'If You Can Keep It': What Trump Owes Congress

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President Trump and his administration and allies have sent mixed messages about the war with Iran in the first two weeks of the operation.

The Secretary of Defense called it a war.

The Republican Speaker of the House said Iran is not a war, and the President has said both.

Which one is it?

Well, it's both. It's both an excursion that will keep us out of a war, and the war is going to be for them.

It's a war for us. It's not to be easier than we thought.

Whatever the President calls the joint U.S. and Israeli campaign of missile and airstrikes that started February 28th,

the cost so far in lives 13 U.S. troops, more than 2,000 people in the Middle East overall, both civilians and military.

Congress has voted on a resolution to limit the President's power to wage this campaign.

That effort failed. Beyond that, the President has made little effort to involve Congress or build public support before launching this war.

Many Republican members, though not all, appear unbothered by those facts.

At least in public.

I'm Todd Zwillikin for Gen White. You're listening to the 1A podcast today for our weekly politics series.

If you can keep it, we're asking what does President Trump owe Congress as far as buy-in on war?

And how have past presidents involved the legislative branch when deploying the military?

Plus, what the President owes you the American public?

And how he's chosen to explain or avoid explaining the justifications and objectives for this war?

As after this break, stay with us.

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Welcome back, let's get into our conversation and meet our guests joining me in studio now is Liz Goodwin,

she's Congress reporter for the Washington Post.

Welcome back, Liz.

Thanks for having me.

Great to have you here. Also joining us from Washington DC, Sarah Binder.

She's a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution and a professor of political science at the George Washington University.

Sarah, welcome back to you.

Great, thanks for having me.

The President engaged in this war in the middle of weeks of negotiations with Iran, Liz,

and threats that he would attack if Iran didn't agree to a deal over its nuclear program.

What did members of Congress know before the start of this war?

Were they surprised when the missile started flying?

So in this case, the Trump administration did notify the gang of eight about military action.

What is the gang of eight?

The gang of eight is the top leaders of the House and Senate bipartisan.

So you can't cut out Democrats, which occasionally has happened in recent months.

So in the Venezuela situation, members of Congress really felt cut out when Trump launched that operation to get out Maduro.

That was a situation where they felt like they weren't getting enough information.

In this case, with Iran, Congress was not fully cut out in that way.

I think there was a surprise that action happened because he was sort of on the fence until he made the call.

But they did notify Congress.

Before the attack we're going?

I believe so. I believe it was that same day.

I don't know if it was like minutes before it had started.

Okay, so House and Senate leaders, intelligence leaders, these sort of top eight people notified.

Well, the week after President Trump's campaign against Iran began, the House and Senate, they did vote on war powers resolutions.

Those efforts failed, as I just mentioned.

A Sarah Binder almost all Republicans, a few Democrats voted against invoking the War Powers Act for this war in Iran.

What would those resolutions have done?

Well, the resolutions generally would be the Senate saying, for starters, the Senate saying,

there shall be no more use of military forces in the conflict there, unless Congress is actually authorized, given authorization to the President to conduct war.

In theory, Senate might have passed it. In theory, might have gone to the House.

But ultimately, the President would have had to sign it into law, unless the House chambers were to veto, override the veto.

So, there wasn't really a chance of legislation being enacted here, but it was a chance for senators.

In this case, Democratic senators and a handful of Republicans to go on record here about their views about the President's conduct of the war.

What's the track record of resolutions like this, Sarah Binder?

In the last several decades, we're going to talk about AUMF's authorizations of use of military force.

War powers resolutions has congresseded a lot of authority to the White House in this regard.

Well, the War Power resolutions have not succeeded.

None of them have succeeded. The closest was back in Trump's first term when he vetoed one, having to do with Yemen, the conflict in Yemen.

So, in that sense, no, they've not succeeded in technically legally reigning in the President.

Congress has had at least around the time of 9-11, and around the war with Iraq in the 1990s.

More success there in writing what we sort of refer off-handed to AUMF's authorization for use of military force.

That has a much stronger historical record to them.

But of course, they require large bipartisan support, by camera, bipartisan support to get them done.

Well, Congress passed that AUMF authorization of use of military forces.

Sarah Binder mentions authorizing the war on terror.

Post 9-11 expanded it in 2002 to clear the way for the war in Iraq.

Those resolutions remain in effect for decades afterwards, sometimes, with ambiguous results as to US military action overseas.

