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House Progressives Back War Powers Resolution as Trump Ratchets Up Rhetoric Against Iran
"The president does not have the power to unilaterally declare war," asserted Rep. Summer Lee. "Congressional authorization isn't optional."
Jun 17, 2025
Numerous House progressives said Tuesday that they will support legislation that would force President Donald Trump to obtain congressional permission to wage war on Iran, a development that followed Monday's introduction of two Senate measures aimed at stopping Trump from dragging the United States into the widening Israel-Iran war.
Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) on Tuesday introduced legislation affirming the legal requirement under the War Powers Resolution of 1973—also known as the War Powers Act—for the president to notify lawmakers within 48 hours of committing troops to military action and limiting such action to 60 days, with a 30-day withdrawal period, unless Congress declares war or issues an authorization for the use of military force.
"The Constitution does not permit the executive branch to unilaterally commit an act of war against a sovereign nation that hasn't attacked the United States," Massie explained in a statement. "Congress has the sole power to declare war against Iran. The ongoing war between Israel and Iran is not our war. Even if it were, Congress must decide such matters according to our Constitution."
In a post on the social media site X, Massie thanked the resolution's co-sponsors, all of them Democrats: Don Beyer (Va.), Greg Casar (Texas), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.), Lloyd Doggett (Texas), Jesús "Chuy" García (Ill.), Val Hoyle (Ore.), Pramila Jayapal (Wash.), Summer Lee (Pa.), Jim McGovern (Mass.), Ilhan Omar (Minn.), Ayanna Pressley (Mass.), Delia Ramirez (Ill.), Rashida Tlaib (Mich.), and Nydia Velazquez (N.Y.).
More lawmakers—possibly including Republicans—are expected to sign on to the measure.
"The president does not have the power to unilaterally declare war. Congressional authorization isn't optional," Lee said on social media. "When some profit both financially and politically from endless war, the rest of us pay the price. We can't let them lie us into another conflict that will cost innocent lives."
Tlaib asserted that "the American people aren't falling for it again. We were lied to about 'weapons of mass destruction' in Iraq that killed millions [and] forever changed lives."
The progressive political action committee Justice Democrats welcomed Massie's measure: "Here's an opportunity for bipartisanship that doesn't sell out the American people. Every member of Congress should oppose U.S. involvement, funding, weapons, or troops fighting another endless war in the Middle East."
The House proposal follows Monday's introduction of a war powers resolution by Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) and bill by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) that would prevent the Trump administration from using federal funds for a military attack on Iran without congressional approval. It also echoes a 2020 resolution proposed in the then-Democrat-controlled House that would have banned Trump from waging war on Iran without lawmakers' approval.
Explaining her support for Massie's legislation, Omar said, "I support this resolution because the American people do not want another war."
Indeed, an Economist/YouGov poll published Tuesday revealed that only 16% of surveyed voters "think the U.S. should get involved in the conflict between Israel and Iran." Just 10% of respondents who voted for former Vice President Kamala Harris last year and 19% of 2024 Trump voters want the U.S. to wage war on Iran, as do 15% of self-described Democrats, 11% of Independents, and 23% of Republicans.
A separate survey commissioned by Demand Progress and conducted by the Bullfinch Group recently found that 53% of registered voters—including 58% of Democrats, 47% of Independents, and 56% of Republicans—want Trump to "obtain congressional authorization before striking targets in other countries."
"We applaud Rep. Massie and Sen. Kaine for introducing these resolutions to keep us out of yet another war in the Middle East," Demand Progress senior policy adviser Cavan Kharrazian said Tuesday. "It should be in the interest of Republicans and Democrats to uphold the Constitution and prevent Israel from dragging us into a disastrous war with Iran."
"The American people, including a clear majority of Republican voters, believe the president must obtain congressional authorization before initiating strikes against another country," Kharrazian added. "Congress must listen to them and reassert its constitutional war powers authority by passing these resolutions."
Israel claims it attacked Iran to stop it from obtaining nuclear weapons. However, successive U.S. intelligence assessments have concluded for decades—most recently in March—that Iran is not trying to build nukes. On Tuesday, Trump brushed off his own director of national intelligence's findings that Iran is not close to having a nuclear bomb.
As Trump ratcheted up his cryptic threats against Tehran amid ongoing Israeli attacks on Iran and Iranian counterstrikes, anti-war voices including the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) and the peace group CodePink urged restraint and negotiation to avert escalating the Mideast crisis.
NIAC, which is circulating a petition demanding Congress act to avert U.S. intervention, is planning to hold a Tuesday afternoon No War With Iran Action Hour co-hosted with Peace Action and Action Corps.
