they wrote in a social media post. "This should shake every American to their core."
Other critics, however, noted that it isn't just Republicans who have been supporting the right-wing police state. Seven US House Democrats, including Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine), voted with the vast majority of Republicans on Thursday to give US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) an additional $10 billion.
"Corporate Democrats are complicit with the full breakdown of our constitutional rights," commented Sunrise Movement.
Greg Krieg, media director at political consulting firm Slingshot Strategies, took particular aim at Golden for shoveling more money to ICE despite documented evidence of agents violating Americans' civil liberties.
"Thank you Jared Golden, special man who understands Maine better than anyone on the planet, for telling us how much people actually like this horseshit," he wrote sarcastically.
Nico Perrino, executive vice president of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, said the agent's behavior crossed a line that should be condemned by Americans of all political persuasions.
"I hope the vast majority of freedom-loving Americans are uncomfortable with the idea," he wrote, "that masked police are now telling people engaged in First Amendment-protected activity that they are 'domestic terrorists' who will be added to a secret government database."
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, predicted that federal agents' aggressive taunts against legal observers would backfire politically against the Trump administration.
"Ironically these kinds of threats do more to radicalize opposition to ICE tactics than they do to stop people from recording ICE," he observed.
Isaac Saul, founder of Tangle News, also thought the optics of the Maine video were terrible for Republicans.
"It's hard to overstate how unpopular this crap is with normie Americans," Saul wrote. "On top of the gross civil rights violations, that Trump is letting these goons loose in Maine, a state where Democrats could actually pick up a Senate seat in nine months, it's political malpractice."
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11 House Democrats Help GOP Pass 'Disastrous' Pro-Polluter Permitting Bill
"The SPEED Act protects corporate interests, not the public, and it should be rejected by any senator who claims to stand with the people," said one campaigner.
Dec 18, 2025
Eleven Democrats on Thursday voted with nearly all Republicans in the US House of Representatives to advance a permitting reform bill that climate and frontline organizations warn is a "disastrous" attack on a landmark environmental protection law.
Democratic Reps. Jim Costa (Calif.), Henry Cuellar (Texas), Don Davis (NC), Chris Deluzio (Pa.), Lizzie Fletcher (Texas), Jared Golden (Maine), Vicente Gonzalez (Texas), Adam Gray (Calif.), John Mannion (NY), Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (Wash.), and Marc Veasey (Texas) voted with all Republicans present expect Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (Pa.) to pass the bill.
The Standardizing Permitting and Expediting Economic Development (SPEED) Act, spearheaded by Golden and House Committee on Natural Resources Chair Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.), would amend the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which "is often called the 'Magna Carta' of federal environmental laws."
In a statement after the vote, Food & Water Watch legal director Tarah Heinzen said that "for decades, NEPA has ensured logical decision-making and community involvement when the federal government considers projects that could harm people and the environment. The SPEED Act would eviscerate NEPA's protections."
The group detailed key ways in which the SPEED Act attacks NEPA:
- Drastically limiting NEPA's scope of review: Removes many actions from NEPA review altogether, potentially allowing factory farms and coal plants to build and expand without any environmental review or public input;
- Limiting agency accountability: Creates unreasonably short deadlines to challenge inadequate reviews, and limits courts’ ability to stop unlawful projects; and
- Putting polluter profits above science and the environment: Turns NEPA on its head by requiring agencies to prioritize corporate interests over the public interest and limiting their ability to consider the best science.
"Today's absurd House vote is yet another handout to corporate polluters at the expense of everyday people who have to live with the real-world impacts of toxic pollution from dirty industries like fossil fuels and factory farms," Heinzen argued. "This nonsense must be dead on arrival in the Senate."
Other campaigners also looked to the upper chamber after the vote. Erik Schlenker-Goodrich, executive director of the Western Environmental Law Center, said that "renewable energy and climate advocates in the Senate must hold the line against the SPEED Act's evisceration of our bedrock environmental and community protection law."
Allie Rosenbluth, Oil Change International's US campaign manager, stressed that "our senators must stand up against the SPEED Act's attempts to undermine democratic decision-making, pollute our communities, and threaten our collective future."
For a Better Bayou's James Hiatt similarly said that "the SPEED Act protects corporate interests, not the public, and it should be rejected by any senator who claims to stand with the people."
Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright, co-coordinator of Black Alliance for Peace's Climate, Environment, and Militarism Initiative, warned that the bill "represents yet another assault on the health of frontline, Black, Brown, Indigenous, and poor white communities that have been designated as sacrifice zones by big polluters who bribe lawmakers with big money to continue a culture of extract, slash, burn, and emit at the expense of oppressed and marginalized peoples."
"Rather than speeding up the approval of dirty projects, Congress should increase funding for federal agencies and grassroots organizations accountable to frontline communities to carry out legally defensible and accurate environmental analyses," he continued, pointing to the Environmental Justice for All Act, previously led by the late Democratic Congressmen Raúl Grijalva (Ariz.) and Donald McEachin (Va.).
Mar Zepeda Salazar, legislative director at Climate Justice Alliance, also pointed to that alternative: "The SPEED Act fast-tracks harmful fossil fuel and polluting projects, not the community-led clean energy solutions families and Indigenous peoples across the country have long called for. Instead of pushing the SPEED Act—a bill that would strip away what few legal protections communities still have, weaken safeguards for clean air, land, and water near new industrial development, and sidestep meaningful consultation with federally recognized tribal nations—Congress should be advancing real, community-driven permitting reform."
"Examples include the Environmental Justice for All Act, which lays out meaningful public engagement, strong public health protections, respect for tribal sovereignty and consultation obligations, and serious investments in agencies and staff," she said.
Representatives from the Institute for Policy Studies, Sacred Places Institute for Indigenous Peoples, and Unitarian Universalists for Social Justice also spoke out against what David Watkins, director of government affairs for the Climate and Energy Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, condemned as "a sizable holiday gift basket for Big Oil and Gas." He, too, urged the Senate to "reject this retrograde legislation and stand up to the deep-pocketed, polluting industries lobbying for it."
Lauren Pagel, policy director at Earthworks, pointed out that passing the SPEED Act wasn't the only way in which the House on Thursday "chose corporate interests over people, Indigenous Peoples' rights, and our environment." It also passed the Mining Regulatory Clarity Act, which "will remove already-scarce protections for natural resources and sacred cultural sites in US mining law."
"Today's House votes are a step backwards for our nation, but we continue to stand firm for the rights of the people and places on the frontlines of oil, gas, and mining," Pagel said. "Communities and ecosystems shouldn't pay the price while corporations rush to profit off extraction—with a helping hand from our elected officials."
Along with those two pieces of legislation, Public Citizen pointed to the House's approval of the Power Plant Reliability Act and Reliable Power Act earlier this week. David Arkush, director of the consumer advocacy group's Climate Program, said that the bills advancing through Congress "under the guise of 'bipartisan permitting reform' are blatant handouts to the fossil fuel and mining industries."
"We need real action to lower energy bills for American families and combat the climate crisis," Arkush asserted, calling on congressional Republicans and President Donald Trump "to fast-track a buildout of renewable energy, storage, and transmission—an approach that would not just make energy more affordable and sustainable, but create US jobs and bolster competitiveness with China, which is rapidly outpacing the US on the energy technologies of the future."
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