Democrats to force vote in Congress to limit Trump’s war powers against Iran – US politics live

Democrats demand immediate vote in Congress to limit Trump's war on Iran

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Top Democrats demanded over the weekend for an immediate vote in Congress on whether to restrain president Donald Trump’s military action against Iran.

The House and Senate were already expected to hold votes this week but Trump’s decision to launch attacks on Iran has increased the urgency of lawmakers to try to reassert their powers.

It comes as Israel and the US launched fresh waves of intensive attacks across Iran as part of their joint campaign to overthrow the country’s government, which has plunged the Middle East into a new regional conflict with no certain timeline or outcome.

The heated rhetoric from both Washington and Tehran suggests a further escalation in the coming hours and days.

New York representative Gregory W Meeks, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said he would “get on the next plane flying” to vote against the war.

Meanwhile, Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer and House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries both called for urgent action to restrain Trump’s attacks on Iran.

The Democrats’ strategy of forcing votes on war power resolutions have been portrayed as a way for Congress to reclaim its constitutional powers to declare war but have, so far, all failed.

In other developments:

• Donald Trump appeared to link the massive attack he ordered against Iran to his persistent claims about his 2020 election loss in a social media post about allegations that Tehran’s government interfered in the US elections. This is the second military operation of the Trump administration where the president alluded to allegations concerning the 2020 result.

• Donald Trump said on Sunday he was prepared to talk to what was left of the Iranian leadership after the killing of the country’s supreme leader by US-Israeli airstrikes aimed at overthrowing the regime. Trump was speaking as a second day of intense bombing of Iranian cities and Tehran’s missile counterattacks sent tremors across the region and through the global economy.

• Three US service members have been killed in action as part of US military operations against Iran, the US Central Command said in a statement on Sunday. These are the first confirmed deaths since the US began launching strikes against Iran on Saturday.

• The Iranian community in Los Angeles has spoken out about the attack by Israel and the US, with some saying ‘it’s not an invasion, it’s a liberation’.

• The US military reportedly used Claude, Anthropic’s AI model, to inform its attack on Iran despite Trump’s decision, announced hours earlier, to sever all ties with the company and its artificial intelligence tools.

• National Democrats are watching the Texas Senate primary closely to see which style and message resonates – anti-Maga rage or a populist crusade against a “corrupt” political system.

• All unaccompanied immigrant children who are pregnant, many by rape, are being moved to a single facility in Texas in order to avoid providing abortion services in a significant human rights violation, critics say.