Republicans bat down bid to handcuff Trump’s war powers as peace deal nears

Senate Republicans narrowly halted another attempt to handcuff President Donald Trump's war authority in Iran as a peace deal begins to take shape.

The latest failed war-powers resolution, this time from Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., comes after Trump signed a memorandum of understanding with the Iranian government that could lead to an end to the war. While Congress is still in the dark on the details of the deal, Republicans still stood behind the president Tuesday.

Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., who has led the Democrats’ war powers efforts for the last several months, argued that while a possible deal was a good thing, it appeared the U.S. and Iran would be headed to an "intermission" in fighting as both sides hammered out the final details of a longer peace deal. 

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"An intermission is a great time to do what we should have done before this war, which is have the consultation with Congress that the Constitution requires," Kaine said. "Why restart a war if we haven't done our job?"

Still, Warnock’s resolution failed despite a previous effort advancing in the Senate last month when a cohort of Senate Republicans joined nearly all Senate Democrats to rebuke the war. That same group, Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, Bill Cassidy, R-La., Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, and Rand Paul, R-Ky., joined all Democrats to vote for the resolution. 

But absences on both sides of the aisle helped the GOP in their effort to give Trump more runway to hammer out a deal to end the war. 

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Senate Foreign Relations Chair James Risch, R-Idaho, argued that Democrats were effectively trying to "help Iran" with Democrats' war powers efforts, and he countered that if the resolution passed, Iran would back out of any forthcoming peace deal.

"If a miracle happened, a miracle happened, and this passed, got through the Senate, got through the House, and the president signed it — if that miracle happened, do you think Iran would sign the deal that has been negotiated? Of course not," Risch said. 

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Meanwhile, Congress is still waiting for details of the deal, which as of Tuesday, had yet to materialize publicly or behind closed doors in the upper chamber. 

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said he still had not been briefed on the matter. When asked if it was normal for Thune and others to request these kinds of briefings from the administration, Thune said, "Since I've been in this job, we haven't had this issue, so I don't know the answer to that."

"My assumption is that it's a function of, at some point, they understand they're going to have to, I think they've intimated as much, that they've got to get this in front of us," he said. "And hopefully, that'll happen sooner rather than later. But you know, obviously it sounds like they're not going public with it until later in the week, so we'll see." 

Some Democrats, on the other hand, are contending that early reports of the deal appear to favor Iran more than the U.S.

Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said, "It’s essentially a surrender." 

"But I think that's the only play we can make at this point. We have to end this war, stop wasting money, stop killing Americans and civilians, stop driving a crisis," Murphy said.
"So, it's a bad deal, but he's not gonna get a better deal. So, we just have to accept the humiliation."