Biggs, Schweikert back Trump on Iran despite past war power stance

WASHINGTON – Reps. Andy Biggs and David Schweikert, who have long argued that presidents lack the power to go to war without congressional approval, set aside those qualms Thursday and backed President Donald Trump’s decision to attack Iran.

Both Arizona Republicans are running for governor in the July 21 primary, and neither can afford to anger the president or his base. Trump has endorsed Biggs.

“I believe it was the right vote,” Schweikert, R-Fountain Hills, told Cronkite News in a brief interview after the House voted 219-212 to reject a resolution forcing Trump to end hostilities with Iran.

He declined to elaborate or explain how support for the attacks that began Feb. 28 squares with his views on presidential authority. He posts those views on his website: “The power to declare war rests exclusively with Congress, not the Executive branch.”

Neither Biggs nor Schweikert has publicly praised the decision to attack Iran. That remained true after Thursday’s vote.

“I strongly support Congress exercising its constitutional role on matters of war and peace,” Biggs, R-Gilbert, said in a statement after the vote, “but the resolution addressed a situation that does not exist. President Trump’s targeted actions to neutralize threats from the Iranian regime fall squarely within his Article II authority as Commander in Chief and within the parameters of the War Powers Act of 1973.”

The House vote came one day after the Senate voted 53-47 to kill a similar resolution. Arizona Sens. Mark Kelly and Ruben Gallego were on the losing side with other Democrats and one Republican.

In the House, just two Republicans voted to curb Trump’s war power, while only four Democrats voted to affirm it. The six Republicans and three Democrats from Arizona all voted with their party.

“The Islamic Republic is a brutal regime that has massacred its own people at a scale unprecedented in this century,” Phoenix Rep. Yassamin Ansari, the first Iranian-American Democrat in Congress, said after the vote. “We must hold the regime accountable for its horrific crimes.”

But she said, “The Constitution is clear: the power to declare war rests with Congress. … The fate of the Iranian people and the United States are at stake.”

Biggs defended his vote, and the apparent contradiction with his previous stance on presidential war powers, by arguing the Iran conflict doesn’t amount to a war.

“The president’s actions were limited and strategic, consistent with longstanding precedent used by both Republican and Democrat administrations. Targeted military operations aimed at protecting American personnel and preventing Iran from advancing toward nuclear capability do not constitute open-ended war,” he said.

But Biggs has previously accused presidents of overstepping their authority in episodes involving much less extensive military operations – none of which included the death of the adversary’s leader. Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed in an air strike in the early hours of the conflict, along with other top Iranian leaders.

When President Joe Biden ordered air strikes against Houthi targets in Yemen in January 2024, Biggs posted on X that “Biden’s airstrikes in Yemen blatantly violate Article I of our Constitution. He can’t unilaterally pull us into another war. Why does he want so many wars?”

In 2019, Biggs co-founded a bipartisan War Powers Caucus with liberal Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., stating that “the framers of the Constitution were committed to ensuring that Congress be at the heart of all decision-making related to our country going to war.”

Trump was president at the time.

In January 2020, Biggs and Schweikertwere among just 11 House Republicans who voted with Democrats to limit Trump’s ability to pursue military action without approval from Congress. The measure failed.

In July 2020, Biggs and Florida Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz proposed a repeal of the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force in order to end the broad leeway Congress gave presidents during the “war on terror” after the Sept. 11 attacks. The measure failed.

On Thursday, Biggs said he was satisfied with the mission described by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth: “Protect American lives, dismantle the regime’s ability to threaten the region, and ensure Iran never obtains a nuclear weapon.”

“I will always support the constitutional balance of powers, but I will also support a president who is acting lawfully and within his constitutional authority to decisively keep Americans safe,” Biggs said.

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