{"id":13114,"date":"2025-09-10T21:16:55","date_gmt":"2025-09-10T21:16:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/house-repeals-middle-east-war-laws\/"},"modified":"2025-09-10T21:16:55","modified_gmt":"2025-09-10T21:16:55","slug":"house-repeals-middle-east-war-laws","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/house-repeals-middle-east-war-laws\/","title":{"rendered":"House repeals Middle East war laws"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

A bipartisan coalition of lawmakers voted to repeal the decadesold laws that authorized the U.S. to go to war in the Middle East.<\/p>\n

Lawmakers, in a 261-167 vote, approved an amendment to major defense legislation that would rescind the war powers laws \u2014 which passed in the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the 1991 Gulf War.<\/p>\n

The vote is a small win for war powers advocates, who contend the laws need to go to prevent abuses of presidential power and reclaim Congress\u2019 authority over use of the military.<\/p>\n

But the House defense bill won\u2019t address broader concerns that President Donald Trump is freely wielding military force, including a strike last week on a suspected drug-smuggling vessel<\/a> in the Caribbean.<\/p>\n

The rollback will tower over negotiations between the House and Senate on a compromise defense policy bill<\/a>. Both chambers have voted to repeal the Iraq War authorization in recent years under Democratic leadership, although no legislation has ever been enacted.<\/p>\n

The amendment \u2014 sponsored by conservative Rep. Chip Roy<\/a> (R-Texas) and House Foreign Affairs ranking member Gregory Meeks<\/a> (D-N.Y.), along with other lawmakers in both parties \u2014 won the support of 49 Republicans and 212 Democrats.<\/p>\n

The measure had an unlikely path to passage. The proposal was initially left out of a package of amendments to the defense bill proposed by the House Rules Committee. But Democrats won an incredibly rare vote in the committee to secure a debate on it. Reps. Ralph Norman<\/a> (R-S.C.), Morgan Griffith<\/a> (R-Va.) and Roy broke ranks with fellow Republicans to help make it possible. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t need to have Congress effectively modern-day declaring war and leaving it in place for a quarter of a freaking century, or in this case, 34 years,\u201d Roy said. \u201cWe can do better.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meeks hinted at a future struggle in negotiations with the Senate, saying he was \u201cprepared to fight … to get this over the finish line.\u201d<\/p>\n

Opponents of repealing the laws warned of unintended consequences. Rep. Joe Wilson<\/a> (R-Fla.) argued doing so \u201cwould tie the president\u2019s hands in going after Iranian puppet militias in Iraq.\u201d<\/p>\n

The House is expected to pass the bill Wednesday. But Republicans will likely do so largely on their own after adopting a series of culture war amendments that House Democrats warned they won\u2019t support<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A bipartisan coalition of lawmakers voted to repeal the decadesold laws that authorized the U.S. to go to war in the Middle East. Lawmakers, in a 261-167 vote, approved an amendment to major defense legislation that would rescind the war powers laws \u2014 which passed in the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13114"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13114\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}