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Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., has time and again pushed to rein in President Donald Trump’s war authorities, but he has rarely gone to the same lengths for his own party’s presidents.
Kaine’s argument has stayed fairly consistent over the years that Congress should reassert its constitutional authority and decision-making in the run-up to a military conflict. And he has either led or joined several pushes over Trump’s non-consecutive terms in office to corral his war powers.
But he never pulled the same kind of move under former Presidents Barack Obama or Joe Biden, causing Republicans to question whether his desires are politically motivated or genuine.
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There was not a single war powers resolution filed in the Senate during Obama’s time in office, but Kaine did push back on his expansive use of drones in the Middle East.
“I have been as consistent as I can be, because I really got in the way of President Obama when he wanted to use military action in Syria without congressional authorization,” Kaine said. “And I told him, you know, ‘You’re like my friend. But this is, you know, a basic principle for me.’”
His latest push to curb future military action in Venezuela without congressional approval nearly succeeded in the Senate but ultimately was killed through a rare procedural move coupled with an intense pressure campaign from Trump, his administration and Senate Republican leaders.
Before the first vote, which saw five Republicans peel from their colleagues to advance the resolution, Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso, R-Wyo., contended that Kaine’s latest push “does not reassert Congress’ powers.”
“There are Democrats in this chamber who are using the arrest of Nicolás Maduro not to advance American interests, but to attack President Trump,” Barrasso said.
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And building off Barrasso’s sentiment was a broader argument from several Republicans, and top officials like Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who charged that Kaine’s push was moot given that there were no boots on the ground in Venezuela and that the administration has no future plans for military action.
Republicans who may have been on the verge of supporting Kaine’s push argued that without a plan to beat an almost guaranteed veto from Trump, it was nothing more than a messaging tactic.
“It’s a messaging exercise, and I think that you’d have more credibility if, at least, you had some elements, like boots on the ground to justify it,” Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., told Fox News Digital.
“I mean, if somebody’s serious about getting something done, if you sit down with me and say, ‘I can get the 67 votes, so I have a veto-proof majority, and this is how I’m going to do it,’ that impresses me,” he continued.
Dating back to Trump’s first term in office, Kaine has either introduced or supported seven war powers resolutions. Each of those pushes — four of which he led — were all directed toward reining in Trump’s military authority and reasserting Congress’ oversight role.
However, he rejected two of three Republican-led war powers pushes during Biden’s presidency, and notably, voted for the same procedural move used to kill his own Venezuela resolution to nix another from Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, in 2024.
Cruz’s war powers resolution sought to curb Biden’s war authority as he pushed for the creation of a temporary pier on the coast of Gaza to deliver aid to the country.
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Kaine argued there was a stark difference between humanitarian missions and military action in explaining his vote against Cruz’s resolution.
“That was because building a humanitarian pier is not hostilities, right? If that’s hostilities, the U.S. going to do tsunami relief is hostilities,” Kaine said.
“But you know what we’re doing in Venezuela is hostilities,” he continued. “It’s not building a pier for humanitarian aid. So, that was why I said the definition of hostility should not apply to humanitarian acts, OK? And I firmly believe that, and I’d vote for that under presidents of either party.”
Still, Republicans countered that Kaine’s own war powers resolution was similarly void because there were no active or planned hostilities in the region.
“It’s pretty clear, war powers only applies if you’ve got boots on the ground,” Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., told Fox News Digital. “We don’t have boots on the ground in those locations that he’s talking about. And so I’m not sure what the reasoning is, but it appears to me to be unnecessary, and it certainly does not deserve to be privileged.”
Kaine has no intention of relenting on his war powers pursuit while Trump is in office and noted last week that he would file resolution after resolution to take a hammer to the cracks forming in the GOP’s mostly unified resistance against questioning the president’s war authorities.
That decision has not surprised many Republicans.
“I mean, he’s a Democrat, so he’s going to try and do messaging,” Tillis said. “I understand that — we do the same stuff.”
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