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War & Peace
Progressives Warn Democrats: Vote for Iran War Powers Resolution or Face Primary Challenge
"Today every House member will go on record and answer: Do they truly oppose endless wars and stand for the Constitution, or were those just empty campaign slogans?" said one group.
Mar 05, 2026
As the US House prepared to vote Thursday on a war powers resolution aimed at ending President Donald Trump's assault on Iran and Democratic leaders whip votes in support of the measure, progressive organizers ramped up pressure on lawmakers to side with the vast majority of the party's voters and support the resolution—or face consequences in upcoming elections.
Usamah Andrabi, a spokesperson for Justice Democrats, told Axios Wednesday after Senate Republicans—and Democratic Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania—voted down a companion resolution, that "any Democrat that votes against war powers is supporting Trump's war on Iran and deserves to be primaried because all voters across the political spectrum are wholeheartedly against it."
A poll released by Reuters/Ipsos this week found that just 25% of voters support Trump's decision to join Israel in launching airstrikes across Iran, which have so far killed more than 1,000 Iranian civilians. At least six US service members have also died or been killed since the unprovoked assault began over the weekend.
Only 7% of Democratic voters support "Operation Epic Fury," as the administration is calling the attacks, while 74% oppose it. A small majority of Republicans, 55%, said they approved of the White House's war on Iran, which the administration has justified with conflicting reasons—none of them convincing experts who say the attacks are a clear violation of international law.
After warning that "the American people will remember who voted to keep our service members in danger by supporting this dangerous, unnecessary, unpopular war" following the Senate vote on Wednesday, the advocacy group Demand Progress urged Americans to call their representatives in Congress and demand they support the war powers resolution introduced in the House by Reps. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.).
The measure is expected to fail due to the GOP majority; Republicans hold 218 seats in the House while Democrats control 214; Massie and one other Republican, Rep. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio), have indicated support.
Groups are "organizing calls into their districts to make sure that every Democrat votes for" the bipartisan resolution, one House progressive told the outlet.
Organizers are directing particular ire at House Democrats who have a history of staunchly backing Israel and have unveiled a resolution that would allow Trump to continue striking Iran for 30 days.
That resolution was introduced by Reps. Josh Gottheimer (NJ), Jim Costa (Calif.), Henry Cuellar (Texas), Jared Golden (Maine), Greg Landsman (Ohio), and Jimmy Panetta (Calif.) and would authorize the attacks for roughly the same length of time the president has said he believes they'll last, although Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Wednesday that the war could take twice as long and that, ultimately, there would be no timeline placed on the war.
Cavan Kharrazian, a senior policy adviser for Demand Progress, told The Intercept Wednesday that for "any representative that is actually against the war," the resolution introduced by Khanna and Massie is "the vehicle they should be voting for now, and not attempting to give Trump a blank check for 30 days."
“We have already seen in the past four days the death and destruction and escalation with this war. I can’t even imagine what things look like in 30 days," said Kharrazian.
Golden is not seeking reelection this year; the other five co-sponsors of the alternative war powers resolution are up for reelection and facing primaries in the coming months.
Axios asked other lawmakers including Reps. Tom Suozzi (D-NY) and Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) how they plan to vote on Khanna and Massie's resolution, but did not receive clear answers, with Suozzi saying only that he was "going to do the right thing."
Moskowitz told The Hill that he has "decided" how he'll vote but is "not ready to say what my vote is."
Oliver Larkin, a democratic socialist running against Moskowitz in the primary, seized on the congressman's comment.
Britt Jacovich, a spokesperson for the grassroots advocacy group MoveOn, told Axios that the organization's members "have no plans to throw their support behind members of Congress who refused to do their job and stop Trump from expanding his war. All options are on the table to make sure that our members' voices are heard loud and clear."
MoveOn also said Wednesday that any lawmaker who supports a $50 billion supplemental funding package "should expect to hear from our members."
"MoveOn members consider a vote for the supplemental a vote in favor of Donald Trump's war," said the group.
In a private Democratic caucus meeting on Wednesday, Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY), the House Foreign Affairs Committee ranking member, and Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.), made an "emphatic" case for Khanna and Massie's resolution, and House Minority Whip Katherine Clark (D-Mass.) has been leading efforts to whip votes.
One anonymous progressive House Democrat told Axios that a vote against the resolution would be "politically perilous" for any Democrat.
Advocacy groups are "already preparing" to organize primary challenges against Democrats who break ranks or vote to allow Trump to attack Iran for a 30-day window, said the lawmaker.
"If the filing deadline has passed, they'll do it in '28," they told Axios. "It's basically inviting a primary challenge."
