Punchbowl News senior Congressional Reporter Andrew Desiderio reports some Republicans are pushing back against a move by President Donald Trump's administration to exclude Democrats from important military decisions.
The administration did not invite Democrats to a “boat strikes briefing” pertaining to a rash of Congressionally unauthorized bombings against Venezuelan outboard motor boats, which the Trump administration claims are transporting illegal drugs to the U.S.
“The 'boat strikes briefing' that [U.S. Sen. Mike] Warner (D-Va.) and top [Democrats] weren’t invited to was organized for GOP senators who were on the fence about the war powers resolution,” reported Desiderio on X. The meeting included U.S. Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.) and Sen. Mike Lee R-Utah, who Desiderio said sought more info on the legal justification of the strikes as well as briefings from the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel.
NBC News Capitol Hill Correspondent Melanie Zanona posted on X that U.S. Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), who was at the GOP-only briefing, told NBC News that he personally told “the Trump administration that those type of briefings should be bipartisan, and he called it ‘unfortunate’ that Dems weren’t there.”
Rounds added that the meeting was “initially just a smaller briefing that had been specifically requested by a select few members, who were not on the committee — and when other Republicans heard about the briefing, they decided to join.”
But other critics complained of exclusion, no matter how innocuously Trump administrators arranged it.
“Huge new precedent set here — future Dem admins will now be able to freeze out GOP members from classified briefings,” warned Huffpost Senior Political Reporter Igor Bobic on X.
Desiderio added in a followup post on X that the White House "is blaming GOP Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.) for this because he provided the list of other Republican senators who were on the fence about the war powers resolution." Desiderio added further that the list was actually expanded beyond what Young sent, to include Intel Chair Cotton (R-Ark.) and Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair Sen. Jim Risch (R-Idaho) and others.