Centrist Dems Buck Jeffries, Offer Trump 30-Day Clock To Wage Iran Conflict
Six House Democrats are going against House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) and introducing different legislation that would give President Donald Trump 30 days to deal with the situation in Iran before he has to ask Congress for permission to use military force.
Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) is putting forward a war powers resolution that would give Trump “30 days to make the case to Congress [and the] American people for military action in Iran or end the operation.” Trump has said that the operation in Iran is “ahead of schedule” and will probably last four to five weeks.
“Iran is actively firing drones and ballistic missiles at U.S. troops, our embassies, allies, and is targeting civilians across the region,” Gottheimer wrote on X. “This new Democratic War Powers Resolution will uphold Congress’s constitutional authority — while also ensuring the U.S. can defend our troops, embassies, and allies from Iranian aggression. We must protect our troops and allies.”
Democratic lawmakers who support Gottheimer’s resolution are Jimmy Panetta (D-CA), Jared Golden (D-ME), Henry Cuellar (D-TX), Jim Costa (D-CA), and Greg Landsman (D-OH) are all Democrats. The resolution is a break with Jeffries.
The leader of the minority party backs a broad war powers resolution led by Reps. Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Ro Khanna (D-CA). The two’s bill would force Trump to stop the U.S. military from fighting Iran unless Congress votes to allow it.
The Gottheimer resolution stipulates that Trump can’t send ground troops into Iran without congressional authorization, “except for search and rescue missions.” It requires the administration to brief Congress on the “goals, objectives, and timeline of major military action.”
The bill also includes a provision, according to Gottheimer, saying the United States maintains the “right to defend itself, our armed forces, embassies, and allies from Iranian attacks.”
It addresses what Republicans and even Democrats like Landsman saw as deficiencies in the version drafted by Massie and Khanna.
“I don’t support the resolution, which would require us to completely abandon our allies. It calls for the immediate removal of defensive weapons in the region,” Landsman told the Washington Examiner last week. “The Administration returned to the practice of notifying Congress of a strike with Rubio briefing the Gang of 8 last week. The strikes are an attempt to prevent further war, not to start one.”
Despite the concerns, Jeffries and Democratic leadership have pushed for a vote on the Massie-Khanna bill this week.
Jeffries said on Tuesday during a press conference that “there is going to be very strong Democratic support” for the Massie and Khanna measure. When asked by reporters, the minority leader said he hadn’t seen Gottheimer’s alternative proposal.
Jeffries recently came under fire for saying the U.S. strikes on Iran are “not going to end well” for the American people and that more Americans will come home in body bags, comments which did not sit well with many.
“Article 1 of the Constitution explicitly provides Congress with the authority to declare war, period, full stop. And the framers of the Constitution made that decision because they were concerned about kings throughout time getting their people into unnecessary wars, impoverishing them or imperiling their very well-being by sending them off to a foreign conflict. And that’s why the power was given explicitly to the House and to the Senate,” Jeffries said during an interview on CNN.
“And Donald Trump chose intentionally not to come before Congress, which is why we’re going to force this vote on a war powers resolution and make sure that we do everything we can to constrain him at this point in time,” the New York Democrat added.
"""My husband brought his mistress to our daughter’s wedding—and then asked me to give her my seat beside him.
"""My husband brought his mistress to our daughter’s wedding—and then asked me to give her my seat beside him. For a few seconds, I honestly thought I was looking at the wrong table, because my name card had vanished and Melissa’s was sitting exactly where mine had been on every seating chart. She wore a pale blue silk dress, lifted her champagne as if she belonged there, and avoided my eyes when I stopped beside the chair. David stood up, pointed to an empty seat at the next table, and quietly said, “For tonight, why don’t you sit over there?”
I had spent fourteen months helping our daughter, Emily, plan that wedding, from dress fittings and florist meetings to late-night calls over napkins and seating charts. That morning, while I fastened the pearl buttons on her gown, she made me promise I would enjoy the day and not let anything between her father and me touch it. I meant that promise, because whatever was left of my marriage, I would not make my daughter’s wedding the battlefield where it died. But David had apparently made a different plan, and he expected me to cooperate with it in silence.
When I asked what Melissa was doing there, David’s face showed guilt for only a second before he hid it behind irritation. He acted as though I were creating the problem simply by noticing that his mistress was seated at the family table in the place reserved for the bride’s mother. Then Melissa looked at me and said, “Honey, today really isn’t the day to make Emily uncomfortable.” I almost laughed, because the woman who had been sleeping with my husband for nearly a year was now warning me not to embarrass my own daughter.
I could feel people settling into nearby seats, laughing and talking, unaware that my marriage was being quietly rearranged in front of them. David kept his voice low and told me we should not “do this here,” as if the humiliation belonged to me because I refused to disappear politely. I looked at the empty chair he had chosen for me between a cousin and someone from the groom’s side, and I realized something colder than anger. This was not spontaneous; he had thought about where Melissa would sit, and he had assumed I would move.
For twenty-eight years, I had been the woman who adjusted, explained, forgave, and made excuses when David forgot anniversaries, missed dinners, or put work ahead of family. When he became distant, I learned to expect less instead of asking for more, and somewhere along the way he mistook that patience for permission. Even now, part of me considered taking the other chair, smiling for photographs, swallowing the humiliation, and telling myself it was all for Emily. I actually reached for the chair because protecting my daughter still mattered more to me than winning a public fight.
Then I heard one word behind me: “Mom?” Emily was walking toward us in her wedding dress, still glowing from the ceremony, and at first she looked confused rather than angry. Her eyes moved from me, to the empty chair, to Melissa, then back to the family table where she had personally placed me months ago. David quickly stepped in and announced that he had “rearranged a few things,” as if changing the bride’s seating chart without permission were no more serious than moving a centerpiece.
Emily asked why I was not sitting in my seat, and David casually pointed to the neighboring table and said I would be sitting “right there.” Her smile disappeared, and her eyes dropped to the place card in front of Melissa. I watched my daughter’s expression go completely still as she picked up that card and turned it over in her hand. In that instant, I understood the worst part: Emily had not approved this, and David had brought his mistress into our daughter’s wedding believing he could force everyone to accept what he wanted once it was already done.
What Emily did not know was that six months earlier, I had discovered David’s affair through a message that appeared on his phone while he was in the shower. Melissa had written, “I hate pretending I don’t miss you when she’s around,” followed by another message asking whether Friday was still theirs. When I confronted him, David spent eleven minutes calling me paranoid, insecure, dramatic, suspicious, and unfair before I repeated Melissa’s words exactly. The silence that followed ended our marriage long before either of us ever said the word divorce.
We had kept the details quiet because Emily was planning her wedding, and I refused to turn her happiest season into a crisis about us. David told me he was “confused,” that what he had with Melissa was “more complicated than an affair,” and that he needed time before making decisions. I agreed only that Emily’s wedding came first, so we slept in separate rooms, spoke carefully, and tried to appear functional while our marriage quietly collapsed. I believed David understood that one day required restraint, but he had apparently used that silence to prepare something else.
Three weeks before the wedding, he had casually asked whether Emily had finalized the family table and whether every seat had been assigned. At the time, I thought it was harmless conversation, but standing there with Melissa’s card in my daughter’s hand, I finally understood why he had asked. He had been checking whether there would be room, and when there was not, he simply removed me. Emily looked up at her father and asked, very quietly, “Where is Mom’s place card?”—and for the first time that night, David had no easy answer.
…FULL STORY IN THE COMMENT 👇👇👇"" "