Paco Fabian, a spokesperson for Our Revolution, told Axios that "when elected officials... fail to stand with working people demanding peace and accountability, they risk losing the trust of the voters who put them in office."
"And when that trust is broken," he said, "voters often begin looking for leaders who will fight for them."
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GOP Senator and AIPAC Darling Tim Sheehy Accused of Breaking Anti-War Veteran's Arm
“How has Tim Sheehy not yet been arrested for assault and hauled away as the deranged violent thug that we all saw brutalizing a marine veteran in the Senate today?” asked one observer.
Mar 05, 2026
US Sen. Tim Sheehy came under fire Thursday after the former Navy SEAL was involved in an incident in which a Marine Corps veteran and Green Party Senate candidate's arm was fractured after he disrupted a hearing to protest the illegal US-Israeli war on Iran.
In a video posted on social media by CBS News reporter Alan He, Sheehy (R-Mt.) is seen helping Capitol Police officers as they forcefully remove Brian McGinnis—who is wearing Marine dress blues and shouts, “No one wants to fight for Israel!"—from a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on US military readiness.
In an apparent attempt to make it more difficult to remove him, McGinnis inserts his left hand into a door frame and wraps his arm around the door. Sheehy joins officers who are trying to pry McGinnis from the door, and the audible sharp snap of breaking bone is heard as the senator hooks in under his victim's shoulder and pulls hard.
People are heard saying, "His hand! His hand!" and, "A US senator just broke the hand of a Marine!" as Sheehy and the officers struggle to remove McGinnis.
This is psychotic behavior by Sheehy. My goodness
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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) March 4, 2026 at 3:33 PM
Prior to his removal from the Senate chamber, McGinnis had stood up and shouted during the hearing, "America does not want to send its sons and daughters to war for Israel!"
The peace group CodePink posted video of the incident recorded from different angles, including footage of McGinnis being removed from the building.
"Americans citizens don't want to send their sons and daughters to fight in Iran," he says.
On Thursday, McGinnis said on social media that the incident has "only made me more determined."
"Anger is real," added. "So is resolve."
Sheehy—who previously admitted to lying about a self-inflicted gunshot wound which he falsely claimed he suffered during his deployment to Afghanistan—said on X following the incident that "Capitol Police were attempting to remove an unhinged protestor from the Armed Services hearing. He was fighting back. I decided to help out and deescalate the situation."
"This gentleman came to the Capitol looking for a confrontation, and he got one," the senator added. "I hope he gets the help he needs without causing further violence."
X users added a community note to Sheehy's post, stating: "The [senator] describes this as 'deescalation,' but full vid/reporting show he joined officers by physically grabbing the marine's leg then his arm breaks. Reports say the protester was treated for an injury after. The marine did not come to start a confrontation, he protested."
The Capitol Police said McGinnis "got his own arm stuck in a door" and claimed three officers were injured during the incident. The department said McGinnis would be charged with three counts of assault, resisting arrest, an unlawful protest.
Critics, meanwhile, called for Sheehy's arrest and even his resignation from Congress.
"How has Tim Sheehy not yet been arrested for assault and hauled away as the deranged violent thug that we all saw brutalizing a marine veteran in the senate today?" asked New Yorker staff writer Philip Gourevitch on Bluesky.
Numerous observers noted that Sheehy has taken more than $600,000 in campaign contributions from the pro-Israel lobby, including the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Sheehy also visited Israel at the height of the US-backed Gaza genocide—which has left more than 250,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing—during which he recorded a video for AIPAC as "his first act as an elected senator" to promise he would do "everything" for the Israeli military.
US and Israeli forces are now bombing Iran, where more than 1,000 people have been killed and over 5,000 others wounded, according to the Iranian Red Crescent Society. Bombings include so-called "double-tap" strikes meant to kill survivors and first responders. Paramedics and victims' relatives say Saturday's massacre of around 175 children and others at an elementary school in Minab was a double-tap strike.
McGinnis is an Iraq War veteran running for Senate as a Green "because I know capitalist parties will never actually serve working-class people."
In a video posted on social media prior to Wednesday's incident, McGinnis said he was "here in DC trying to speak out" against lawmakers' support for President Donald Trump and fugitive Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's war of choice against Iran.
pic.twitter.com/t6kSX68kLI
— Brian McGinnis (@BrianMcGinnisNC) March 4, 2026
"Anyone who feels disillusioned and betrayed by our government, you are not alone," McGinnis said, alluding to Trump's promise of no new wars. Trump has ordered the bombing of 10 countries—the most of any US president ever—and announced Wednesday that he is deploying troops to Ecuador to help fight drug traffickers.
