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Democrats raced on Sunday to criticize President Donald Trump’s strikes on Iranian nuclear sites, warning that he had enmeshed the US into an unpredictable and costly war without congressional approval.
Perhaps the most striking response came from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who warned as recently as June 2 that Trump was “folding” instead of confronting “the terrorist government of Iran.” After Trump bombed the nuclear sites, Schumer insisted that Republicans schedule a vote to authorize the attacks under the War Powers Act.
“No president should be allowed to unilaterally march this nation into something as consequential as war with erratic threats and no strategy,” Schumer said. “Confronting Iran’s ruthless campaign of terror, nuclear ambitions, and regional aggression demands strength, resolve, and strategic clarity.
While some progressives went much further, raising the prospect of an impeachment that they have no power to act on in a Congress they don’t control, most Democrats aligned around a clear message: Trump acted without a long-term plan and contradicted his own past promises to keep the US out of military commitments in the Middle East.
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries criticized Trump for increasing “the risk of war” and called for a congressional briefing. And Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., read Trump’s statement on the attack aloud during a “Fighting Oligarchy” rally in Tulsa, Okla. There were boos from the crowd of around 5,000 people and chants of “no more war,” as Sanders nodded his head.
“I agree,” said Sanders. “It is so grossly unconstitutional. All of you know that the only entity that can take this country to war is the US Congress. The president does not have the right.”
Notably, pro-Israel Democrats responded cautiously to the news, and Democratic governors who are seen as potential presidential candidates in 2028 were largely silent as of Sunday morning. Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker said only that he would “receive briefings” in case the events in Iran began to affect his state.
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Democrats were infuriated by the line pushed by the administration and Israeli officials on Sunday: That the strikes had achieved their goal, set back Iran’s nuclear program, and would not lead to any wider war.
“We’re not at war with Iran,” Vice President JD Vance said in an NBC News interview. “We’re at war with Iran’s nuclear program.”
Democrats had fought amongst themselves over the Biden administration’s commitment to Ukraine and Israel last year — consisting of aid and ordnance, but with no US military role. The Trump administration, they said, was trying to fight a new war without calling it one (although Vance used the word openly).
“The Iranian government likely doesn’t see it that way, nor will other countries,” said Matt Duss, the executive vice president at the Center for International Policy and a former foreign policy aide to Sanders. “To my knowledge there’s no ‘except for just a few B-2 airstrikes’ carve-out in Article I [of the Constitution].”
Room for Disagreement
Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., who has become known for his contrarian views on Israel, stood largely alone in breaking from his party. He praised the strikes as “the correct move” in a post that amplified Trump’s initial Truth Social announcement about the strikes.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., on the other side of the party’s divide on Israel, went further than party leaders in calling the attack “grounds for impeachment.
“He has impulsively risked launching a war that may ensnare us for generations,” she wrote. Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., who co-sponsored a House War Powers resolution with anti-war Republicans, chastized Schumer for his responses — both before and after the strike — and wrote that “the next generation needs to make the party anti-war & pro-worker” to win again.
“You’re wasting billions of our dollars,” Khanna said in a Sunday interview with CBS. “What did you accomplish, and why are you oblivious to the American people who are sick of these wars?”
The View From the ‘invisible primary’
Senators seen as presidential hopefuls in 2028 were more clearly anti-war. “There is no history of the United States knowing how to get out of wars,” said Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., in a social media post. Sen. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., an Iraq war veteran, called for Trump to explain why the strikes were necessary.
“The president’s actions could escalate us into a war,” Gallego wrote. “We cannot repeat history and blindly march into another faraway conflict that puts Americans’ lives at risk.”
The View From republicans
Trump, who exited the Obama administration’s nuclear deal with Iran seven years ago during his first term, had run in 2024 promising to end wars in Ukraine and Gaza. He also consistently said that Iran’s nuclear weapons program should be destroyed.
“It’s the biggest risk we have, nuclear weapons,” Trump said in an October 2024 town hall in Fayetteville, N.C., criticizing Biden for saying that Israel should not strike nuclear sites. “The answer should have been: Hit the nuclear first, and worry about the rest later.”
If there was a contradiction in Trump’s positions, it was not a problem for him in the November election. Trump’s anti-war promises also drove a wedge into the Biden-Harris coalition, epitomized by future cabinet members Tulsi Gabbard and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. who endorsed Trump and campaigned for him as a peacemaker.
On Sunday, fanning out across news shows, members of the administration insisted that Trump was being consistent. He had attacked Iran’s nuclear capacity, but had not endorsed regime change, the kind of war aim that Americans had voted against.
“I empathize with Americans who are exhausted after 25 years of foreign entanglements in the Middle East,” Vance told NBC News. “But the difference is that back then we had dumb presidents, and now we have a president who actually knows how to accomplish America’s national security objectives.”
Thus far, GOP criticism has been limited to the anti-war Republicans who believe that any strike on Iran could turn into a wider conflict.
“We were promised that we would put our veterans, our immigration policy, and our infrastructure first,” Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., said in an interview with “Face the Nation” on CBS, joined by Khanna to talk about their War Powers resolution. “There was no imminent threat to the United States.”
Notable
- The first polling on the operation from YouGov showed that, by a 19-point margin, more US adults think the attack will make America “less safe” than “safer.”
- In the American Conservative, before the strikes, Collin Pruett warned that a war in Iran “would likely be received as a betrayal of a core campaign promise and come at a time when there is bipartisan skepticism of the Israeli government among fighting-age citizens.”
- In Slow Boring, Matthew Yglesias blamed Trump’s politically-driven exit from the Iran nuclear deal for today’s conflict.