Democrats threaten to grind Senate to a halt to force public Iran hearings

Senate Democrats are preparing a series of war powers votes aimed at curbing President Donald Trump's authority to continue military operations against Iran — and forcing the administration to publicly defend its actions.

Several Senate Democrats filed war powers resolutions last week meant to handcuff Trump and his continued conflict in the Middle East. It’s a power play by the group, who say the administration has not shown enough evidence that the U.S. should have struck Iran in the first place, much less continue fighting in the region.

Sens. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., Cory Booker, D-N.J., Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., collectively filed five war powers resolutions last week, and they’re joined by Sens. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., and Tim Kaine, D-Va. Kaine has filed resolution after resolution to curb Trump’s war authority since he took office for his second term.

SCHUMER ONCE BLOCKED TRUMP'S MOVE TO FILL THE NATION'S OIL RESERVES, NOW HE WANTS THEM OPENED

Those resolutions, barring an official slate of hearings with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, could hit the Senate next week and grind down floor time.

"This Congress should be focused on the biggest military action since the Afghanistan war, and we're not even holding hearings on that," Booker told Fox News Digital. 

Murphy said that the resolutions could hit the Senate floor as soon as next week, and warned that if hearings are set in motion, Democrats would be able to "call up a vote every day on war powers and force at least a short debate and vote every day."

"There's no excuse to hide what the administration is doing from the public," Murphy said. 

STATE DEPARTMENT DEFENDS 'PROACTIVE' EVACUATION EFFORTS AGAINST DEMS' CLAIMS OF DIPLOMATIC CHAOS

While the group wouldn’t reveal exactly what their gridlock-inducing floor strategy would look like, they contended that the chairs of the Senate Armed Services and Senate Foreign Relations committees had already requested that Rubio and Hegseth testify.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair Jim Risch, R-Idaho, wouldn’t say whether he had requested Rubio to appear before his panel but blamed Senate Democrats for helping the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.

"You'll notice the Democrats are the only entity on this planet who are helping the IRGC," Risch told Fox News Digital, referring to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

OPERATION EPIC FURY SURVIVES SENATE CHALLENGE AS REPUBLICANS CLOSE RANKS BEHIND TRUMP

The group argued that Rubio and Hegseth should make the case for the war in Iran to the public and that closed-door, classified briefings on the matter weren’t enough to convince them that the war was necessary.

"I was absolutely not convinced. In fact, nothing was offered to show me that we were under imminent attack," Baldwin said. "That we were under imminent attack, or that it was reasonable to believe that we were at risk — and that's what would trigger the president's authority to use military force without coming to Congress first."

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., acknowledged that Democrats’ strategy would eat away at floor time but cautioned that "we’ll see how the next few days in the conflict go."

"I'm sure there'll be some decisions made around that, but maybe that'll affect whether or not they try to trigger all those," Thune said.

Thune said that "there always are" hearings and noted that the Senate Armed Services Committee would be holding hearings soon on the annual National Defense Authorization Act.

"So they're going to have all those folks coming through on a fairly routine basis anyway, and I'm sure this will be a subject of discussion," Thune said.