"Free Palestine," McGinnis says in his video. "Free America."
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'Total Panic' Across Beirut as Israel Issues 'Unprecedented' Mass Evacuation Warning
"They want civil chaos in this country," said one journalist of Israel's military plans in Lebanon.
Mar 05, 2026
The Israeli military on Thursday issued what the Times of Israel described as an "unprecedented" evacuation warning to residents in Beirut's southern suburbs ahead of planned strikes against Hezbollah.
According to the Times of Israel, the warning "covers four major neighborhoods in the southern suburbs" of the Lebanese capital, and represents a marked difference from past evacuation warnings that have typically covered specific locations where Israel intended to launch strikes.
In the warning, Israeli Army spokesman Col. Avichay Adraee told residents of the four neighborhoods to "save your lives and evacuate your homes immediately," and warned that any movement southward toward the Israeli border "may endanger your lives."
Israel has deployed soldiers and conducted airstrikes in Lebanon as its military also joins the US in attacking Iran in an operation they began late last week. The US and Israeli attacks have led to a widening conflict in the region, with the Iran-backed Hezbollah launching missiles at Israel in retaliation.
Maha Yahya, director of the Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center, said in a Thursday social media post that the Israeli warning has caused "total panic across the city," as the area being targeted by Israel is home to "at least a half million people."
Lebansese-Australian journalist Rania Abouzeid similarly described "widespread panic" across Beirut in the wake of the order.
"Traffic is choked, people rushing to leave and head north," Abouzeid wrote. "Drones in the air. WhatsApp messages urging people to crack windows open to avoid shattering from expected blasts."
Ariel Oseran, senior Middle East correspondent for i24News English, posted video on social media showing packed streets filled with cars of people trying to escape the impending Israeli attack.
Residents of Beirut’s southern suburbs seen fleeing shortly after the IDF issued an evacuation warning for the entire area. https://t.co/V34p1mhCW6 pic.twitter.com/LCQfOxO59J
— Ariel Oseran أريئل أوسيران (@ariel_oseran) March 5, 2026
Mohamad Safa, executive director of PVA Patriotic Vision, an international multilateral organization with special consultative status at the United Nations Economic and Social Council, said that the evacuation order was making a dangerous situation on the ground in Lebanon even worse.
"Our teams have been on the ground assisting [internally displaced peoples] since day one," he wrote. "The humanitarian situation in Lebanon is going from bad to worse. Shelters are overcrowded, and there are no apartments available for rent. Emergency relief is insufficient. People are sleeping on the ground without blankets or mattresses in the bitter cold."
Journalist Rania Khalek of BreakThrough News said that Israel "is trying to empty out huge portions of the country," and she speculated that it was being done in a way to maximize chaos on the ground.
"The Israelis are telling Lebanese they are displacing from Shia neighborhoods to take roads to what will inevitably land them in Christian and Sunni areas," she wrote. "They want civil chaos in this country."
Philippe Lazzarini, commissioner-general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) said that his agency "has opened emergency shelters for displaced people—Palestine refugees, Lebanese, and Syrians alike" in the wake of Israel's evacuation warning.
Lazzarini also emphasized that "Lebanon needs peace, not more destruction, displacement, and death."
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'Beyond Evil': Medics Say Iran School Massacre Was Double-Tap Strike
"The second bomb hit," said one paramedic. "Only a small number of those who had taken shelter survived."
Mar 04, 2026
As the US and Israel continued to wage war on Iran Wednesday, paramedics and victims’ relatives said last weekend’s bombing of an elementary in southern Iran was a so-called "double-tap" airstrike—a common tactic used by US, Israeli, and Russian forces by which attackers bomb a target and then follow up with a second strike meant to kill survivors and first responders.
Iranian officials said that around 175 people—most of them young children—were killed when the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ elementary school in Minab was hit Saturday by what they said was a US-Israeli attack
“When the first bomb hit the school, one of the teachers and the principal moved a group of students to the prayer hall to protect them,” said one of two Iranian Red Crescent Society (IRCS) paramedics who spoke to Middle East Eye on condition of anonymity.
“The principal called the parents and told them to come and pick up their children," the paramedic added. "But the second bomb hit that area as well. Only a small number of those who had taken shelter survived... Some parents recognized their children only because of the gold bracelets they were wearing."
The father of a girl killed in the second strike on the facility told Middle East Eye that school officials "asked us to come as quickly as possible and take our daughter home.”
However, when he arrived at the school, "My little girl was completely burned."
