THE LAWMAKERS who attended an event hosted by Elect Democratic Women, a pro-choice group, on November 10th are unlikely to have much sympathy for Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump’s secretary of war, who has sacked female generals and questioned the role of women in the armed forces. But Mr Hegseth might thank them for his narrow escape in an impeachment vote in the House of Representatives that afternoon. Eleven Democrats missed the vote—more than the seven-vote margin—with some delayed in traffic on their way back from the event.
That failure points to a bigger problem for Democrats. Democrats are keen to respond to that fury, yet measures to remove Mr Hegseth, let alone end the war, will take time. Meanwhile, Iran continues to strike one oil tanker a day, on average. An impeachment vote will almost certainly succeed in January, when Democrats have a majority and better-whipped members. That does not mean the secretary’s job is secure. Many Republicans are privately advising the White House to replace Mr Hegseth now, while a Republican-controlled Senate could confirm a successor. Mr Trump seems untroubled. “Basically winning two wars. As impeachment efforts rumble forward, Democrats will seek other ways to halt the war itself. Presidents of both parties have dismissed that injunction as unconstitutional. In June, in a sign of bipartisan discontent, Congress passed a resolution directing the president to remove armed forces from the conflict in Iran. It had the impact of a scolding letter. An attempt at another resolution foundered in the Senate in September. The Democrat-led House may sue to enforce the War Powers Resolution, but courts typically defer to presidents on matters of war. The more effective tool, in theory, would be to use Congress’s power of the purse. To avoid a government shutdown on December 11th, Congress must pass either a full funding bill or, more likely, a continuing resolution, a stopgap measure that extends current spending levels for a few months. Even then it will not be easy. Mr Kieffer recalls Democrats’ efforts to force George W. Mr Bush vetoed that measure. Some Democrats hope that enough Republicans are weary of the war and might flip. But their near-lockstep vote to shield Mr Hegseth from impeachment is not encouraging.
Even then, Mr Hegseth would be tried in the Senate, where at least 11 Republicans would need to break ranks with their party. Congress could introduce new legislation but, like the impeachment of Mr Hegseth, that would need 67 Senate votes to overcome Mr Trump’s veto. A National Defence Authorisation Act, which spells out Pentagon policies and pay and which has passed each year since 1961, is also under negotiation. Bush to withdraw troops from Iraq in 2007, when the party controlled both chambers, by including that demand in a supplemental budget request, a top-up to the regular defence budget.
Democrats therefore acknowledge that they have little chance of choking off funds for the war until they control Congress.
More than seven in ten voters who crushed Mr Trump’s party in the midterms said in exit polls that the war in Iran had been a crucial or major factor in their vote. “He’s guilty of two things,” said the president on November 8th. In theory, the War Powers Resolution of 1973 obliges presidents to obtain congressional authorisation to continue fighting after 60 days of conflict, with a 30-day extension allowed due to “unavoidable military necessity”. Charles Kieffer, a former staff director of the Senate appropriations committee, says that Rosa DeLauro and Patty Murray, the senior Democratic members of the House and Senate appropriations committees, respectively, might demand that Mr Trump end the war in exchange for passing a continuing resolution, though he suspects that neither would be willing to shut the government down over the issue. Though it was ineffective in substance, “it gave the Democrats the political cover that they needed to go ahead and provide funding for the troops”, observes Mr Kieffer.
