Don’t Say ‘War’?

Today’s notice: The reasons for Trump’s war with Iran seem to be somewhat fluid. Some are debating whether to even call it a war. Plus: Insights on tonight’s big primaries. Centrist Democrats do not remember Biden fondly. And: Inside the aviation officials group chat after El Paso’s airspace was shut down.

THE LATEST

Ir-rationale? Yesterday began with the main question for Donald Trump’s team being, how long? As in, when will the war with Iran end? “Four weeks, two weeks, six weeks,” Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth told reporters.

But a bigger question has taken over: why? Secretary of State Marco Rubio appeared to change the story after briefing members of Congress. “We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action,” he told reporters. “We knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we didn’t preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties.”

Trump told the nation something different when he announced combat operations over the weekend, citing unabated Iranian nuclear ambitions and the any-day-now deployment of long-range missiles as the main reasons to put American lives at risk. Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, even made the claim on Fox News last night that Iranian negotiators bragged about having enough enriched uranium to make 11 nuclear bombs.

Rubio’s explanation has not gone down well with everyone. “That is what’s called a pretext, not an imminent threat,” Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine told reporters. “Our foreign policy is not determined by what some other nation does. It should be determined by our own national interest.”

Republicans are left to play defense. “There’s been no inconsistencies out there with regard to what they’ve told folks, and what we’ve been told,” Sen. Mike Rounds said.

This new problem is baffling to some White House allies. “I think the reason people, even non-interventionalists, respected what the president did in Venezuela was because there was no attempt to gaslight about our intentions. We were brazen: We want their oil,” a GOP strategist close to the White House told Jasmine. The messaging this time is “just a mess,” they said.

What comes next: The White House says it has weeks to sort Iran out, and Congress seems to be accepting that timeline. The House is not scheduled to return until Wednesday and is slated to leave town after voting Thursday, the NOTUS Hill team reports. The Senate will vote on Iran war powers sometime this week, but the vote is expected to fail.

“So far, Congress has been basically — not basically, totally — irrelevant, because we’ve not used our power,” Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, complained.

Open tabs: Trump Is Ending His Long-Standing Boycott of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner (NOTUS); Federal judge nixes latest policy requiring 7 days’ notice for members of Congress to visit ICE facilities (NBC); Classified Report Finds Kristi Noem Created Security Vulnerabilities at Airports (WSJ); Labor Secretary Is a Rare Presence at Department in Turmoil (NYT)

From the Middle East

Clearly, the questioning of why the U.S. is now at war is reaching far outside of the country.

“This is not an endless war. This is a gateway to peace. It’s the exact opposite of what people are saying,” was Benjamin Netanyahu’s message to Americans last night on Fox News.

The Israeli prime minister called the idea that he dragged Trump into war “ridiculous,” and parroted the White House’s talking points that Iran was a direct threat to the American people. “Iran is committed to your destruction. And whether people understand it or not, the leader has to understand it,” he said, meaning Trump.

Primaries preview

What to watch for tomorrow night: A couple of nuggets from our reporters ahead of the first big primary night in a year that will be packed with them.

Texas: A Democratic strategist in the state told NOTUS’ Alex Roarty that they haven’t seen a single ad from Rep. Jasmine Crockett on TV, haven’t received a single piece of mail from her campaign and haven’t had a single volunteer knock on their door. It’s a contrast, they said, from the effort by state Rep. James Talarico, whose campaign has a ubiquitous presence on TV and has contacted their household multiple times. Despite this, the race is still effectively a toss-up.

North Carolina: The premier blue-on-blue primary of the night might be in the 4th Congressional District, where the commissioner of Durham County, Nida Allam, is trying to unseat Rep. Valerie Foushee in a safe Democratic seat.

The closing days are all about the war in Iran, NOTUS’ Christa Dutton reports. Allam, who has the backing of Sen. Bernie Sanders, launched a new ad yesterday that accused Foushee of being backed by “the same AI corporation who powered Trump’s attacks on Iran.” Foushee has publicly condemned the war.

In the 1st District, Republican strategist Jonathan Bridges predicts his party will again nominate Laurie Buckhout, who lost to Democratic Rep. Don Davis in 2024. Thanks to redistricting that made the electorate redder, the path to Congress for Buckhout could be smoother this time.

From the campaign trail

The coming fight over Joe Biden’s legacy? “At times, the administration sounded like a caricature of wokeness,” Jonathan Cowan, a founder of the centrist group Third Way, told a crowd gathered for a conference in Charleston, South Carolina, this weekend. “Yes, age was a problem for Biden. But these failures had nothing to do with age.”

Alex was in Charleston and reports that multiple centrist speakers on stage had similar critiques of the last Democratic administration. (Needless to say, progressives feel differently about where Biden went wrong.)

An anecdote that summarized the event: Attendees were told the progressive wing of the party doesn’t get Democratic voters — primary voters are more likely to watch “Law & Order” than “Heated Rivalry,” one speaker said.

THE BIG ONE

Wait, can we call it that? Trump called it a war. So has Hegseth. The Associated Press said it meets the criteria of one.

Still, Sen. Markwayne Mullin doubled down yesterday, again correcting an interviewer who asked him about Iran. “This isn’t a war. We haven’t declared war,” Mullin said on CNN.

“Strategic strikes are not war,” Rep. Anna Paulina Luna argued Sunday on MS NOW. In the talking-points memo that the White House reportedly sent to Hill Republicans, the suggested boilerplate response to the straightforward question, “Is the U.S. at war with Iran?” notably does not answer the question.

Casualties are increasing. Iran is still bombing U.S. assets. So why might semantics matter?

“This is just absolute pretzel-twisting from members who are trying to justify this as something that doesn’t need to be constitutionally validated by Congress,” Cato Institute defense policy scholar Katherine Thompson told Emily.

Plus, among Republicans, Mullin and Luna might be tilting at this windmill alone. Sen. John Boozman told Emily it is, in fact, a war. “We’re bombing a bunch of people,” he said. “If they did the same thing to us, I think we’d call it that.”

Other Republican senators didn’t care what it’s called. “It is what it is. Let’s be successful as quickly as we can,” Sen. Ted Budd said.

“I don’t think the semantics matter at this point,” Sen. Cynthia Lummis said. “Regardless of what we call it, I’m OK with what we’re doing.”

NEW ON NOTUS

We’ve got the El Paso airport shutdown texts: “Damn. I’ve called everyone. No one knows nothing,” an unnamed official in a group chat full of officials who manage commercial aviation in El Paso texted into the void on Feb. 10, the night a spat between Trump Cabinet officials led to a hastily called and hastily lifted cancellation of air traffic in the city. NOTUS’ Dave Levinthal reveals the jaw-dropping confusion and bewilderment among local officials trapped in the eye of a national scandal.

More: Vivek Ramaswamy’s Deep Pockets Overshadow Democrat’s Fundraising in Ohio’s Governor Race, by Tyler Spence

NOT US

• How Trump Decided to Go to War, by Mark Mazzetti, Julian E. Barnes, Tyler Pager, Edward Wong, Eric Schmitt and Ronen Bergman for The New York Times
  
• Social media videos and surprise phone calls: How Trump told the world about Iran, by Brian Stelter for CNN
  
• Can James Talarico Convince Democrats He’s the Fighter They Need? By Tim Murphy for Mother Jones
  

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