House primed to vote on Iran war powers resolution
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) speaks to members of the media during a news conference on Capitol Hill on March 4, 2026 in Washington, DC. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — As lawmakers debate the legal basis of President Donald Trump’s decision to launch strikes against Iran, the House is primed to vote on a war powers resolution Thursday afternoon that attempts to curtail military action.
The resolution, which only expresses the sentiment of Congress, calls on the president to terminate the use of U.S. armed forces in hostilities against Iran or any part of the Iranian government or military unless a declaration of war or authorization to use military force is enacted.
The measure is non-binding and not subject to the president’s signature or veto.
Nevertheless, passage remains an open question in the closely divided House and could depend on attendance Thursday.
Speaker Mike Johnson argued Wednesday that the United States is “not at war” but only engaged in a “defensive operation” in Iran.
“We’re not at war right now,” Johnson told reporters at the Capitol. “We’re in — four days into a very specific, clear mission and operation.”
Later on Wednesday, Trump contradicted Johnson, repeatedly referring to the conflict in Iran as a “war” hours after Johnson said it wasn’t.
Sitting next to Johnson during a roundtable on energy prices, Trump said “we’re doing very well on — on the war front, to put it mildly.”
Johnson also expressed confidence that Republicans will defeat the resolution, despite some reservations voiced by a couple of conservatives.
“I think passage of a war powers resolution right now would be a terrible, dangerous idea,” Johnson said. “It would empower our enemies. It would kneecap our own forces, and it would take the ability of the U.S. military and the commander in chief away from completing this critical mission to keep everybody safe.”
The resolution’s prospects for passage rests largely on turnout in the House where Republicans hold a slim majority. Nine lawmakers missed votes on Wednesday, including four Republicans and five Democrats — enough truancy to sway the vote on Thursday.
The measure was debated on the House floor on Wednesday, though a vote was postponed until Thursday.
“We have lost our way,” Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna, the bill’s Democratic sponsor, said during debate. “Let us declare with courage and clarity that we reject this illegal and unjust war in Iran. Let us choose moral renewal over further moral decay.”
At least two Republicans — Reps. Thomas Massie, the bill’s Republican sponsor, and Warren Davidson — have announced they will vote in favor of the measure, though a handful of moderate Democrats are expected to offset those defections by opposing the resolution themselves.
On Wednesday, Senate Democrats failed to meet a 51-vote threshold on an alternate Iran war powers resolution sponsored by Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine and Republican Sen. Rand Paul. The resolution failed behind a 47-53 tally.
(WASHINGTON) — Members of Congress are tracking to pass new legislation that would compel Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to provide lawmakers the unedited military video of 11 people being killed in the Caribbean Sea on Sept. 2 after an initial strike on a suspected drug boat left two passengers alive in the water.
A provision tucked into the annual, must-pass Pentagon spending and policy bill says the Defense Department should hand over unedited copies of video to the House and Senate Armed Services committees. If the department does not comply, Hegseth’s travel budget would be slashed by 25% until the relevant videos are turned over, according to the legislation.
The provision could be amended before the bill is voted on in either chamber.
The House is expected to hold a floor vote on the bill this week. The Senate must take it up for a floor vote by the end of the month.
At issue is whether the Sept. 2 military strike on the alleged drug boat amounted to a war crime. Officials have confirmed there were four military strikes against the boat — the first strike killing nine of the 11 people aboard. Some 40 minutes later, a second strike was ordered to kill the remaining two survivors. Two more strikes were ordered to sink the boat, officials say.
Lawmakers who have seen portions of the video of the strikes in a classified briefing last week have described the state of the survivors before being killed by the U.S. military in starkly different terms. Democrats insisted the survivors were helpless and should have been rescued to comply with international laws that call for either sides in a conflict to help combatants who fall overboard or are shipwrecked. Republican Sen. Tom Cotton, however, said the survivors were trying to “flip” the boat “so they could stay in the fight.”
President Donald Trump last week said he is open to releasing the video.
“I don’t know what they have, but whatever they have, we’d certainly release, no problem,” he told reporters in the Oval Office last Wednesday.
