WASHINGTON, D.C. – Representative Jamie Raskin (MD-08) released the following statement after President Trump launched a military campaign in Iran without Congressional approval, violating the Constitution and putting the lives of American servicemembers and civilians across the Middle East at risk in an undeclared “regime change” war:

“The Framers provided in our Constitution that Congress must declare any war that our nation enters. They knew that Kings plunged their nations into wars of arrogance, deceit, distraction, plunder and intrigue without regard to the consequences for our soldiers, our people or anyone else. Our Framers insisted that the decision to put the lives of the people at risk be put in the hands of the representatives of the people who must carefully analyze and deliberate the staggering implications of going to war. 

“Desperate to distract from the spectacular failure of his discredited and illegal tariffs, spiraling inflation in groceries and housing, the accelerating and shocking disclosures from the Epstein files and his collapsing poll numbers, the president who campaigned on keeping us out of regime-change ‘forever wars’ in the Middle East, like the savage Iraq and Afghanistan wars, just launched military strikes against Iran without any congressional declaration of war. 

“The Iranian regime is, of course, a vicious theocratic tyranny like the brutal government in Saudi Arabia. The world must hold these antidemocratic and illiberal regimes accountable for their documented human rights violations against their own populations, their oppression of the rights of women and their malicious support for terrorism. We must also restore and reinvigorate the international instruments of nuclear nonproliferation and arms control that have been decimated by the Trump administration’s war on international law and the rules-based international order. 

“To Speaker Johnson I say what every constitutional patriot in America is saying: bring the House back into session immediately so that we can vote on Reps. Thomas Massie (KY-04) and Ro Khanna’s (CA-17) bipartisan War Powers Resolution. Defenders of the Constitution on both sides of the aisle must come together to rein in the reckless and lawless actions of the would-be king. American lives and security depend on our Constitution being respected.”

 

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