On Tuesday, Congress did something it had never done before: It approved a war powers resolution that rebuked Donald Trump and called on the president to end the war in Iran.

It was a largely symbolic move — the measure had no formal force of law — but as Democratic Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the ranking member on the Senate Armed Services Committee, noted in a statement, “This marks the first time since the enactment of the War Powers Resolution of 1973 that both chambers of Congress have approved a concurrent resolution directing a sitting president to end a military conflict.”

White House officials quickly downplayed the significance of the developments, but Trump clearly took the matter seriously. Not only did the president complain via social media about the “Republican Losers [who] voted with the Dumocrats,” but when he met with GOP senators behind closed doors on Wednesday afternoon, he continued to complain about the vote.

MS NOW reported that Trump specifically went after Pennsylvania Sen. Dave McCormick for having missed the vote, despite the fact that his absence wouldn’t have changed the outcome, and that the senator missed the vote because he was with Trump at a rally in his home state at the time.

Hours after Senate Republicans heard from the president, they took fresh steps to try to appease him. MS NOW’s Jack Fitzpatrick reported:

A procedural vote on an Iran war powers resolution failed at about 11 p.m. on Wednesday, as two Republicans changed their position after yesterday’s confrontation with Trump.

The vote was 50-47, with one member, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., voting present. Paul has voted for every war powers resolution since the Iran war began. Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., voted against the motion along with most other Republicans. Those two members had supported the House-approved concurrent resolution that the Senate adopted on Tuesday.

GOP leaders specifically held the vote, knowing it would fail, in order to make Trump feel better.

With this in mind, shortly before midnight, the president published a new item on his platform, celebrating the move. “Wow!” he wrote. “The Senate just changed its vote on Iran from 50-48 against, to 50-47 for. … This vote puts Iran on notice!”

That wasn’t quite right. The Senate didn’t change its vote, so much as it held two separate votes on related but distinct resolutions.

The measure on Tuesday afternoon, which has not been negated or undone, was historically significant, but it lacked any real practical meaning. The resolution simply expressed the sentiment of Congress. It didn’t even advance to the White House for a presidential signature or veto.

The second vote, held on Wednesday night, actually had teeth. This war powers resolution, championed by Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, would have explicitly directed Trump to “remove the United States Armed Forces from hostilities within or against Iran” unless authorized by Congress. While four GOP senators were willing to support Tuesday’s nonbinding measure, zero Republicans broke ranks on the second such vote.

In other words, some GOP lawmakers were willing to show a little independence when the stakes were low, but when pressed to take a more meaningful step, they lost their nerve and folded — hours after Trump read them the riot act and demanded that they fall in line.

The post Under pressure from Trump on war powers, Republicans fold and try to appease White House appeared first on MS NOW.

Author: Source Author

From MS Now.