Hegseth, however, has not committed to doing so. Speaking at the Reagan National Defense Forum on Saturday, Hegseth said he was concerned that releasing the video could expose sources and methods tied to an ongoing operation. He said the military uses “bespoke capabilities, techniques, procedures” that would have to be protected.
“I’m way more interested in protecting that than anything else. So, we’re viewing the process, and we’ll see,” he said.
Hegseth also has suggested that the people killed in the strike were an imminent threat.
“I was told, ‘Hey, there had to be a reattack, because there were a couple folks who could still be in the fight [with] access to radios.’ There was a link-up point of another potential boat, drugs were still there … I said, ‘Roger, sounds good,'” Hegseth said.
Rep. Adam Smith, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee who was briefed on the video, said there were no radios and called Hegseth’s description “ridiculous.”
“They ought to release the video. If they release the video, then everything that the Republicans are saying will clearly be portrayed to be completely false and people will get a look at it and they will see,” Smith said.
ABC News’ Lauren Peller and Allison Pecorin contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — As of Monday, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his government will be added to the U.S. State Department’s list of the world’s most dangerous terrorist organizations.
Declaring Maduro the head of a foreign terrorist organization — instead of a corrupt dictatorial regime, as the U.S. government has regarded him for years — is an unprecedented move that President Donald Trump insists gives him the authority to strike inside Venezuela, as some outside experts question his rationale.
What happens next is far from clear, in part because Trump hasn’t said what he wants to happen. When asked by a reporter at an Oval Office press conference on Nov. 17 what Maduro could do to placate the U.S., Trump called it a “tricky” question.
But some experts said that forcing Maduro from power without a long-term plan could leave a power vacuum, potentially giving way to violence and chaos.
“Any post-Maduro government will live or die based on the amount of security cooperation the United States is willing to provide,” said Henry Ziemer, an associate fellow with the Americas Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told ABC News.
Here are three things to know about what could happen next:
Trump could use military strikes inside Venezuela and force Maduro to flee.
After weeks of lethal military strikes on suspected drug vessels, the State Department this week told Congress that Maduro wasn’t just a foreign leader but the head of “Cartel de los Soles.”
Experts told ABC News the term, which translates to “Cartel of the Suns,” is a general reference to corrupt Venezuelan officials, including those involved in the drug trade. The Cartel de los Soles has not been listed on the Drug Enforcement Administration’s annual National Drug Threat Assessment or in the United Nation’s World Drug Report.
The designation becomes official on Monday following a seven-day notice period to lawmakers, putting Maduro on the same list as terror networks like al-Qaida and the Houthi rebel group in Yemen. Maduro denies the allegation, instead calling for diplomacy.
Trump suggested the label gives him the authority to launch strikes, although legal experts told ABC News that claim is dubious. According to the Congressional Research Service, the list primarily serves “the purpose of imposing financial sanctions, immigration restrictions, or other penalties in pursuit of law enforcement or national security goals.”
In an interview with the right-wing One America News Network, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth insisted the decision was about giving the president greater military options.
“Nothing’s off the table, but nothing’s automatically on the table,” he said.
Maduro could placate Trump, but there’s no clear path for that.
While labeling Maduro a terrorist leader, Trump also said he’s open to negotiations. But when asked if Maduro could do anything to get Trump to back down, the president wasn’t clear.
“You know, the question’s a little bit tricky,” Trump said Nov. 17 in the Oval Office. “I don’t think it was meant to be tricky. It’s just that, look, he’s done tremendous damage of our country, primarily because of drugs,” and “the release of prisoners into our country has been a disaster.”
Some U.N. officials and regional experts said that Venezuela facilitates and profits off the drug trade, but that drug smuggling routes in the Caribbean are primarily headed for Europe. The majority of drugs coming into the U.S. enter through Mexico and legal ports of entry, they say.
Maduro has denied profiting from the drug trade.
