House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) previewed the plan in a letter to colleagues. It hinges on a procedural maneuver that Republicans could thwart.
WASHINGTON—House Democrats will try to place guardrails on the Iran war when the floor is briefly open during a two-week break for Easter.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) detailed his intentions in an April 8 letter to colleagues.
During an April 9 session that would normally be a formality, Democrats will seek to advance a War Powers Resolution on Iran through unanimous consent. It’s a maneuver that House Republicans can easily block.
Jeffries’ letter comes one day after President Donald Trump announced he was suspending attacks in Operation Epic Fury, which has pitted Israel and the United States against Iran.
Multiple parties have accused one another of violating the two-week ceasefire. Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, whose country helped mediate the brief interruption in fighting, has called on the combatant nations “to exercise restraint and respect the ceasefire for two weeks.”
In his April 8 letter, Jeffries described the present ceasefire as “woefully insufficient.”
“We have demanded that the House come back into session immediately in order to vote on our resolution to permanently end the war in the Middle East,” he wrote.
A War Powers Resolution would mandate congressional authorization of U.S. involvement in the war.
A previous attempt to constrain the president’s actions failed in the House on March 5.
Almost all Republicans opposed that resolution, which drew the support of all but four Democrats in the lower chamber.
The Senate equivalent was shot down on March 4. That vote also mostly fell along party lines. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) broke with his party to support the measure, while Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) crossed the aisle to oppose it.
Ongoing two-week breaks in the House and Senate have been punctuated by pro-forma sessions. Those brief assemblies of only a few members are held as a formality so the chambers technically remain in session.
On the Senate side, the meetings keep the individual breaks short enough that the president cannot make recess appointments.
The sessions are also how lawmakers avoid adjourning for longer than three days. Under Article I of the Constitution, anything longer would take an agreement between the House and Senate.
