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Trump has insisted that continued U.S. attacks against Iran do not mean a return to war or long-term action. After the first House vote to halt the war in early June, he posted on social media that it was \u201cunpatriotic\u201d and \u201cmeaningless.\u201d<\/p>\n
A statement of administration policy issued by the White House on Thursday noted that the resolutions don’t have the force of law and encouraged lawmakers to vote against them.<\/p>\n
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\u201cThe President has the Constitutional authority to defend the United States and our citizens from the danger posed by the Iranian regime,\u201d the policy statement said. \u201cThis requires the ability to act decisively to ensure it never obtains a nuclear weapon.\u201d<\/p>\n
Continued American airstrikes are occurring even as diplomatic efforts show little public sign of progress and officials on both sides have dug in on the dispute over the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial waterway for global energy that remains largely closed. The unpopular war threatens further worldwide economic disruption and is sending fuel prices up ahead of midterm U.S. elections this fall.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are in this new escalatory phase where Americans have been killed, and Americans are experiencing the rising costs \u2014 I think it\u2019s important that people be held accountable,\u201d said Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat who led the Senate effort on Thursday. \u201cAnd this is a very unpopular war.\u201d<\/p>\n
Most Republicans vote to cede congressional powers<\/p>\n
As the House debated the resolution Wednesday evening, Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Brian Mast, R-Fla., read out names of 18 service members killed since the war began.<\/p>\n
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\u201cTo belittle this mission is to belittle and demean the very service these members gave their life for,\u201d Mast said. \u201cTheir sacrifice was not meaningless. This operation is bringing reckoning for the hundreds of times Iran has attacked and killed people of the United States of America.\u201d<\/p>\n
The top Democrat on the panel, New York Rep. Gregory Meeks, said that presidents are supposed to make the case to Congress.<\/p>\n
The service members who died made the ultimate sacrifice for \u201can illegal unauthorized war that the American people don\u2019t want,\u201d Meeks said.<\/p>\n
Democrats said they would continue to force Republicans to vote on the issue.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf Donald Trump won\u2019t listen to the people and end this war then Congress must,\u201d said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.<\/p>\n
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Trump is watching Iran votes closely <\/p>\n
Republicans on both sides of the Capitol know that voting against the war can have a political cost, even as many of them have privately questioned the Trump administration\u2019s handling of the conflict.<\/p>\n
In his post after the June House vote, Trump called the four Republicans who voted with Democrats \u201cGRANDSTANDERS!\u201d and said they should be \u201cashamed of themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey would rather have our Country fail than give me another, of many, victories,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
When the Senate passed a war powers resolution on Iran for the first time in June, Trump called the four Republicans who voted for it \u201closers” and then reprimanded them at a Senate GOP luncheon that he attended the next day.<\/p>\n
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Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy, one of the Republicans who had voted with Democrats, said afterward that he had clashed with Trump over the issue. He said he told Trump directly that he needed to give more details to the public about the conflict.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis was supposed to last four weeks. It\u2019s lasted four months,\u201d said Cassidy, who had just lost reelection in a primary after Trump endorsed one of his opponents. \u201cOur original objectives have not been achieved.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump argued back, Cassidy later told reporters, and he told the president that he wouldn\u2019t change his vote until he got a briefing. The White House later relented, giving Cassidy a one-on-one meeting, and the Louisiana Republican changed his vote in a late-night do-over vote before the Senate left for a two-week recess.<\/p>\n
Cassidy voted against the resolution again on Thursday.<\/p>\n
Polling finds Americans disapprove of the war<\/p>\n
Most Americans disapprove of the way Trump is handling the situation with Iran, according to recent polling. A Washington Post\/Ipsos poll conducted in July found that few Americans think the war in Iran has been worth fighting, and most aren\u2019t confident that the U.S. military action in Iran and negotiations to end the war will prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.<\/p>\n
Only about two-thirds of Republicans approve of Trump\u2019s handling of the situation in Iran, according to the poll. Most Republicans, about 6 in 10, think the war has been worth fighting and are confident that the military action and ensuing negotiations will prevent Iran from development nuclear weapons, but a sizable share \u2014 about one-third \u2014 are unconvinced.<\/p>\n
Associated Press writers Steven Sloan and Amelia Thomson DeVeaux contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., leaves without taking any questions from reporters after finishing a series…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":163342,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[145],"tags":[21363,1175,2694,17499,504,12,13615,34,75416,572,573,11482,3007,569,570,4090,3010],"class_list":["post-163341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-chuck-schumer","tag-bill-cassidy","tag-brian-mast","tag-charles-schumer","tag-chris-van-hollen","tag-chuck-schumer","tag-donald-trump","tag-gregory-meeks","tag-iran","tag-iran-congress-war-powers-resolution-vote","tag-package-100024-ap-online","tag-package-100373-mc-complete-state-national","tag-pramila-jayapal","tag-product-30117-ap-washington-dc-state-news-no-weather","tag-product-30598-ap-national-news-report-a-wire","tag-product-31998-ap-online-national-news","tag-product-32510-ap-online-general-election-news","tag-product-46986-ap-online-top-stories"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163341","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=163341"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163341\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/163342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=163341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=163341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=163341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}