"Trump continues to renege on his own commitments to diplomacy and an end to wars by perpetuating [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu's war of aggression through his own vocal support and U.S. military equipment and personnel in the region," NIAC said Tuesday. "Israel's assaults on Tehran have killed upwards of 224 Iranians and hospitalized over 1,277 more."
"Happening at the same time, in just the last day alone, Israeli forces have also killed at least 51 Palestinians desperate for aid and food at a World Food Program site in southern Gaza," NIAC noted. "There is no telling how much more devastation for Iran, Israel, and the U.S. an expanded war on Iran would bring."
"President Trump must immediately halt military aid and support for the Israel war on Iran," the group added, "and if he will not, Congress must act within its constitutional authority to save millions of American, Iranian, Israeli, and Palestinian lives."
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Jewish Voices for Palestine and Free Speech Slam House GOP 'Kangaroo Hearing' on Antisemitism
"What we are seeing has nothing to do with keeping Jews safe and everything to do with crushing dissent," said one Barnard College student.
May 07, 2025
Jewish students and academics for Palestinian rights and free speech on Wednesday condemned a congressional hearing in which House Republicans repeatedly conflated opposition to Zionism and Israeli crimes against Palestine with antisemitism, while Democratic lawmakers warned against the weaponization of civil rights to suppress dissent.
The House Education and Workforce Committee held the hearing—titled "Beyond the Ivy League: Stopping the Spread of Antisemitism on American Campuses"—which followed last year's panel on antisemitism, both real and contrived, at Columbia University.
This time, the presidents of Haverford College, DePaul University, and California Polytechnic State University were grilled by lawmakers including committee Chair Tim Walberg (R-Mich.), who said that Israel should deal with Gaza "like Nagasaki and Hiroshima" and was a manager at the Moody Bible Institute, which according to a memo from a group of mostly Jewish Haverford professors, "trains students to convert Jewish people to Christianity."
The memo notes that committee member Rep. Mark Harris (R-N.C.) once said Jews and Muslims will never know "peace in their soul" until they renounce their religions and accept Jesus Christ as their lord and savior. Another committee member, Rep. Mary Miller (R-Ill.), said that Nazi leader Adolf Hitler was "right" about political movements' need to capture youth support, before later apologizing.
Yet these and other Republican lawmakers on the panel pressured the three university presidents to crack down on constitutionally protected speech, while conflating support for Palestine and criticism of Israel with antisemitism.
"Haverford employs faculty members who engage in blatant antisemitism with no apparent consequences," said Walberg. "For example, one professor declared online that Zionism is Nazism."
Asked by Walberg if the phrase "long live the intifada"—an affirmation of Palestinians' legal right to armed resistance against Israeli oppression—is "protected speech at Haverford's campus," college president Wendy Raymond incorrectly said, "That is an antisemitic form of speech."
Walberg also falsely called the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack on Israel "unprovoked" and singled out students and faculty who praised Palestinians who resist Israel—which is facing a genocide case at the International Court of Justice and whose prime minister and former defense minister are fugitives from the International Criminal Court, where they are wanted for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity, including extermination and forced starvation, in Gaza.
DePaul University president Robert Manuel said he was "deeply sorry" for "mistakes" made at the Chicago school, where two Jewish students were brutally attacked last November in what prosecutors have charged as a hate crime, while touting the banning of pro-Palestine groups including Students for Justice in Palestine from campus.
While noting that the Constitution "doesn't protect antisemitic violence, true threats of violence, or certain kinds of speech that may properly be labeled 'harassment,'" Georgetown University Law Center professor and former ACLU national legal director David Cole told the committee that the First Amendment "protects speech many of us find wrongheaded or deeply offensive, including anti-Israel advocacy and even antisemitic advocacy."
Cole accused the committee of making "broad-based charges of antisemitism without any factual predicate."
"To be honest, and with all due respect, the hearings this committee held on this same subject last year are reminiscent not of a fair trial of any sort, but of the kind of hearings the House Committee on Un-American Activities used to hold," Cole contended. "And I think we can all agree that the HUAC hearings were both a big mistake and a major intrusion on the First Amendment rights of Americans."
Cole also took aim at U.S. President Donald Trump's weaponization of antisemitism to threaten and defund colleges and universities that don't crack down on Palestine defenders, stressing that "the government may not threaten funding cuts as a tool to pressure recipients into suppressing such viewpoints."
Dozens of Jewish Haverford students signed an open letter to members of the House Education Committee ahead of Wednesday's hearing stating that "we are all deeply concerned by how you are weaponizing our pain and anguish for your own purposes."
Letter to the Editor: Jewish Haverford Students Reject Congress’ Weaponization of Antisemitism haverfordclerk.com/letter-to-th...