“There was nothing left of her," he said. "We could only identify her from her school bag, which she was still holding."
"When I saw her smile after coming home from work, all my pain disappeared," the father added. "Now I don’t know what to do with this pain. I don’t know how to live with this.”
The mother of a boy slain in the strike told NBC News that the school also called her and told her to quickly come pick up her child.
“By the time we arrived, the entire school had collapsed on top of the children,” she said. “People were pulling out children’s arms and legs. People were pulling out severed heads.”
On Wednesday, Middle East Eye published a partial list containing the names and ages of 51 children—26 boys and 25 girls—one infant, and eight women killed in the school strike.
Thousands of mourners thronged the streets of Minab on Tuesday as funerals were held for the strike's victims.
Extraordinary crowds as a mass funeral procession begins in Minab, Iran for the 165 school girls & teachers killed in the US/Israeli school strike on Saturday.Many outcomes of this war are uncertain. But a renewed generation of hatred towards the West is now baked in.(🎥 Alireza Akbari)
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— News Eye (@newseye.bsky.social) March 2, 2026 at 11:57 PM
It is not known whether the school, which is located near an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps compound, was deliberately targeted.
“All that I know is that we’re investigating that. Of course, we never target civilians," said US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who oversees a military whose 21st century wars have killed more than 400,000 noncombatants, according to the Costs of War Project at Brown University's Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Monday that the Pentagon "would be investigating that, if that was our strike."
"Clearly, the United States would not deliberately target a school," Rubio added.
Since the late 20th century, the US has bombed—either deliberately or through inadequate target vetting and identification—schools in countries including Vietnam, Laos, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.
If carried out by the US, Saturday's strike in Minab is likely the deadliest American school bombing since 182 students, staff, and other civilians were massacred in an apparently deliberate secret strike on a school in Laos—the most heavily bombed country ever—during the Vietnam War.
Israel has bombed all levels of schools in Gaza as part of what critics have called a deliberate policy of scholasticide.
North Carolina-based independent journalist Lauren Steiner told Common Dreams Wednesday that the double-tap tactic is "beyond evil."
Other such strikes have been reported during the US-Israeli war on Iran, including the Sunday evening bombing of Niloofar Square in Tehran, where people were celebrating the end of their daily Ramadan fast.
“Suddenly there was the noise and explosion," one survivor, who was enjoying the evening at a café before the bombing, told Drop Site News. "We got up and a few people ran away. We turned around to get our belongings and we saw that blood was spraying everywhere. Someone’s hand had fallen on the floor, a head had fallen on the floor."
“When the second one hit, suddenly everything exploded," he added. "The windows all shattered... One of my friends whom I don’t know that well, he was sitting here... He was severed in half. Half of him was thrown to the side. I put him back together and placed him where he was. A piece of his brain was thrown here on the floor.”
⚡️ Witnesses Describe Horror Scene After “Double-Tap” Bombing Kills Over 20 at Popular Tehran SquareIn Iran, the US & Israel are employing tactics used in Israel’s genocide in Gaza, the “War...Story by Reza Sayah & @mazmhussain.bsky.social for Drop Site Newswww.dropsitenews.com/p/tehran-ira...
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— Drop Site (@dropsitenews.com) March 2, 2026 at 4:20 PM
The IRCS says more than 1,000 Iranians have been killed during four days of US and Israeli bombing, with Iran's retaliatory strikes killing six US service members, 11 Israelis, and a number of people in Gulf states that have come under Iranian bombardment.
"The enemy is exploiting every possible tactic to inflict maximum harm on our people," IRCS spokesperson Mojtaba Khaledi said Tuesday. "We beg the public: Do not rush to bombed areas. The first moments after an explosion are the most dangerous—some munitions are programmed to detonate again, turning rescuers and survivors into additional victims."
Some of the more infamous US double-tap strikes include the April 1999 Grdelica bridge bombing in Yugoslavia, which happened while a passenger train traveling from Belgrade, Serbia to Greece was crossing, killing more than 20 people; the March 2019 drone strike in Deir Ezzor, Syria that killed scores of civilians along with some Islamic State fighters; the April 2025 attack on Ras Isa port in al-Hudaydah, Yemen that massacred 84 civilians; and the bombing last September of a boat allegedly transporting drugs in the Caribbean Sea.
Israeli has carried out many double-tap strikes in Gaza, including last summer's attack on Nasser Hospital that killed more than 20 people including five journalists, and the July 2024 massacre of more than 90 people in a purported "safe zone" in al-Mawasi. Israel is facing a genocide case currently before the International Court of Justice in The Hague, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant are wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity, including murder and forced starvation.
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