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House Minority Leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-New York) is facing criticism after refusing to rule out supporting a potential request from the Trump administration for tens of billions of dollars in additional military funding for the U.S.-Israel war on Iran.
In an interview with NBC on Sunday, Jeffries didn’t speak out against the war itself, only repeating his critique of the Trump administration’s lack of clear reasoning for the war.
“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it in terms of if the administration makes a request to Congress to consider additional funding,” he said. “But at this particular point in time, the administration has failed to make its case as to the rationale or justification for this war of choice in the Middle East.”
Earlier in the interview, Jeffries denounced the idea of an “endless war,” and even acknowledged that “the American people don’t want to see billions of dollars being spent to bomb Iran in the Middle East.” But, as in previous statements and interviews, he did not commit to blocking funding for more war, even as evidence points to U.S. culpability for horrific atrocities.
“Listen, candidate Trump promised that he was not going to get the country into an endless war, particularly in the Middle East,” Jeffries said. “President Trump has now done the exact opposite and absent him actually providing us with a compelling rationale, he’s gonna have a difficult case to make on Capitol Hill.”
Reports say that the Trump administration is putting together a $50 billion supplemental funding request to back its war in Iran. Several Democrats in the Senate have said that they would consider backing the funding, Politico reported last week. “I need to know the goals and the plan…. I don’t rule anything out,” said ex-CIA officer Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Michigan). “I mean, we’re in it.”
Other Democrats, however, have taken a stand, in sharp contrast to Jeffries’s statements.
“I mean, you lie to us, don’t consult us and then expect us to send more taxpayer money to a war that we shouldn’t have started with no plan and no answers,” said Rep. Pat Ryan (D-New York), adding that a $50 billion request is “outrageous.”
Votes on war powers resolutions in both the Senate and the House failed last week. Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) voted for the respective resolutions in each chamber, but the Democratic leaders have faced condemnation for not doing enough to oppose the war.
Jeffries and Schumer must “explicitly state that they will oppose any bill that provides funding for this unjust, illegal war on Iran and other Israeli and U.S. attacks in the region,” said the Center for American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) in a statement. “No leader of Congress should waffle about whether they would vote for a bill funding this illegal and disastrous war.”
“The head of the nominal opposition party in the House not ruling out further bankrolling Trump’s Iran bloodbath is an objectively pro-war position. His limp process criticisms about Trump ‘not making his case’ mean nothing if he doesn’t oppose more funding,” said media analyst Adam Johnson.
Meanwhile, on Friday, the State Department bypassed Congress to send $152 million worth of military support to Israel, including 12,000 1,000-pound bombs, as it teams up with the U.S. to escalate its aggression against Iran and once again chokes humanitarian efforts in Gaza.
Some Democrats are trying to move to assert Congress’s powers over war despite the lack of movement from Jeffries and Schumer. Semafor reported on Monday that six Senate Democrats are threatening to force repeated votes on War Powers resolutions until Republicans agree to hold public committee hearings on the war, rather than just the closed door briefings that the administration has held so far.
“[Secretary of Defense] Pete Hegseth and [Secretary of State] Marco Rubio must immediately come before Congress for a public hearing and explain why we’re in this war, how it will end, and why they are prioritizing billions of dollars on an open-ended war instead of lowering costs for American families,” the senators said in a statement.
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