Rep. Jill Tokuda critiques President Trump's unilateral 10-day Israel-Lebanon ceasefire and associated Iran blockade as a costly "war" risking American lives and inflating prices. She urges Democrats to support a War Powers Resolution vote today to hold the administration accountable before the May 1st deadline, while referencing Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's tenure issues regarding Signal Gate and mass firings. Ultimately, the segment highlights growing congressional pushback against executive overreach in foreign policy. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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America's War Powers Crisis00:05:22
I just had excellent conversations with the highly respected President Joseph Aoun of Lebanon and Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu of Israel.
These two leaders have agreed that in order to achieve peace between their countries, they will formally begin a 10-day ceasefire at 5 p.m. Eastern.
On Tuesday, the two countries met for the first time in 34 years here in Washington, D.C. with our great Secretary of State, Marco Rubio.
I have directed Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Rubio, together with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Dan Raisin Kane, to work with Israel and Lebanon to achieve a lasting peace.
It has been my honor to solve nine wars across the world, and this will be my 10th.
So let's get it done.
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Congresswoman Jill Takuda joins us now, a Democrat from Hawaii.
She's a member of the House Armed Services Committee.
And Congresswoman, it was less than an hour ago that we heard Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth speak to reporters at the Pentagon.
He said, among other things, that the blockade that is happening right now is, quote, the polite way, telling the Iranian regime to choose wisely.
Your energy industry is not destroyed yet, saying we prefer to do it the nice way or we can do it the hard way.
Your thoughts on the blockade and what happens in the remaining days of this ceasefire.
Right, and let's just remember that there aren't many days left in this ceasefire.
We are literally talking about less than a week coming up on when this very fragile, quite frankly, ceasefire will end.
And we also need to remember that this is Trump's war.
Let's call it what it is.
This is not, this was a unilateral decision.
This was not the will of the people.
This was President Trump and his minions and his cabinet executing this war on Iran that ultimately is costing taxpayers dollars.
It is costing gas to go up.
It's costing food to go up.
This is a war in America that it's becoming right now.
And this latest blockade, we have to remember, a blockade like this takes a lot of resources.
And right now, with the kind of threats that Secretary Hagseth is issuing, it's putting American service members' lives at risk as well.
What's your expectation for what happens with this war powers vote today in the House?
We saw it defeated yesterday in the Senate.
Is it likely to have any different results today in the House?
Well, I can tell you that Democrats are going to stand firm again and vote in support of the war powers resolution.
All we need are a few brave souls to really take a step back and think about this.
Do they want their legacy to be flawed by Trump's war?
Do they want their constituents to look at them and ask, why?
Why is my gas prices going up?
Why are our service members putting themselves in harm way for a war in which we have no idea of when it will end?
We have been hearing for days and weeks now the president say this is over.
We've won already.
We're going to be out soon.
And here we are today with thousands and thousands of more troops headed to the Middle East as we speak right now.
Let us hope that today, when we once again vote for that war powers resolutions, that we can have a few brave souls from the Republican side find their courage, put partisan politics aside, take back our power as Congress to actually declare war and vote in favor of the resolution.
Why have this vote now?
Why not wait until the 60-day mark of the beginning of a conflict as laid out in the War Powers Resolution of 1973?
The president can take action for 60 days and then he has to come and either ask for an extension or end it.
Why does this have to happen now?
And I know the 60-day mark is May 1st, so it's close, but there's still some time.
The American people will tell you that we don't have time to wait.
Let's think about the sacrifices that they are making every single day, paying at the pump, questioning whether they can't even afford food to put on their tables.
And I have heard from service members, families worried, worried about where their husbands and their wives, their sons and their daughters will end up going in the next days, weeks, or potentially months, depending on how long this war actually lasts.
We don't have time to wait.
And that's why every single day that we have the opportunity to put that resolution on the floor, we need to hold people accountable to the way that they vote.
And that's something that everyone, Democrats and Republicans, have to remember.
Their constituents will look at them and ask them, how did you vote to support, yes, American freedom, but also to make sure that we have the freedom to be able to live and work and thrive here in our own country.
And right now, too many Americans don't have that luxury because things are just far too unaffordable as a result of Trump's war.
How would you vote on an impeachment resolution against the Defense Secretary?
Holding Congress Accountable00:00:36
There was one of those filed yesterday by your colleague, Congresswoman Ansari of Arizona, a fellow Democrat.
Are you on board with the idea of impeaching Pete Hegseth?
From the very beginning of his tumultuous tenure in this position with Signal Gate, with a lot of the flawed decision-making that we saw coming out, his mass firing of top generals.
We'll leave this here, but you can finish watching it if you go to our website, cspan.org.
Live now to remarks from Israeli UN Ambassador Danny Dinan, speaking after an announced ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon.