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No Democrat Should Give Trump a Blank Check for His Illegal War

The case for opposing funding for Trump's War in Iran

Dan Pfeiffer

Mar 11

READ IN APP

Trump’s illegal regime change war in Iran has reached its second week, and things are not going well. Yes, the U.S. and Israel are bombing the hell out of Iran, but the region has been thrust into complete chaos. Iran just appointed a new Ayatollah who is vehemently anti-American, with no signs of the complete surrender that Trump has demanded. The war is costing the U.S. at least a billion dollars a day. The Strait of Hormuz is closed, and gas prices have

This was a strategic and moral disaster. Democrats have almost universally opposed the war. Most have aggressively criticized Trump for his capricious decision to go to war.

And yet — there is always an And Yet — many Democrats who oppose the war seem prepared to turn around and vote to fund it.

A number of Democrats have refused to rule out voting for the $50 billion that Trump is going to request to pay for the war.

This would be a catastrophic mistake.

The Moral Case

In the run-up to and aftermath of the Iran War, Trump and his administration have been unable to answer basic questions about why we are at war, what the plan is, or what victory looks like. Is the goal to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon? If so, why did Trump say he’d already obliterated their program just two weeks ago? If the goal is regime change, what kind of regime do we want? Trump has said he wants freedom for the Iranian people — and also that he’d be comfortable with a Venezuela-style situation where the current regime stays in place. He has also called for complete and total surrender. And if the goal is to inspire a pro-American uprising, why are we bombing civilian infrastructure?

The Trump administration can’t make a coherent case for this war because there isn’t one. They made this momentous decision with almost no thought to its potentially calamitous consequences. Eight American soldiers are dead. 150 more have been wounded. More than a hundred Iranian schoolgirls and many more civilians have been killed. Struggling American families are paying more at the pump.

And for what?

No articulated strategic imperative. No imminent threat. Trump started a war just because he thought he could — without asking Congress for authorization or building any public consent.

It’s one of the most irresponsible decisions made by a U.S. president in modern history. Democrats are right to oppose it, and they would be wrong to fund it.

Many have drawn comparisons to the Iraq War, when Democrats repeatedly voted to pay for a conflict many of them opposed. Even then-Senator Obama voted for Iraq funding bills. That muscle memory is causing so many Democrats to be open to funding Trump’s war today.

Maybe those votes were a mistake — I’m open to that critique. But this is a fundamentally different situation. Congress authorized the Iraq War. Bush went through the steps he was supposed to take. And there were troops on the ground that needed armored Humvees and other supplies.

None of that is true here. This war is illegal. Trump never sought authorization. The war is on such shaky legal footing that some Republicans won’t even use the word “war” to describe it. The whole thing is enough to make Kafka blush.

Because Trump and the Republicans won’t seek authorization, the only lever Democrats have to stop this war is the funding. That is not a power they should cede lightly.

Trump is reportedly considering deploying ground troops. That can only happen if Democrats fund the war.

Voting to fund it is handing Donald Trump a blank check. Any Democrat who does so will bear responsibility for whatever comes next — in a war being waged by an irrational and unpredictable president with no plan and no endgame.

The Political Case

I know it can feel trite to talk about politics in moments like these, but we are in a high-stakes fight for the future of this country. The only way to stop Trump and protect democracy is to win more political power. In that sense, thinking about politics isn’t a distraction — it’s a moral obligation.

And the political case against funding this war could not be more compelling.

First, nobody wants this war. A Quinnipiac poll released Monday found 53% oppose and only 40% support — a number consistent across all the polling since the war began. That includes a significant chunk of Trump voters. Approval for the Iran War basically tracks Trump’s overall approval rating, which tells you something important: almost no one who still approves of Trump is a persuadable voter in 2026. We are trying to win over the majority of Americans who disapprove of Trump and his war.

Second, even the war’s supporters aren’t really into it. In most polls, the number of people who strongly disapprove of this war is roughly twice as large as the number who strongly approve.

Third, the American people don’t see Iran as a serious threat. An NPR/Marist poll found that 55% of Americans — including 60% of independents — see Iran as a minor threat or no threat at all.

Finally, voters don’t trust Trump to wage war. There are some Democrats genuinely wrestling with whether they have an obligation to fund troops in the field. But most are simply afraid of being painted as anti-military by Trump, Fox News, and the right-wing media machine. These Democrats were around — or came of age — in post-9/11 America. They remember Max Cleland being compared to Osama Bin Laden.

Here’s the thing: those attacks only work when the person making them has credibility on national security. Trump doesn’t. In the Quinnipiac poll, 55% disapprove of his performance as Commander in Chief, 57% disapprove of him on foreign policy, and 57% disapprove of his handling of Iran. These are brutal numbers.

The polling makes the case, but there’s a bigger strategic imperative here too. To vote to fund is to give Trump a veneer of bipartisan cover for an illegal, costly war that nobody wants. Why would Democrats do that? Why would they accept shared responsibility for a war they believe is a bad idea, poorly executed, and actively damaging the economy?

The internal Democratic polling I’ve seen shows that the most powerful argument against this war connects the billions being spent in Iran to what’s being cut at home — a trillion dollars slashed from Medicaid, rural hospitals closing, Americans losing their health coverage.

Voting to fund the war hands Trump a free pass on all of it.

And there’s something even bigger at stake. Voters already think Democrats are too weak to stand up to Trump. Some of that criticism is fair. Some of it reflects unrealistic expectations. But voting to fund this war — at this moment — would validate that criticism in the most vivid and politically catastrophic way imaginable.

It's not enough for Democratic leaders to sit back and see where the wind blows. This is exactly the moment voters are watching to see whether Democrats actually stand for something. Fight to stop this funding, and bring as many Democrats with them as possible.