Members of Congress are criticizing the Trump administration and demanding answers after a proposed briefing on Israel and Iran scheduled for Tuesday was postponed without an explanation.
The briefing, which is to feature U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, has been rescheduled for Thursday.
The Senate’s top Democrat, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), said that is insufficient.
“Congress is entitled, as representatives of the American people, to hear from the administration about matters of national intelligence and national security,” Schumer said on the Senate floor on Wednesday.
“Refusing Congress like this would be egregious, troubling and a violation. It would make Americans wonder, ‘Why would Donald Trump prefer to send two talking heads to meet with Congress instead of intelligence analysts and policy makers?’” Schumer said.
“Maybe Donald Trump doesn’t want Congress or even America to know the truth about what’s going on,” the Jewish senator added.
Schumer had called the initial postponement “outrageous, evasive and derelict” in an earlier floor speech on Tuesday. He also suggested that reports that the U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear sites had significantly less impact than the administration claimed may have led to the briefing’s postponement.
U.S. President Donald Trump claimed that American strikes set Iran’s nuclear program back “basically decades, because I don’t think they will ever do it again.” An Israel Atomic Energy Commission report seemed to confirm Trump’s claim, stating that the strikes rendered Iran’s Fordow enrichment plant “inoperable.”
However, early U.S. intelligence findings reported by news outlets, including CNN, The New York Times and The Washington Post, said American strikes on the nuclear facilities only set Iranian progress back by months.
Others have questioned the intelligence findings. “The assessment in question, from the Defense Intelligence Agency, was made with ‘low confidence,’” Seth Mandel reported in Commentary magazine, “which is code for ‘we don’t really know what happened so we’re going to guess, kind of.’”
“What is going to happen is that any Iranian attempts to get back in the blocked facilities will be stopped in their tracks by the Israel Air Force. And Israel’s agents within Iran will likely have more, not less, success from here on out because the chain of command is decimated,” Mandel wrote. “Also decimated? The team of scientists working on the program. Ayatollah Khamenei cannot simply ChatGPT his way to a bomb even if he’s got a few canisters of uranium in his wine cellar.”
‘Political games’
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said he didn’t know why the original briefing was postponed.
“No reason was given to us other than perhaps the convenience of the administration,” the Jewish senator told CNN. Other Democrats joined Schumer and Blumenthal in condemning the Trump administration.
“The American people deserve to know the facts and the truth,” said House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.).
“Is it, in fact, the case that Iran’s nuclear program has been completely and totally obliterated?” Jeffries said. “What are they running away from? Why was this briefing, which is already days late, postponed? Why is the Trump administration playing political games on questions of war and peace that relate directly to the safety and security of the American people?”
“The Constitution is not a suggestion. Congress is not here for show,” said House Minority Whip Katherine Clark (D-Mass.). “Our democratic institutions exist because there are no kings in our country. No one person has the right to declare war. That power belongs to the people through their representatives.”
“And yet,” she added, “days after this unauthorized, unconstitutional military strike, the American people still don’t know what happened. That is why having this briefing, so late as it was, be postponed even further, is so critical.”
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) stated that “it’s outrageous and scandalous that the Republicans canceled the one and only briefing they planned for members of Congress on the war in Iran.”
“The Constitution makes clear that only Congress has the power to declare war,” the Jewish congressman said.
Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) called the move “a slap in the face to the Congress of the United States.”
“The unjustified cancellation of this briefing by the Trump administration is an intolerable insult to their co-equal branch of government and the constitutional requirement that the president comes to Congress before going to war,” she stated. “The president owes the American people an explanation on why his administration is keeping them and their representatives in the dark.”
The outrage was not limited to congressional Democrats.
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), a libertarian who typically opposes all foreign-policy legislation and who has criticized Israel, also questioned the Trump administration’s motives.
“The top secret Israel-Iran war briefing we were supposed to receive today was canceled,” he stated. “They say it was ‘postponed,’ but no new date was given. What the hell?”
