Republicans bat down bid to handcuff Trump’s war powers as peace deal nears

By Fox News · Fox News

Senate Republicans narrowly halted another attempt to handcuff President Donald Trump's war authority in Iran as a peace deal begins to take shape. The latest failed war-powers resolution, this time from Sen. Raphael Warnock , D-Ga., comes after Trump signed a memorandum of understanding with the Iranian government that could lead to an end to the war. While Congress is still in the dark on the details of the deal, Republicans still stood behind the president Tuesday. Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., who has led the Democrats’ war powers efforts for the last several months, argued that while a possible deal was a good thing, it appeared the U.S. and Iran would be headed to an "intermission" in fighting as both sides hammered out the final details of a longer peace deal. TRUMP'S IRAN DEAL SPARKS GOP DEMANDS FOR VOTE AS CONGRESS REMAINS IN THE DARK "An intermission is a great time to do what we should have done before this war, which is have the consultation with Congress that the Constitution requires," Kaine said. "Why restart a war if we haven't done our job?" Still, Warnock’s resolution failed despite a previous effort advancing in the Senate last month when a cohort of Senate Republicans joined nearly all Senate Democrats to rebuke the war. That same group, Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, Bill Cassidy, R-La., Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, and Rand Paul, R-Ky., joined all Democrats to vote for the resolution. But absences on both sides of the aisle helped the GOP in their effort to give Trump more runway to hammer out a deal to end the war. TRUMP'S PUSH FOR $350 BILLION 'ARSENAL OF FREEDOM' HITS GOP SKEPTICISM Senate Foreign Relations Chair James Risch, R-Idaho, argued that Democrats were effectively trying to "help Iran" with Democrats' war powers efforts, and he countered that if the resolution passed, Iran would back out of any forthcoming peace deal. "If a miracle happened, a miracle happened, and this passed, got through the Senate, got through the House, and the president…