Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA) is calling on House Speaker Mike Johnson to immediately reconvene Congress and hold a vote on a War Powers Resolution as President Trump escalates threats against Iran, warning today (Tuesday) that a “whole civilization will die tonight” if a deal is not reached.
Beyer, whose 8th District includes Arlington, described Trump’s threats as “sick” and “murderous” and accused Republicans of enabling what he called “an immoral and unwell man willing to wield it recklessly.”
“My Republican colleagues in Congress continue to abdicate their duty and turn a blind eye as the President makes unhinged threats to obliterate an entire civilization in clear violation of basic human decency and American ideals,” Beyer said. “This is a moral failure and cowardice of the highest order.”
He called on Johnson to bring the House back into session “immediately to reclaim its constitutional authority, serve as a desperately needed check on this increasingly erratic president, and vote on a War Powers Resolution to put an end to this madness at once.”
Trump threatened Tuesday that a “whole civilization will die tonight” if Iran fails to meet his latest deadline to strike a deal that includes reopening the Strait of Hormuz, while the Islamic Republic urged young people to form human chains around power plants and other potential targets, according to the Associated Press.
The president insisted the deadline is final and will expire at 8 p.m. in Washington unless there is a major diplomatic breakthrough. Tehran has rejected a 45-day ceasefire proposal, saying it wants a permanent end to the war.
Pakistan’s prime minister urged Trump to extend his deadline by two weeks to allow diplomacy to advance. In a post on X, Shehbaz Sharif, whose country has been leading negotiations, also asked Iran to open up for two weeks the strait through which a fifth of the world’s oil transits in peacetime, the AP reported. The White House said Trump had been informed of the proposal and would respond.
Even before the deadline, airstrikes hit two bridges and a train station, and the U.S. hit military infrastructure on Kharg Island, a key hub for Iranian oil production. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israeli warplanes struck bridges and railways in Iran.
Beyer has previously called for limiting U.S. military involvement in the Iran conflict, and Virginia’s Democratic congressional delegation denounced the strikes shortly after they began in late February.
In his statement Tuesday, Beyer pointed to a series of what he described as failures to check presidential power — including the Senate’s confirmation of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Congress’s failure to stop unlawful boat strikes in the Caribbean, and the repeated defeat of War Powers Resolutions.
“The message from Secretary Hegseth and President Trump has been a clear and consistent endorsement of impunity for criminal acts under the color of our flag,” Beyer said. “And Republicans in the House and Senate have pulled out all the stops on multiple occasions to defeat War Powers Resolutions that would have stopped this war.”
“Now, the President is emboldened and untethered from consequences,” he said. “He is escalating threats that, if carried out, would constitute egregious war crimes committed on behalf of the United States government and the American people. This moment demands urgent congressional intervention.”
Trump’s expansive threat prompted Democrats in Congress, some United Nations officials and scholars in military law to say such strikes would violate international law. Tehran’s representative at the U.N. said the threats “constitute incitement to war crimes and potentially genocide,” the AP reported.
In Rome, Pope Leo XIV said Tuesday that the threats were “truly unacceptable.” French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said that attacks targeting civilian and energy infrastructure could constitute a war crime. Trump has said he’s “not at all” concerned about committing war crimes.
More than 1,900 people have been killed in Iran since the war began, according to the AP, but the government has not updated the toll for days.
Rep. James Walkinshaw (D-VA), whose 11th District includes parts of Fairfax County, also condemned Trump’s rhetoric in a statement Tuesday, calling his comments “unhinged, out of control, criminal.”
“It’s past time for Congress to end Trump’s dangerous war in Iran before it and he spirals even further out of control,” Walkinshaw said. “Republican leaders will explain this away, as they always do. But they won’t be able to escape the moral and political responsibility they hold for enabling this.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
