Senate Republicans + John Fetterman Just Chose Bibi Netanyahu & Israel Over James Madison & The U.S.

Because Nothin' Says ‘Small Government’ Like Unlimited War Powers

Kentucky Republican Thomas Massie and Señor TACO are now fighting to the death— Massie’s death. Trump’s superPAC is running existential ads against him in his district and Massie is warning Trump and AIPAC that primarying him could backfire, since voters oppose funding Israel’s forever wars. “I think what Israel is doing in Gaza has diminished their standing in the United States, especially among younger people in the district. But I will say this— they still have a tight grip on Congress. So the disparity is growing between what Congress is doing and what the people are thinking. AIPAC is motivated to attack me, largely in the same way the president is motivated to attack me, which is to say they don’t want any outliers, and the attacks and the threats of attacks are meant to keep my colleagues in line, not to change my positions.”

On Friday, the Senate blocked Tim Kaine’s War Powers resolution, every Republican, except Rand Paul, plus crackpot Zionist John Fetterman voting no and every Democrat except Fetterman voting yes. What a disgrace, especially for Republicans who have voted for the same resolution when there was a Democrat in the White House. Had Kaine’s resolution passed, it “would have forced Trump to go to Congress for approval of further military action against Iran, dealing a blow to efforts to rein in his war powers… The measure invoked the War Powers Act, a 1973 law aimed at limiting a president’s power to enter an armed conflict without the consent of Congress. It would have required the White House to notify lawmakers and seek the approval of both the House and Senate before U.S. forces could take further military action against Iran.”

Supporters of the resolution rejected Trump’s contention, embraced by many who opposed the measure, that the limited strike did not constitute war or necessitate a declaration as such.

“What would we have said if Iran or any other country had flown bombers over our country and struck our facilities,” Senator Chris Van Hollen, Democrat of Maryland, said in a floor speech before the vote. “We would rightly call it what it was: an act of war.”

…Republicans balked at the idea of limiting Trump’s authority, and accused Democrats of playing politics, noting that few of them had been vocal opponents when Obama launched strikes against Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East.

“Democrats, of course, rushed to turn this successful strike into a political fight,” Senator John Barrasso, the No. 2 Republican, said on the Senate floor. “National security moves fast. That’s why our Constitution says: ‘Give the commander in chief real authority.’ ”

In urging members to vote the effort down, Barrasso said that consultation with Congress was not needed and would “prevent the president from protecting us in the future.”

The vote was the latest setback for proponents of clawing back congressional war powers. For decades, they have lamented how presidents of both parties have gone around the legislative branch when making decisions about the use of military force.

…A sole Republican, Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, voted in favor of the measure, citing the arguments made by President James Madison in his early writings encouraging the passage of the Constitution.

“Madison wrote in the Federalist Papers that the executive is the branch most prone to war. Therefore, the Constitution, with studied care, vested that power in the legislature,” Paul said earlier this week.

… [I]n a letter sent to Congress this week, Trump cited his authority as commander in chief and the “constitutional authority to conduct United States foreign policy” as the sole legal basis for the attack.

He also said that the operation was undertaken in “collective self-defense of our ally, Israel,” suggesting that even in the exceedingly unlikely event that Kaine’s resolution had passed, cleared Congress and survived a presidential veto, Trump could have circumvented it by arguing that he was taking defensive, not offensive, action.

That is, if you accept the very dubious premise that Israel is the 51st state. Which every Israeli knows it isn’t, even if not every far right Christian Zionist in Arkansas, Texas and Tennessee does. The Senate vote was a masterclass in cowardice and subservience, the Republicans lining up like trained seals behind Trump and AIPAC. These so-called “constitutional conservatives” have no problem shredding the very checks and balances they pretend to worship when it means pleasing their billionaire donors and right-wing foreign lobbyists. They’ll scream “America First” on a Fox News set and then crawl on their knees to do the bidding of the Israel lobby and a megalomaniac president who’s escalating a dangerous conflict and expanding executive war powers. The hypocrisy is staggering: many of these same Republicans supported the War Powers Act when it was aimed at Obama, but now that Trump is back in power, they’re just fine with letting him rain bombs on foreign countries without even a whisper of congressional oversight. Apparently, their principles expire the moment the Dear Leader snaps his fingers. This vote wasn’t about national security; it was about power, money and fear of Trump’s wrath, of AIPAC’s checkbook and of losing their seats to an even more fanatical MAGA clone.

Massie’s defiance may be rare, but he’s right: the gap between the people and their Representatives is growing. The public— especially younger voters— wants accountability, restraint and a foreign policy that doesn’t revolve around endless war in defense of an increasingly extreme right-wing Israeli government. But Congress, bought and paid for by AIPAC and armored in cowardice, just gave Trump carte blanche to drag us deeper into yet another Middle Eastern quagmire. The War Powers vote was a test— and the GOP failed spectacularly, proving once again they don’t serve the American people.