We'll talk a little bit more about why those votes actually can really, really matter to the politicians who vote on them.

Republicans in Congress have largely backed President Trump on these attacks in Iran.

What are you hearing from them right now about the operation?

They're comfort with it at this point, how it's going, and the information that they're getting from the White House.

Yeah, for the most part, Republicans are backing this.

I think in part just because Iran historically has been an enemy of the United States, and there's a lot of history there.

It's unlike Venezuela, which felt a little bit more hard for them to explain to their base.

There still is a discomfort with this energy crisis that's been sparked, and the fact that there doesn't appear to be a clear plan to get out of it.

Some Republican senators are even saying publicly now it doesn't feel like they were prepared for the straight of our moves to get closed, and they don't seem to have a way to get out of that.

So I think as oil prices rise, you're going to see more complaints and questions from Republicans on the strategy there.

Meanwhile, the MAGA base, especially online, but elsewhere, I mean, is really divided on this war.

America first, some isolationism in the MAGA base, questioning the advisability of attacking Iran, certainly partnering with Israel.

Why hasn't that divide bubbled up to elected officials?

I think there aren't as many America first elected officials.

There's people who kind of put on that costume when that became popular, but a lot of Republicans were hawks originally, and the party hasn't turned over in Congress to the extent that now everyone's a true blue.

America first, even though they've become that way, but if you even look at JD Vance, I mean, he stayed incredibly quiet since this conflict started.

And I think he represents that wing of the party, and they're more staying quiet than raising the alarm, because I think they're hoping that it'll come to an end, and then they don't want to stick their neck out and have criticized Trump at the meantime.

Let's get our voice mail in box.

My name is Arthur from Louisville, calling me in regards to what I expect from Congress as this war to lingers on.

I hope that Congress applies to not going to see any more funds for this illegal war.

There's no sense in endangering American troops or American civilian lives for that matter.

And I hope Congress who's there powers and checks and balances to reign in this world government, even though they have ceased to do so this entire potential run.

Well, Sarah Bender, there's one listener hoping Congress takes back some of its power and steps in with oversight or power of the purse here.

Past presidential administrations have frequently sent troops abroad without getting express approval from Congress under the war powers.

Presidents hate the war powers resolution.

Most of them think it's unconstitutional to begin with when have presidents engaged with Congress before sending troops into combat or in early stages of fighting in a way that would.

Qualify is, I don't know, informed consent for Congress.

Well, I think it's helpful first to take a kind of a big historical step here and then we can focus more recently on the modern times.

Keep in mind that until World War II, right, over the 19th century, even into and through World War I and begins a World War II,

there was no large, what we now call the large standing army, a very large Pentagon, of both military and civilian employees.

There's army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, essentially established already under control of the Secretary of Defense.

That's not what it was like before World War II.

The president had to go for Congress, for authorization to ramp up really quickly to get a military force together.

But that's long gone, right?

And now we're in a world where, as we know, right, numbers and numbers of Pentagon employees and so forth, so that the military is there at the Beckenkall of the president.

So being the Commander-in-Chief, he's ready to go.

He does it, but he can go to war in theory without going to Congress first to ask permission or sources.

We have to go to a quick break, but before we do, one of you emailed the Dems and remaining few true conservatives in the Republican Party should insist that any supplemental funding for Trump's Iran War be paid for by shifting funds from the massive amount of money that ICE and Border Patrol received in the big, beautiful bill.

Well, more on that supplemental funding bill and what presidents communicate to the public when going to war.

Stay with us.

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Let's get back to our conversation now.

We're talking about what the president owes Congress and you, the American public, as he forges ahead with his war in Iran.

And we're asking how this moment compares to what we've seen throughout history.

Heather from Cleveland writes in to say, where is our government getting the money to fund this war and who profits?

So as Heather from Cleveland suggests, Congress has a lot of power here if they choose to use it.

We talk about war powers, authorizations, but it also controls spending.

It also has the power of oversight.

Now, the Trump administration has already signaled that it will soon come to Congress to demand a massive amount of money to fund the Iran operation, which it calls Operation Epic Fury Pentagon officials said last Thursday.

The first full week of this war cost a minimum of about $11 billion in munitions alone.

That is definitely low-balling it.

Now the administration says their initial ask, Liz Goodwin could be $50 billion for starters.

What will members of Congress be weighing when they consider this vote and take this vote?

