Speaker Nancy Pelosi
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Earlier in the week, Pelosi said the House "may" vote on Rep. Barbara Lee
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"We will have that resolution coming up soon under the leadership of congresswoman Barbara Lee," Pelosi said during a press briefing in the Capitol.
The comments came just hours before the House was scheduled to vote on a separate resolution designed to limit President Trump
Donald TrumpMcCarthy says he told Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene he disagreed with her impeachment articles against Biden Biden, Trudeau agree to meet next month Trump planned to oust acting AG to overturn Georgia election results: report MORE's unilateral military confrontations with Iran. That measure, sponsored by Rep. Elissa Slotkin
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"We're taking this path because it does not require ... a signature of the president," she said. "This is a statement of the Congress of the United States, and I will not have that statement be diminished by whether the president will veto it or not."
A number of progressives in the Democratic caucus had initially sought to expand Slotkin's war powers resolution to include both Lee's AUMF repeal as well as another provision, offered by Rep. Ro Khanna
Rohit (Ro) KhannaHouse Democrats introduce measures to oppose Trump's bomb sale to Saudis House impeaches Trump for second time — with some GOP support Stacey Abrams gets kudos for work in Georgia runoff election MORE (D-Calif.), to deny the Pentagon funding for offensive military force targeting Iran without prior congressional approval. But some moderate Democrats balked at those additions, leading Pelosi and Democratic leaders to pursue the slimmer resolution proposed by Slotkin.Still, there's plenty of appetite within the liberal-leaning caucus for the Lee and Khanna proposals, both of which the House passed late last year as part of a sweeping defense authorization bill but which were stripped out in negotiations with the Senate.
The AUMF debate is hardly new: Lawmakers in both parties have pressed for years to repeal or update both the 2001 resolution, broadly governing the war against terrorism, and the 2002 Iraq resolution, both of which passed following the 9/11 attacks. The debate has been snarled by sharp disagreements between liberals worried that a new AUMF would greenlight sweeping new conflicts in the Middle East, and conservatives wary of tying the Pentagon's hands at the expense of national security.
She outlined the three areas that any new AUMF would have to address: the timeline for operations; the regions of the world to be covered; and the range of operations to be sanctioned, from boots on the grounds to air strikes to mere surveillance.
"Timing, geography and scope. ... It's harder than you would think," Pelosi said. "But we have to do it."
She did not say when.
