Members of Congress applauded after the House Appropriations Committee overwhelmingly approved Rep. Barbara Lee’s amendment that would revoke the overbroad 2001 law giving the president authority to undertake war against al Qaeda and its affiliates unless a replacement provision is created. The bipartisan vote was a rebuke of President Trump’s abuse of this authority to…
JFP Welcomes Passage of Barbara Lee Amendment to Sunset 2001 AUMF June 29, 2017 Congresswoman Barbara Lee introduced a repeal of the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) as an amendment to the Department of Defense appropriations bill. Her amendment, which would sunset the 2001 AUMF after eight months, was passed by…
Late on Monday, June 26, the White House threatened military escalation against the Syrian government. US defense officials reached by BuzzFeed News said they were unaware the White House was planning to release its statement. Military officials were caught off guard by the White House statement, the New York Times reported. Urge your representatives to…
On Thursday, April 6, President Trump attacked Syria without Congressional authorization, violating the Constitution and the War Powers Resolution. Following Nixon’s unauthorized escalations of the Vietnam War, the Congressional Framers of the War Powers Resolution knew that it was likely that future Presidents would try to use military force without Congressional authorization. That’s why they…
Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) has introduced a bipartisan bill to block additional U.S. forces from being sent into Syria. H.R. 1473 prohibits the Department of Defense from funding any attempt by the administration to expand our presence in Syria by putting U.S. combat boots on the ground. Under the bill, the Pentagon would be prohibited…
On the TPP and settlement expansion in the West Bank, we mostly lost the first round of the fight over the Democratic Platform. The Platform Drafting Committee rejected an amendment opposed to the TPP and rejected an amendment opposed to settlement expansion in the West Bank. There were five Sanders appointees on the fifteen-member drafting…
Judging from press reports, when Congress returns from its August recess in early September, the United States military will have been bombing "Islamic State" fighters in Iraq for a month, with a broader set of missions than originally advertised, and with plans to continue bombing for months. The United States Constitution and the 1973 War Powers…
The greatest struggle facing the anti-war movement in the United States is the struggle to get people who come to anti-war demonstrations after a war starts to engage politically to prevent the same wars in the future. In the case of U.S. policy towards Iran, we created a political movement to support diplomacy with Iran…
Some people claim that there’s nothing we can do to stop the President from launching a new war in Iraq, if that’s what he decides to do. But last August, when the President had decided to bomb Syria, we proved that wasn’t true. When 192 Members of the House said he had to come to…
In mid-November, the Christian Science Monitor reports, a loya jirga in Afghanistan – a national meeting of tribal leaders and other notable Afghans – will vote on whether to meet the Obama administration’s terms for keeping U.S. troops in the country beyond the end of 2014. If you care about democracy in Afghanistan, you should…