Yeah, so they are going to come to Congress and ask for a bunch more money.

I think the administration is lucky in this instance because they can do this with only Republican votes.

They could do this via reconciliation where they can skip the filibuster in the Senate.

So they would only need 50 votes in the Senate to get this through.

So really, their only concern now would be as if there was some big split in the party and they started to be resistance to funding this war, which we're not seeing those signs yet.

I still think Republican members have concerns that we talked about earlier about the energy crisis, but it's hard for me to imagine that the funding would be in jeopardy.

So you can do this with just 50 votes in the Senate.

The House majority is very, very narrow.

Yes.

Would there be a guarantee that all House Republicans would go along with this looking forward to the midterms?

There's never a guarantee with House Republicans is what we found this past year.

I do think, though, that there's still a handful of Democrats who didn't vote for the war powers resolution in the House, right?

So you could even get a Democrat crossing the aisle to vote for funding.

Pentagon funding is usually bipartisan.

It's something that Democrats, a lot of Democrats don't like to oppose.

Sarah Bender, there's a history here of these votes on wars becoming extremely meaningful after the fact.

And sometimes that there are rubber stamps.

But I'll take you back to 2002.

We already mentioned the authorization of use of military force for Iraq.

Hillary Clinton voted yes.

And then she had to defend that position years later in a primary against Barack Obama.

And it was one of the factors among many that led to him beating her.

She didn't become president.

You could argue because of that vote.

Remember, John Kerry, way back in 2004, being branded a flip flopper because he said, I voted against the war.

I voted for the war before I voted against it.

These votes have a way of coming back on politicians and really mattering.

Well, for sure. And as we often say about members and votes is that the rewards are for the positions you take, not so much for the outcomes that result.

So any of these votes, even though even like a war power resolution vote, even if they don't have immediate teeth or long term teeth, the positions that lawmakers are taking.

And for precisely the reasons that you point out with these sort of quote-unquote celebrated examples, where a vote comes back to bite you.

So I think that, of course, it's going to vary quite a bit.

The circumstances of 9-11 and the ground swell of congressional and public support for what the administration was doing right in the throes of it, quite a bit different than this conflict with Iran.

And the question of public support, let alone bipartisan support, like none of that is here in this case.

So the cost of voting against the administration here for a Democrat certainly quite low, maybe a tougher vote for some of those Republicans.

Well, we're getting a lot of questions from listeners and a lot of concern about where the money goes, especially given Donald Trump and the Trump's family's financial ties directly in the Middle East.

Sanders says, I'm still trying to figure out why Trump started this war. In his initial statement, he said he was doing it to free the Iranian people.

I don't think he cares at all about the people of Iran. How much of the Trump family's business interests are tied up with Iran? Will they profit from the war?

And we got this from a member of our 1-8 tech club. Does the fact that the war is expensive playing to this at all, meaning going to war is a big payday for many billionaire Trump supporters and the military industrial complex?

These questions are all going to a general concern, and I wonder if members of Congress consider it a liability.

Donald Trump and his family have direct financial ties in the Middle East, but also many of his supporters in what this listener calls the military industrial complex.

And people have suspicions that $50 billion if that's what the number is of a supplemental is going into those pockets as well.

It is a large number. I think what the administration has said is that these missile interceptors, the sad technology is incredibly expensive.

We gave a lot of those to Ukraine, these Patriot Defender things. This isn't my area of expertise, but we ended up offloading a ton of very expensive weaponry to Ukraine, and the Pentagon has said we are now running low on them.

They cost so much money to produce each one. They also take a long time to produce. So that's where...

It has to be a little bit misleading, though, to blame this on aid to Ukraine when so many of those thads, patriots and other interceptors had been fired in the Gulf because of the sheer volume of Iranian drones that are flying across the water.

Oh, for sure. Yes, I think the Pentagon just said that our stocks were our supplies were already low before this conflict started.

This was something that General Kane was warning Trump before he made the decision to start the war. We're not in a good position to be in this war, which the post reported on.

So I think that's why they're saying the price tag is so high because the weaponry is so expensive.

Well, another key area of congressional power is oversight. Power of the purse, power to declare war, also oversight. The administration has provided closed or classified briefings to some lawmakers.

There have been no public hearings explaining or justifying this war. Meanwhile, some Democrats in Congress, like Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona, Richard Blumethal of Connecticut, are calling for investigations into how the military has carried out this operation, especially the missile strike on the first day.

Of operations that hit that girl school in southern Iran, killing more than 165 people, the majority of them children, military investigators have concluded that the US was indeed responsible for that strike.

And so now you have, especially Democrats demanding investigation and public hearings, but there haven't been any public oversight hearings televised or otherwise.

At all, isn't that unusual, Liz, are they going to get them?

I'm not sure if they're going to get them because it would take Republican members wanting them, demanding them, holding them.

I think there has been a little bit of pushback from the Hill to the Trump administration on that school strike because initially President Trump was denying that the US was responsible for that.

And Republican senators, including John Kennedy from Louisiana, were saying, listen, we did this and it was a mistake and it's horrible.

So there's been a bit of distance between Trump and Republicans in the Senate, but not enough to show we want oversight on this.

We're actually going to do something here. It's really just a little bit of rhetoric at this point.

I mean, how is it possible? I covered Congress for many years.

How is it possible that a war starts?

Reports come out clearly indicating that the administration was surprised for instance by Iran closing the Street of Hormuz.

The President on one hand says there aren't any targets left to hit. We're wrapping it up, then says he's not ready to wrap it up.

Then gets on truth social, asking for help, demanding help from warships from other countries, which is not a sign that he's ready to wrap up the war or is being advised to.

Is it possible that members of Congress with the power of oversight aren't demanding answers to their questions and in public?

Well, I mean, as Rand Paul just said recently when he was the only Republican who voted for the war powers resolution in the Senate that he thinks the founding fathers never envisioned a Congress with such little ambition.

He thinks this Congress has sort of withered away in its assertion of its powers to such an extent that it doesn't even really resemble the Congress that was initially envisioned by the founding fathers.

So I think there has been just a steady erosion of their muscles of oversight, of their muscles of power of the purse, of trade powers, of war powers.

So it goes back decades as Sarah was saying and we're now reached this point of crisis where the Congress is just pretty prone. It's sort of lifeless.

Supine even.

Sarah Bender, if this war doesn't end tomorrow and drags on for days or weeks or months and given the posture of this Congress that Liz Goodwin just described, what are you watching for from this Congress?

What do you think is next? What'll be important?

Well, I think one thing to keep eyes on is the pain as Americans experience it and that is first in terms of rising, if they're rising casualties, second of all price of gas.

It seems hard to put those on the same plane there, but price of gas. How do people experience it here?

And general sense that the war is not in American's interest. And so in that, the onus returns, the burden is on the president to make a consistent public case for why it's important for the US and his view to keep prosecuting the war.

Absent building of public support is just going to keep degrading and that will eventually may not crack Republicans, but it will make it harder and harder for Congress just to say nothing.

That's Sarah Bender, Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. Liz Goodwin, Congress reporter for the Washington Post. Thank you both so much.

Thank you.

Here's a message we got from James in Parkersburg, West Virginia.

What I feel the president owes the American public right now is the truth, even if it's ugly, we need to know the truth, we need to know the facts, and we don't need the politicians just lying to us all the time.

Well, Peter says Trump doesn't owe the American people any explanation because we put him in the position of not having to answer to anybody.

It's time for independence to register for a party so they can vote in primaries, then at the ballot box vote every single incumbent out Democrats and Republicans.

That's the only way we're going to take back our country and save democracy. Peter, thank you for that response. Well, let's get to the question.

What explanation does the president owe you the American public while America is it or Phil Stewart is here, Chief National Security correspondent for rotors.

Phil, welcome back. Thanks for having me and joining us from Columbus, Ohio is Dakota, root of sale. He's a law professor at the Ohio State University previously served as a senior staff member in the US Senate and worked on intelligence matters in the Obama administration, including at the office of the director of National Intelligence Dakota, welcome to 1a.

Great to be here. Well, in his press conference at the Pentagon on Friday, one of the many he's held since the war began, Defense Secretary Pete Hexeth faced questions about the ongoing near blockade, uh, in the street of horror moves, though, which much of the through which much of the Middle East's oil moves. Here's his response, something we're dealing with.

We have been dealing with it and don't need to worry about it. We're on plan to defeat, destroy, disable all of their meaningful military capabilities at a pace.

The world has never seen before. Don't need to worry about it says the Secretary of Defense. Um, Phil, take us into the briefing room for these press events by the Secretary of Defense and also chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, general Dan Cain.

