[Congressional Record Volume 172, Number 114 (Tuesday, July 14, 2026)]
[Senate]
[Page S3915]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                  IRAN

  Mr. SCHUMER. Now, Mr. President, on Iran and the NDAA, when all the 
Trump administration can say about his disastrous war with Iran is that 
Vietnam was worse--a point Trump made yesterday--he reveals the scale 
of his failure. This is what Donald Trump said. The only thing he can 
say is that Vietnam was worse.
  Oh my God, a war that killed close to 50,000 Americans, a war that 
lasted almost a decade, a war that ripped America apart in ways that 
took decades to recover is what he compares Iran to? Oh my God.
  Trump's supposed cease-fire deal has completely collapsed. Our troops 
are coming under attack. The Strait of Hormuz is a minefield, and gas 
prices are going back up. Donald Trump is totally out of his depth. In 
fact, Donald Trump is drowning in the Strait of Hormuz because he has 
no plan. He had no plan when he got America into this war, and he has 
no plan on how to get us out. Trump started the war without 
authorization, without a strategy, without an exit.
  The reason that we have war powers acts is to force an administration 
to think through the consequences of going to war ahead of time. Trump, 
of course, didn't listen. Finally, after weeks, bipartisan majorities 
in both Chambers of Congress voted to end it. We had tried and tried. 
Finally, enough Republicans joined us, but Donald Trump ignored them.
  Now the White House has formally notified Congress that hostilities 
have resumed; that American strikes are underway again; and that our 
forces remain positioned for more. Yet Republicans want the Senate to 
take up the NDAA--the Defense bill--as though none of this is 
happening, as though Congress can debate the Nation's central national 
security bill while ignoring the Nation's most urgent national security 
crisis. We cannot.
  I will be voting no.
  The President is waging an unauthorized war in defying bipartisan 
majorities in Congress and in refusing to level with the American 
people about the cost, the mission, or the endgame. The NDAA cannot 
become a permission slip for that recklessness that we see occurring in 
Iran. Donald Trump does not get to drag the American people deeper into 
a war he cannot explain and does not know how to end and then demand 
Congress look the other way.
  Donald Trump and the administration have no authorization, no 
strategy, no peace, no blank check. Therefore, a day after the 
President told Congress that his war is back on, I am a no--a strong 
no--on the NDAA.

                          ____________________