In the hours after President Donald Trump announced on Saturday that the U.S. had bombed Iran, dozens of Democrats leapt at the opportunity to blast out statements.
But handed an opportunity to put up a united front opposite Trump’s action and his dismissal of Congress’s authority to authorize the use of military force, Democrats struck vastly different tones.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said Trump “must provide the American people and Congress clear answers on the actions taken tonight and their implications for the safety of Americans.”
“No president should be allowed to unilaterally march this nation into something as consequential as war with erratic threats and no strategy,” Jeffries said.
But Jeffries’ stance was far from the only one. In fact, the former No. 2 House Democrat, Rep. Steny Hoyer, went a completely different direction.
“The U.S. strike on Iranian nuclear facilities at Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan yesterday was essential to preventing Iran from developing a nuclear weapon,” Hoyer said.
By Tuesday, Democrats didn’t appear to even be in agreement on whether or not their party has a cohesive message after the bombings. Although multiple Democrats insisted the party was “unified,” Rep. Ritchie Torres had a more clear-eyed perspective.
“There are widely varied views,” Torres, a staunch supporter of Israel, told NOTUS. “So, naturally, there’s going to be widely varied messages.”
It’s true that part of the messaging challenge for Democrats is that they have to navigate varied perspectives throughout the caucus — from Iran hawks and Israel supporters encouraged by the strike to progressives disturbed by the sudden offensive.
“This is a complicated one,” Rep. Chrissy Houlahan, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, told NOTUS. “It’s an enormously complicated one.”
“It’s not wrong to try to pursue Iran being a nonnuclear threat,” she added. “That’s not wrong. But what’s possibly negotiable, or somebody has different opinions on is, how do you accomplish that?”
The challenge for Democrats is that the merit of the strike itself isn’t the only issue the party needs to message around.
There’s the question of whether Trump had the constitutional power to authorize the strike without Congress’ input. There’s the question of whether the operation was successful in actually “obliterating” Iran’s nuclear facilities. And there’s the question of whether Trump should be conducting high-stakes diplomacy via late-night Truth Social rants.
Further complicating the dynamic is that the situation in the Middle East — and Trump’s response to it — is rapidly changing.
On Saturday night, the U.S. bombed Iran’s nuclear facilities. On Sunday morning, Vice President JD Vance said the U.S. is not interested in Iranian regime change. On Sunday evening, Trump said he is, in fact, interested in regime change, posting “MIGA,” meaning “Make Iran Great Again.” (He has since flipped on the issue of toppling the Iranian government.)
On Monday morning, Iran retaliated by striking a U.S. base in Qatar. On Monday afternoon, Trump declared he had brokered a ceasefire between Israel and Iran. On Monday night, the two countries exchanged missile attacks.
On Tuesday morning, Democrats told NOTUS they were eager to catch up on the intelligence in a classified briefing later in the day. On Tuesday afternoon, the Trump administration had punted the briefings to Thursday.
Democrats in Congress are simply trying to make sense of the evolving situation. Meanwhile, on the Republican side, Rep. Buddy Carter nominated Trump for a Nobel Peace Prize.
When NOTUS approached Rep. Jim McGovern on Tuesday afternoon, he wasn’t yet aware that the briefing had been cancelled, as one of his colleagues, Rep. Yvette Clarke, lambasted Republicans over the move on the floor.
“I don’t think Trump has a clue what the hell he’s doing,” McGovern said. “I mean, just follow his postings on Truth Social. I mean, I get whiplash, like from moment to moment, trying to figure it out.”
Fortunately for Democrats, some conservative Republicans have shouldered some of the load of resisting the Trump administration. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, for example, has blasted Trump for entangling the U.S. in another foreign war after running on an “America First” isolationist foreign policy platform.
“Republicans are not united either because you’ve got an isolationist wing of the party led by Marjorie Taylor Greene and Tucker Carlson. You’ve got Trump saying he’s against regime change one minute and then he’s for it the next. And then you’ve got everyone in the middle who just follows Trump no matter what he does,” Rep. Seth Moulton told NOTUS. “We’re a little more organized than them.”
As Democrats try to synthesize the incoming information from news reports without an official briefing to draw from, several told NOTUS they are taking cues from leadership.
Jeffries, a careful communicator, has been especially vocal in response to the bombings, hosting multiple press conferences early in the week. His message to reporters Tuesday afternoon was that “the American people deserve the truth, not Truth Social posts that are increasingly unhinged.”
“As far as the clarity that’s coming from the party, the House Democrats’ leader, Jeffries, has articulated the position of the House Democratic Caucus,” Rep. Steven Horsford said.
But for every Democrat who told NOTUS they were comfortable deferring to leadership on messaging, there seemed to be another holding back their position or saying the party views defy simple characterization.
“There’s no official party line,” Rep. Gregory Meeks, the top Democrat on the Foreign Affairs Committee, told NOTUS.
Still, Democrats in both chambers have rallied around Congress exercising its authority to declare war — as stated in Article I of the Constitution. Rep. Ro Khanna last week introduced a privileged war powers resolution with renegade Republican Rep. Thomas Massie that would bar the U.S. military from carrying out “unauthorized hostilities” in Iran.
But there is a potential limit to the extent House Democrats can milk their chamber’s resolution, given it might not get a vote. Already, Speaker Mike Johnson has argued that the foundational War Powers Resolution of 1973, which limits presidential power to wage war, was unconstitutional. Because of that assessment, Johnson wants to revoke the resolution’s privileged status and block a vote.
A similar effort to check the president’s power is underway in the Senate, where it might have more legs. In the upper chamber, senators are slated to vote this week on Sen. Tim Kaine’s resolution that seeks to bar Trump from taking additional military action in Iran without congressional approval.
That resolution has the capacity to pack more of a punch, actually forcing Republicans to go on the record with whether they support Trump’s unilateral use of military power in Iran. Kaine touted near-unified support behind his effort.
“Democrats, other than Sen. Fetterman, believe that while you might have slightly different views about the conditions that would suggest war with Iran is necessary, I think that everyone agrees, ‘Not without a vote of Congress,’” Kaine told NOTUS.
But there is one issue that Democrats appear to all be on the same page on: They want more information.
The Trump administration kicking the can on briefings enraged top Democrats, with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer hammering Republicans for keeping Congress in the dark.
“We need a war powers act where they have the legal obligation to tell the Congress the details they are now avoiding to tell us,” Schumer told reporters during a Tuesday press conference. “And again, they’re ducking, they’re bobbing, they’re weaving. What have they got to hide?”
But the lack of intelligence has also given Democrats — especially Democrats who have been in Congress long enough to remember voting in 2002 to authorize war with Iraq — some time to carefully consider their stance.
Asked by reporters whether she would have supported the strike in Iran had Trump asked Congress for authorization, Pelosi said it “just depends on what he brought,” referring to the intelligence Trump could have hypothetically presented to Congress.
“I just want to hear the truth,” Pelosi said Tuesday morning, adding that she was looking forward to the classified briefing.
The No. 2 Democrat in the Senate, Sen. Dick Durbin, also exercised caution when asked about whether he would support further action in Iran.
“Having been around the Senate scene for three decades, when it comes to war, it’s easy to get in and hard to get out,” Durbin told NOTUS. “And you don’t judge the outcome in the first 72 hours.”
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Riley Rogerson is a reporter at NOTUS. Tinashe Chingarande is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.