President Donald Trump and his national security team meet in the Situation Room of the White House, Saturday, June 21, 2025. (Official White House Photo by Daniel Torok)
Typically, before any president of the United States makes a significant foreign policy decision, they consult with the "Gang of Eight" — leaders from the House and Senate and the chairs and ranking members of each chamber's respective intelligence committees — before going forward. But multiple Gang of Eight Democrats in Congress say President Donald Trump left them out of the loop before he ordered airstrikes on Iran last weekend.
NBC Capitol Hill correspondent Ryan Nobles told MSNBC host Katy Tur on Tuesday that several Democrats are publicly assailing the president for excluding them from national security briefings they say are necessary for decision-making in the midst of sensitive military operations. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said that while Trump called him before carrying out the attacks, the conversation was incredibly brief and that he had no time to ask detailed questions.
"The Constitution, the law, requires us to be alerted. And we're not on a regular basis. We're not at all," he said. "The one time they called me, they wouldn't give me any details, or even tell me the country. It was [a] ten-second conversation."
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Senate Intelligence Committee ranking member Mark Warner (D-Va.) also publicly criticized the administration for cutting him out of intelligence briefings, saying it was "unprecedented" for any president to not brief Gang of Eight members when committing U.S. military resources in a foreign country.
I characterize it as so many things in the second Trump [administration], unprecedented," Warner said. "And I think people that kind of just blow it off or ignore it, some of my Republican friends, I think they do so setting extraordinarily bad precedents."
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) defended Trump's decision to move forward with Iranian strikes without consulting Democratic Gang of Eight members in a Fox News interview on Tuesday. The Louisiana Republican argued that House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) was unavailable when Trump attempted to make contact with him, necessitating a decision to pull the trigger on the operation without a Gang of Eight briefing.
"The Democratic leader, he wasn't available when they called. And that's just the way these things go," Johnson said. "It is ridiculous for anyone to assert that the commander in chief, using his Article II power under the Constitution, should have to consult all the members of Congress — or even all the leadership in Congress — every time he has to make a decisive quick action. I mean, that would that would not be feasible."
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Watch Nobles' segment below, or by clicking this link.