So we learned from those briefings about the worst objectives and the military's plans to achieve them, when have they been clear, when have they not been clear?

You know, it's a fascinating question. I've been to these briefings and it seems as if Secretary Hexeth and General Cain are speaking from two entirely different scripts.

You know, as if their speech writers haven't even spoken to each other before the event begins because you'll hear the kind of political rhetoric we just heard from the Secretary of Defense.

And then we'll hear something much more measured, uh, more limited from General Cain about how they're proceeding to take out, you know, any number of targets related to the missile capabilities or, uh, to their drone industry or what, what have you.

And so, you know, on the one hand, you have these very lofty political, uh, goals that are being enunciated by Secretary Hexeth and then very kind of methodical, almost wonky, uh, discourse from, from General Cain.

And what about on the matter of US casualties, how transparent has the Pentagon been in comparison to other conflicts you've covered?

You know, last week, uh, you know, I, I broke a story about casualties and at the point when I wrote it, the only, the only numbers they had given out were there were eight US personnel who had been seriously wounded.

And I found out the number was, you know, around 150 and I can't even imagine that's been a week. So we don't know what the number is right now.

And if you ask, they won't tell you. And so the transparency is, is not there.

Uh, Dakota, Rudy, so how does the president's handling of the, the messaging and explanations of this war to the public, to Congress, to everyone, compare.

I mean, we compare it to the Bush administration, we compare it to Iraq. How has this been different?

Well, the messaging by this administration for the president on down has been dramatically different than we've seen in any prior conflict that will be familiar with or that we've had in US history.

What I think is especially stunning is that in the messaging over and over, we see a focus on really what is the tactical level things getting blown up, you know, even we've seen, you know, videos coming out from the White House.

Like first person shooter video games, you know, the secretary of defense emphasizes how much stuff we're blowing up.

But at the strategic level of what are our goals? What are our objectives? We keep hearing contrary things from the president, from the secretary of state, from the secretary of defense.

Phil Stewart at the same time, we've seen the White House putting out jockey videos on a lot of social media platforms, celebrating war cartoons, NFL football hits, chess pounding, a lot of gloating about the war. That's new.

For US military families, which I've covered for years, war is definitely not a joke. It's not a game. The casualty have real impact on families across America and will for years.

So injuries coming home from this war are real for those people. Still to come, building public support for war and why it matters. We'll be right back.

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Let's get back to our conversation about President Trump's communication around the war in Iran. A film you've covered a lot of wars from Washington and from elsewhere too.

How much visibility do we through the media, especially the public, have on operation epic fury and what's actually happening with strikes in Iran and around the Middle East, especially compared to how US media has followed past military engagements in the region. How much do we actually know here?

It's a great question. Normally when you're launching a major campaign and especially one with such high risks for the United States and for its allies overseas, you would have major operational briefings and you'd have regular kind of updates about where things are at.

What you've seen is a much more limited attempt to do something like that but none of the nitty-gritty details. We don't know, for example, how many, even things they've hit, they say targets but that can be interpreted in many different ways. They'll give you a number of thousands of targets.

How much of Iran's navy remains intact? How many casualties? We don't have a regular update on that. There's any number of very, very, very basic questions that are outstanding at the beginning and end of every day.

The Pentagon, as we know, we covered extensively on the show, has tried to severely limit press access to what they do. Certainly from the building, now I know that the Pentagon press corps, the legitimate press corps, I'll call it, has been allowed back in the building for these wartime briefings after leaving last October. How has the attempt to limit press coverage affected your ability and reporters' ability to faithfully cover this war?

It's hard to know what you don't know having not been in the building but I can tell you as someone who was a resident there for over 15, 16 years actually, that being able to even just get the vibe inside the US military's headquarters has long been something that really helped reporters understand the twists and turns of conflict.

In last week, there was a major hearing in Washington, and if you'll permit me, the judge at that hearing had questioned the government's arguments about keeping press out, and he noted that, I'm going to read this.

He said, in my lifetime, we've been through the Vietnam War, the Republic was lied to a lot. We've been through 9-11, the conflict in Kuwait, Iraq, and Guantanamo Bay.

I understand a lot of things need to be held secure, but openness and transparency allow the public to know what the government is doing in times of peace, but especially in times of war.

Well, that's some important context Dakota. I want to follow on what Phil has said here. The Pentagon papers showed that military planners and politicians lied to the public for years about Vietnam. This is just a little bit of the history.

The Bush administration is infamous now for starting the war in Iraq on a false claim of weapons of mass destruction under the control of Saddam Hussein.

Here, President Trump claimed there was a threat of imminent attack from Iran in the days before the war. The administration's own briefing since in Congress have contradicted that US officials have claimed Iran was a week away from being able to build a nuclear bomb, and briefings have contradicted that.

So how do these initial explanation and America's collective experience with false justifications for war affect the trust that we the public can put into anything this president or figures like Hegseth, Rubio, the Secretary of State, say about the war going forward?

It is a massive problem. You know, in a republic such as ours, we have popular sovereignty. That's right in the Constitution where it says we the people of the United States. So the public is sovereign.

And if inevitably the interests of the public are going to be impacted by a war. And so there needs to be accountability to the public in explanation of why use of military forces necessary, how that use of military force is unfolding.

But especially in the context that you mentioned where in multiple armed conflicts in the past, the government has been less than honest with the public.

And this administration has a particularly poor record when it comes to being people of integrity.

So it's a massive problem. So I think there needs to be a much clearer explanation of the goals of the war, how it's unfolding.

And we also need to see a legal explanation. To the best of my knowledge, this administration has not published an argument for why this war is legal under the Constitution and under international law.

And there's massive reason to think that it's egregiously unconstitutional and illegal under international law. And you know, that's just a stunning lack of accountability.

Phil. Well, I mean, that's a, that's a really interesting point, you know, experts that we spoke to in the run up to the conflict.

We're asking that very question because usually there needs to be some explanation of the imminence of the threat to a nation in order to wage war against another.

The president seemed to know that that's why he pointed to imminence that a couple of days later we found out really wasn't there.

Right. So, you know, the questions were, you know, was Iran on the verge of having a nuclear weapon? Was there some imminent threat there?

You know, experts would say that no, there was not. You know, was Iran on the verge of having an ICBM capable of striking the United States?

Again, experts would say no. So the imminence argument was hard to really understand.

And there was an idea that maybe Iran would preempt the United States in negotiations by launching, you know, attacks against US bases, but you know, reporting on that hasn't held that up either.

We got this from Gary about Congress. For me, it's the willful conspiracy to void a critical provision of the Constitution.

It's a direct attack on our republic pretty close to treason in my book says Gary and we got this from Denise.

The current occupant of the White House owes us the public his resignation.

He continues to undermine our democracy and destroy our standing in the international community enough as enough says Denise.

Well, there's another wrinkle in this story that I want to ask you both about over the weekend, the chair of the Federal Communications Commission, Brennan Carr, indicated in a post on ex that broadcasters

needed to change their news coverage around the Iran war quote before their license renewals come up.

The president posted on Sunday that media that he approves of Brennan Carr's efforts stories.

He considers fake news should be quote brought up on charges of treason reporters and news outlets brought up on charges of treason.

Phil, how do you understand that kind of threat from the administration aimed at the media itself and aimed at the very heart of fact finding and faithful reporting?

Well, you know, this gets to an issue that the Pentagon Press Association and I'm a board member of that group had been concerned about, which is that is reporting seen as a criminal act potentially by the administration.

When it comes to asking questions, asking questions that might not be seen as in the interest of that administration.

And so, you know, the argument that was made in that court case, again, that I referenced earlier by the government attorney was that if a journalist solicits the word was solicit, you know, classified or sensitive information, they're not protected by the First Amendment and obviously the the PPA does not agree with that.

Dakota, what's your take on the chairman of the FCC warning holders of broadcast license that their licenses could be in trouble if they don't get on board with the administration's message.

Well, this fits a pattern, which is that this Trump administration is endlessly generating more evidence to support the claim of its critics that it is authoritarian.

This is just standard authoritarian autocratic behavior to try to intimidate the media, take over the media, force the media to run messages that the government approves.

And we've seen exactly this sort of thing where the media, you know, is criticized by the government that's in charge and they try to bludgeon it using whatever regulatory approaches they have or get, you know, billionaire buddies to buy out the media.

We've seen this in Hungary, we've seen this in Russia, we've seen this in so many places and so it is just the latest example and we see this in so many different areas where this administration.

You know, it gets very upset when people say that they're authoritarian or dictatorial or fascist or whatever and then they endlessly generate more evidence to support that claim and so I think people should be really alarmed by that.

In the last Pentagon press conference, I also remember, I think Secretary Hegg said something along the lines of the sooner that David Ellison buys CNN the better.

What did he mean by that?

Well, I think he meant that, you know, maybe it's hard to know he didn't explicitly say it, but you know, some folks afterwards commented that he's looking to see CNN either, you know, destroyed or changed.

Now to be clear, when he talks about Ellison, that's paramount. Paramount took over CBS. A lot of people have been watching his CBS news coverage appears to be changing to a more pro Trump posture and here's the Secretary of Defense saying the sooner this happens to CNN, the better.

That's how I took it at a press conference.

Yeah, telling everybody.

Dakota, shift gears a little bit, you study something called secret law.

What is secret law? Why is it important here and how does it inform what we're talking about with the war in Iran?

Yeah, thanks. No, it's very, very relevant.

So secret law, it sounds terrifying, but it's a thing in America.

And as my scholarship has indicated, it is present. It is produced by all three branches of the federal government. Basically, it is legal rules that are real law, real rules that are not published.

And it is a limited exception to the general expectation and norm that we have in a republic that the law is published, so we can all go read it.

There are various examples of this. The one that comes up here most immediately is secret law and the executive branch.

And what may be happening here is that the Trump administration has produced a legal memo of some kind, which lays out their case as to why this Iran war is legal under the US Constitution, legal under international law, but they've classified it or not published it.

And unfortunately, there are a lot of examples over the decades, especially during the George W Bush administration, where legal memos, which made dramatic departures from how the read, how the law just read, if you sat down and read it, right?

Basically made dramatic departures in secret legal documents from how the law appeared to the public, but then classified it, but of course moved ahead on that basis.

This happened with the Pentagon strikes in the Caribbean and the Western Pacific. There was secret legal justification, as I recall, anybody correct me if this is wrong, Phil?

Secret legal justifications that were not revealed to the public until reporters got their hands on them and did publish what these articles, what these memos were arguing, justifying preemptive extra judicial US strikes on boats on the high seas.

Dakota, I have that right, don't I?

Yeah, that's exactly right. I mean, so this administration has been using, you know, just as you said, classified legal explanations for things.

And unfortunately, what we've seen when these documents get published is they're terrible.

The quality is so low as I read one of these documents about the Caribbean operations.

Like I really started to wonder, did they just drop a question into chat GPT? I mean, it was just it's such poor work, but this is one of the problems of secret law is that when you when you when you make the law secret, and especially legal memos that do analysis, what you do is you shield false claims, and you also shield crappy legal work.

And so I think it's long past time for the public to ask and Congress to legally require that any legal document that does any important work has got to be published.

Phil, Stuart, let's boil this down. I mean, why does this really matter? The need for the administration, the president, especially the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of Secretary of State to go directly to the public and earn support for a war like this.

I mean, you could argue, hey, that's what midterms are for. Stop complaining. You don't like it. Vote against it. The elections are coming in a few months. That's one argument. Why does this opacity, this hiding of the truth and this this culture of shifting explanations really matter?

Well, you know, if you speak to experts on on US military history and US and the US military currently, they would they would tell you that, you know, public support is important for any war. And ultimately, you know, the America's sons and daughters are being sent off and to fight these wars.

And so having public support is obviously critical. And and and part of that is building this case in public for why this is necessary and why it's being done correctly. And you it is very unusual to see the US, you know, trying to build that that support kind of retroactively right now, you're seeing the president calling on allies to send ships off to police, the straight of her moves and he's finding some probably uncomfortable resistance from from people that he's dependent on for a long time, like Australia.

So the public case for war is is fundamental, both at home and abroad. What's your biggest unanswered question? I'm sorry to ask you that because I'm sure as a veteran reporter, you have about 50. What does the public need to know now today about this war? Is it about the straight of her moves? Is it about the president's ability to keep this war going prices? What is it? You know, it's just the question popped in my mind, an old patriots question, which is, you know, how does this end?

How does this end? The president says it ends when he feels it in his bones. How does it end? How, indeed, that's Phil Stewart Chief National Security correspondent for Reuters. Also Dakota Rudicill Law Professor at the Ohio State University who served a senior staff in the Senate worked on intelligence matters in the Obama administration. Phil, Dakota, thank you both so much for joining us.

Today's producer was Michael Fallero. This program comes to you from WAMU, part of American University in Washington, distributed by NPR. I'm Todd Zwillig. This is one thing.

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