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— Karen Masters ( @karenlmasters.bsky.social) May 7, 2025 at 12:15 PM
"It is clear to us that these hearings will not, and have no desire to, protect us or combat antisemitism," the letter says. "Instead, this congressional hearing weaponizes antisemitism to target freedom of speech on college campuses, silences political dissidents, and attacks students who speak out in solidarity with Palestine. It is a blatant assault on our Black, brown, transgender, queer, noncitizen, and Palestinian peers."
A day before the hearing, the group Jewish Voice for Peace Action (JVPA)—which called the panel a "kangaroo hearing"— brought nine Columbia University and affiliated students to Capitol Hill to meet with members of Congress and "speak about their experiences as Jewish students who have been steadfastly committed to advocating for the safety and freedom of the Palestinian people."
Columbia junior Shay Orentlicher said that "I'm here asking my representatives to call for the release of my friend Mahmoud Khalil and to put real pressure on the Trump regime," referring to the permanent U.S. resident facing deportation after helping to lead pro-Palestine protests at the New York City university.
"I cannot stand to see the Trump administration smear Mahmoud as an antisemite when it could not be further than the truth," Orentlicher added.
Tali Beckwith-Cohen, a Jewish senior at Columbia-affiliated Barnard College, argued: "The Trump regime is using false allegations of antisemitism to disappear our friends, punish student protestors, and dismantle higher education. What we are seeing has nothing to do with keeping Jews safe, and everything to do with crushing dissent."
"Thousands of Jews on campuses across the country have spoken out in solidarity with the people of Gaza and we will not be silent," Beckwith-Cohen vowed.
JVPA political director Beth Miller contended that "the far-right does not care about Jewish safety."
"Trump and his allies in Congress are platforming neo-Nazis and Christian nationalists, all while pretending to care about antisemitism in order to take a hatchet to our communities and most basic freedoms," Miller added. "This is intended to silence the Palestinian rights movement, sow chaos, and sharpen authoritarian tools that will then be used to dismantle civil liberties and democracy itself."
Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.), the ranking member of the House Education Committee, pushed back on Republicans' assertions during Wednesday's hearing, noting that "my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have not held any hearings on other forms of discrimination and hate, such as racism, Title IX gender violations, Islamophobia, homophobia, or the challenges of meeting the needs of students with disabilities."
Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) noted that Trump praised attendees of the deadly 2017 "United the Right" white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia as "very fine people," and that Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. "spread an antisemitic conspiracy theory that Covid was engineered to target white and Black people but spare Jewish people."
Casar asked committee Republicans to condemn these and other antisemitic incidents by raising their hands. None did.
Antisemitism is an assault on all of our values. So why would Republicans cut funding to address hate crimes or protect synagogues? Republicans are not trying to keep Jewish students safe. They're trying to keep the Israeli government safe from any form of criticism.
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— Congressman Greg Casar ( @repcasar.bsky.social) May 7, 2025 at 10:24 AM
"Not a single Republican today has been willing to condemn any of this antisemitism," Casar lamented. "Unfortunately, the party of 'very fine people on both sides' or ' Jewish space lasers' does not give a damn about stopping antisemitism. If my Republican colleagues want to stop the spread of antisemitism, maybe they should stop apologizing for and promoting antisemites."
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) argued that "it is abundantly clear that the cynical work of the majority party on this committee is now being expanded and weaponized by the [Trump] administration seeking to squash dissent."
"Political protest, anti-war protest, pro-Palestinian protest—this is all protected speech under the First Amendment, regardless of citizenship status," Omar said after listing a number of Palestine defenders, including green-card holders, targeted for deportation by the Trump administration.
"Using immigration authorities to target, abduct, and detain noncitizens for their activism is a clear violation of their rights and a hallmark of an authoritarian government," she added.
Asserting that "throughout history, college campuses have been the places where worldviews, politics, cultures meet," Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.) said that "some of the most transformative movements for justice in this country were ignited by students on college campuses."
"We cannot allow them to use efforts to divide our marginalized communities against each other."
"Now, that tradition of protest, academic freedom, and the core principle of free speech is under attack," Lee noted. "Not genuinely in the name of safety and student well-being, but under the guise of control used to suppress the voices of marginalized groups."
Lee said that it's clear that committee Republicans don't care about tackling antisemitism and other forms of bigotry "because they've dismantled and closed regional offices for civil rights... tasked with investigating antisemitism, that they have not spoken out against the Nazi salutes of Elon Musk or the Great Replacement Theory that led to the largest antisemitic massacre in my district."
"They have done nothing about anti-Blackness—I won't hold my breath for a hearing on that," she continued.
"We haven't acknowledged that our safety and our liberation are tied together," Lee added. "We cannot allow them to use efforts to divide our marginalized communities against each other... We are the closest we have ever been—ever been—to losing our civil liberties. We have to fight against it."
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Sanders Says Trump Arrest of Wisconsin Judge Is About One Thing Only: 'Unchecked Power'
"Let's be clear. Trump's arrest of Judge Dugan in Milwaukee has nothing to do with immigration. It has everything to do with his moving this country toward authoritarianism."
Apr 25, 2025
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders led congressional progressives on Friday in condemning the Trump administration's arrest of a county judge in Wisconsin for allegedly helping an undocumented man evade capture by federal immigration agents.
FBI agents arrested 65-year-old Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan, who faces felony charges of obstruction and concealing an individual, whom she is accused of giving refuge in her chambers as federal officers sought to arrest him.
In a statement accusing President Donald Trump of "illegally usurping congressional powers," Sanders (I-Vt.) said: "Let's be clear. Trump's arrest of Judge Dugan in Milwaukee has nothing to do with immigration. It has everything to do with his moving this country toward authoritarianism."
"Trump continues to demonstrate that he does not believe in the Constitution, the separation of powers, or the rule of law."
"He is suing media that he dislikes. He is attacking universities whose policies he disagrees with. He is intimidating major law firms who have opposed him," Sanders continued. "He is ignoring a 9-0 Supreme Court decision to bring Kilmar Abrego García back from El Salvador, where he was illegally sent. He is threatening to impeach judges who rule against him."
"Trump's latest attack on the judiciary and Judge Dugan is about one thing—unchecked power," the senator asserted. "He will attack and undermine any institution that stands in his way. Trump continues to demonstrate that he does not believe in the Constitution, the separation of powers, or the rule of law. He simply wants more and more power for himself."
"It is time for my colleagues in the Republican Party who believe in the Constitution to stand up to his growing authoritarianism," Sanders added.
Other progressive lawmakers also condemned Dugan's arrest, with Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) calling this "a red alert moment" that we "all must rise against."
Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) said on the social media site X: "Judge Dugan's arrest is outrageous and a fear tactic to our independent judiciary. Trump has always thought he was above the law, but now he's enabling his goons to push that limit as far as it can go. His reckless deportations and flaunting of the Constitution will fail."
Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.)
said on social media that "arresting judges is the kind of crackdown you see in a police state."
"This is how dictators take power," Lee warned. "They manufacture crises, undermine our institutions, and erode our checks and balances. If they'll come for one, they'll come for all."
Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) said that "Trump's playbook is simple: punish anyone who stands in his way."
"This ain't law and order—it's a rise of authoritarianism in real time," she added.
The FBI arrested a Wisconsin judge who stood up for due process for immigrants. This is unprecedented. All of us need to stand up and speak out against arresting judges in this country. We are living in dangerous times.
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— Rep. Ro Khanna ( @khanna.house.gov) April 25, 2025 at 11:07 AM
Accusing the Trump administration of a "shocking" willingness to "weaponize federal law enforcement," Rep. Gwen Moore (D-Wis.) contended that the FBI "coming into a community and arresting a judge is a serious matter" that would require a "high legal bar."
Moore added, "I am very alarmed at this increasingly lawless action of the Trump administration," including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which has "been defying courts and acting with disregard for the Constitution."
Advocacy groups including Voces de la Frontera, Milwaukee Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression (MAARPR), and Milwaukee Turners led a Friday afternoon protest against Dugan's arrest outside the Milwaukee County Courthouse.
HAPPENING NOW: A HUGE crowd of protesters have gathered outside a Milwaukee courthouse to support Judge Hannah Dugan after her arrest earlier today
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— Marco Foster ( @marcofoster.bsky.social) April 25, 2025 at 1:46 PM
"To refer to this heinous attack as alarming would be an understatement," MAARPR said in a statement accusing FBI Director Kash Patel of "intentionally being public with his announcement and accusations" and "seeking to bypass Dugan's due process and label her as a criminal before she even has an opportunity to speak up."
"It's no coincidence that Patel and the FBI have acted this way when the agency has a long history of bypassing any due process," the group said. "They are seeking to send a clear message: Either you play along with Trump's agenda, or pay the consequences."
MAARPR continued:
During this period of racist and political repression, we must stand together to denounce today's actions by the FBI. What happened to Dugan is not new. The FBI and other agencies have been emboldened in recent months, snatching people off the streets, separating families, terrorizing communities, breaking doors down of pro-Palestine activists, and contributing to the unjust deportation of immigrants who don't have criminal records. What is new is that they have gone after a judge.
"The conditions we face are scary, but it will be the people united who can put an end to this terror by the FBI, ICE, and all other agencies committing such acts of injustice," the group added. "The people united will stand against Trump and his agenda."
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