Senate falls short of curbing Trump’s Iran war powers

The Senate

WAS H I NGTON» failed on Thursday to overturn President Donald Trump’s veto of a resolution seeking to block him from taking further military action against Iran without explicit approval from Congress, falling short in its latest effort to curtail his unilateral moves on matters of war and peace.

The unsuccessful override attempt, the second in two years aimed at limiting Trump’s war-making powers, was defeated on a 49-44 vote, a margin well below the constitutionally required two-thirds majority that would have been needed to enact the measure over his veto. But the bipartisan support for doing so underscored lawmakers’ deep skepticism about the president’s penchant for defying Congress on military matters and his expansive authority to wage war without consulting a coequal branch of government. Seven Republicans joined Democrats to support the measure.

“Congress needed to stand up in a bipartisan way to make plain that this president should not get into a war with Iran, or any war, without a vote of Congress,” said Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va. and the sponsor of the measure.

Kaine introduced the resolution after the president ordered a strike against Iran’s top security commander, Gen. Qassem Soleimani, a provocation that brought the United States to the brink of war with Iran and unleashed a bitter dispute in Congress. Lawmakers

were furious about the White House’s failure to confer with them before the strike as well as a classified document notifying them of the move that provided no information on future threats or an imminent attack — the justification the president initially cited for the strike.

Trump vetoed the measure Wednesday evening and used his formal veto message to frame the legislation as a personal affront, calling it “a very insulting attack, introduced by Democrats as part of a strategy to win an election on Nov. 3 by dividing the Republican Party.”