Some independent experts also said Trump’s claim that Venezuela is emptying its prisons and sending people with mental illnesses to the U.S. is not supported by evidence. According to the Migration Policy Institute, some 770,000 Venezuelan immigrants live in the United States — the vast majority arriving after fleeing Maduro’s authoritarian regime and the ongoing economic crisis there.
Trump’s endgame makes more sense when you consider the bigger picture, some conservatives say. The U.S. has long seen Maduro as a source of chaos and instability in the region, but has not been willing to try to force a change.
“I think what we’re doing sends a message to leaders across the hemisphere about the U.S. being very serious about protecting the American people against these narco threats and the weaponization of these illicit activities and criminal activities,” Andres Martinez-Fernandez, senior policy analyst for the Heritage Foundation’s Allison Center for National Security, told ABC News.
“I do think you’re starting to see. … other governments in the region that are more forward-leaning and more aligned with the United States,” he said.
US strikes could trigger chaos inside Venezuela, experts warn.
David Smolansky, who is deputy director of international affairs for the Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, told ABC News that the opposition, which is in exile, is ready to “provide Venezuelans an orderly and democratic transition.”
“What we are focused on is to be ready when the transition begins,” he said, citing the 2024 election of Edmundo Gonzalez with 67% of the vote. “We’ve been ready for a while.”
A new Venezuelan government, though, would inherit serious immediate challenges. Analysts said a new government would need security, help in reforming Venezuela’s armed forces and intelligence support from the U.S.
Zeimer said one major challenge would be convincing people throughout the Venezuelan government that they will be safe without Maduro. And part of their calculation will be how successful a new regime could be.
“Maduro is nothing if not wily and adaptable,” Zeimer said. “He’s been able, time after time, to get the United States to negotiate, and use negotiations, basically as a way to release the pressure and commit to things that he has no plans on following through with and hang on to power.”
“I think he is still definitely trying to do that,” he added. “It is telling that he’s yet to flee.”
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a bill signing in the Oval Office of the White House on February 03, 2026 in Washington, DC. Alex Wong/Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump shared on his social media platform late Thursday night a video that included a racist animation of former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama depicted with the bodies of apes.
After backlash, the White House at about noon Friday said the post had been taken down from the president’s page.
The roughly minutelong video, shared by Trump at 11:44 p.m. ET on Thursday, largely focused on debunked claims about the 2020 election.
At the end of the video, the Obamas’ faces appear abruptly and without explanation for seconds with the song “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” playing over it. The video then ends back on similar imagery of the conspiracy video footage.
The Obamas had no comment when ABC News reached out to their representatives for a response.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, when first asked for comment early Friday, had said, “This is from an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the King of the Jungle and Democrats as characters from the Lion King. Please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public.”
Though later Friday afternoon, a White House official told ABC News that a “staffer erroneously made the post.”
The video reposted by Trump overnight included only imagery of the Obamas.
The meme video referenced by Leavitt was shared in October by the Hardin County Republican Party of Kentucky on Facebook, which led the chairman to issue an apology and deleted the post after swift backlash noting the long history of racist tropes depicting Black people as apes or monkeys — a tool of slave traders and segregationists to dehumanize them.
Trump’s overnight repost was condemned by lawmakers on Capitol Hill, some of whom had called for it to be taken down and for the president to apologize.
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, the first Black leader of a party in Congress, wrote on X: “President Obama and Michelle Obama are brilliant, compassionate and patriotic Americans. They represent the best of this country. Donald Trump is a vile, unhinged and malignant bottom feeder.”
“Every single Republican must immediately denounce Donald Trump’s disgusting bigotry,” Jeffries wrote.
Republican Sen. Tim Scott, the only Black Republican in the Senate and also the head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, posted on X: “Praying it was fake because it’s the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House. The President should remove it.”
Republican Sen. Roger Wicker wrote in a post: “This is totally unacceptable. The president should take it down and apologize.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat, wrote in a post: “Racist. Vile. Abhorrent. This is dangerous and degrades our country — where are Senate Republicans? The President must immediately delete the post and apologize to Barack and Michelle Obama, two great Americans who make Donald Trump look like a small, envious man.”
