Brand New Congress

John,

Last night, in a predictable response to Trump’s unsanctioned assassination of a top Iranian official, two U.S. military bases in Iraq housing American troops, contractors, and allied Iraqi forces were targeted with rocket fire. This is exactly the inevitable escalation of conflict we warned of in our statement calling on Congress to act last Saturday.

In 2017, Congress made this conflict with Iran nearly inevitable when they allowed Trump to retreat from diplomacy with Iran, ripping up the 2015 nuclear deal that stabilized relations with a long-time foe. That same year, Trump’s Twitter rants took us to the brink of war with North Korea. This latest aggression has pushed us closer to the brink of war again.

Despite everything we’ve seen, Congress -- shockingly -- has yet to act. Neither the Democratic leadership of the House nor the Republican stonewallers of the Senate have taken any serious action on the legislation introduced by Ro Khanna and Bernie Sanders to strip Trump of his blank check for war.

But here’s the good news: When Congress didn’t step up, people like you did.

Many of you signed our petition demanding Congress reinforce the War Powers Act and repeal the 2001 AUMF that continues to fuel these conflicts. And hundreds of thousands of Americans have taken to the streets to say “NO WAR WITH IRAN.”

These actions are critical, and we have their attention. The administration is scrambling. After sleeping through the retaliatory attacks on our bases abroad, Trump held a press conference this morning in an attempt to reassure us that things are calming down.

We’ve seen this play before: escalate, de-escalate, and escalate again. If you feel like you’re tethered to the end of a yoyo, you’re not alone.

Trump is taking credit for sprinkling water on a forest fire he started. Congress cannot afford to squander this opportunity to check these ongoing abuses of power by this president or any president.

We must force Congress to respond. This is the time for concrete and sustained action.

We must send a clear message to Trump that we will not be deceived into another war.

We must send a clear message to Congress that we expect representatives to use their seats for good, or lose their seats for good.

We must elect anti-war voices -- like Chris Armitage, Anthony Clark, Cori Bush, Isiah James, Michael Owens, and the rest of our slate -- to Congress.

In these times, we cannot afford passive leadership. We need bold, clear, purposeful and principled leaders in Congress who won’t be bought off by the military-industrial complex.