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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now we turn to the developing politics around the US bombing of Iran as both the damage from the strikes and the political fallout following them continue to be assessed. Members of Congress, mostly Democrats but some Republicans, are questioning President Trump's order to strike Iran without first seeking congressional approval. Representatives Ro Khanna, a Democrat, and Thomas Massie, a Republican, put forth a bipartisan War Powers Resolution in response that would limit the president's powers to call for military action.

Yesterday, Democratic Congressman Al Green filed an article of impeachment against President Trump, accusing the president of failing to notify or seek authorization from Congress before the strikes. The articles of impeachment were overwhelmingly rejected already, following a vote. This pattern from Trump isn't just Trump. In fact, over the past couple of decades, presidents from either political party have been deploying the military more and more without congressional authority, despite what it says in the Constitution, or finding loopholes in that.

Joining us to walk through some of that history and the latest is Carol Lee, Washington Managing Editor for NBC News. Hey, Carol, welcome back to WNYC. Oh, we don't have her. Okay. We're still getting her line hooked up. Listeners, you can call in for Carol Lee on this question. 212-433-WNYC. I'm also going to ask her if she's hearing any reverberations yet in DC, especially in the ranks of national Democrats, regarding the nomination of Zohran Mamdani for mayor of New York yesterday. 212-433-WNYC. I'm going to play a clip of Senator Tim Kaine, Democrat from Virginia, on Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan on Sunday. Listen to this.

Senator Tim Kaine: We've invaded two neighbors of Iran, Afghanistan and Iraq, to topple their regimes since 2000. Those were wars. This is the US jumping into a war of choice at Donald Trump's urging without any compelling national security interest for the United States to act in this way, particularly without a debate and vote in Congress. We should not be sending troops and risking troops' lives in an offensive war without a debate in Congress.

Brian Lehrer: There's Tim Kaine. There are a couple of things in there worth unpacking. Senator Kaine said we are in an offensive war without a debate in Congress. There's a bit of a technicality there. Does an airstrike need the same amount of authorization as a ground effort? Also, the Washington Post reports that members of Congress, mostly Democrats, weren't even given a customary courtesy call, as they call it, to let them know in advance. If we do get Carol Lee, and I think she's almost hooked up now, we're definitely going to ask about that.

There's also a leaked Defense Intelligence Agency assessment reported by the BBC, CNN and others that suggests the core components of Iran's nuclear program have not been destroyed and the strikes only set back Iran's efforts by months rather than years, certainly not "totally obliterated," as the president is repeatedly claiming. Now we have Carol E. Lee, Washington Managing Editor for NBC News. Hey, Carol, welcome back to WNYC.

Carol E. Lee: Happy to be here. Thanks for having me.

Brian Lehrer: Can we start on that point that I was just referencing, the back and forth on just how much damage was done by these strikes?

Carol E. Lee: Yes, this is a point of contention. Look, just to set the stage a little bit. These assessments can take a lot of time. Obviously, Iran is not a country that US can just go into and look around and see what happened. What you're seeing is there's various intelligence agencies within the US government. One of them, the Defense Intelligence Agency, which is the military's version, has an assessment, an initial assessment, an early one, that said that it was not-- Iran's program was set back a matter of months, that it was not "obliterated" as the president said.

That's an assessment from one agency at an early phase in this. What you're seeing is, politically speaking, the president really pushing back on that, saying that this is wrong, that this is-- In his news conference that he just wrapped in the Netherlands, he admitted that it's legit, that it exists, but he's saying that it's not correct. Then you see the president's opponents of his strikes in Iran, including Democrats, saying, "Look, this shows that this wasn't what he said it was going to be," and seizing on it. The reality is that no one knows yet because it's too soon to know.

There are preliminary reports coming in. The Israelis have one where they say it set the program back years, and there's obviously a lot of intelligence gathering going on, but they're very much in the middle of this. This is one assessment, and there'll be a lot of others. Then they'll look at holistically what happened. I think for the opponents of the president, the concerns that they're raising are that this is somehow-- the president has already put out a conclusion, and now there'll be some reverse engineering and manipulating of intelligence to make sure that he is right.

Brian Lehrer: What are the actual implications of the difference between setting Iran's nuclear program back months versus years? Would it wind up in another attack by the US, even separate from whatever Israel is doing? Would it wind up in another attack by the US if it was less than the president claimed?

Carol E. Lee: That's one of the open questions. If the president ordered strikes to achieve a very specific goal, which he has said as destroying Iran's nuclear infrastructure and program, what does that mean if that didn't happen? You're asking exactly the right question, which is, then does the US say, "We've got to do something again?" Do the Israelis say, this is not something that we can live with, and so we have to do something again? That remains to be an open question.

Brian Lehrer: I mentioned in the intro before you got hooked up that members of Congress, mostly Democrats, but some Republicans, are questioning Trump's order to strike Iran without first seeking congressional approval. Representatives Ro Khanna, Democrat, and Thomas Massie, a Republican, put forth that bipartisan War Powers Resolution that would limit the president's powers to call for military action. Can you describe that resolution for us?

Carol E. Lee: Yes, this is something that's designed to rein in this president. Frankly, this president for a while now have been stretching the limits of war powers and really asserting Article II executive authority and being able to take military action without the approval of Congress. With these, there's three resolutions that have been introduced. The House Intelligence, Foreign Affairs, and Armed Services Committees have introduced them. That's on the House side. They're designed to say this can't happen. If you want to order military action, we need to go back to the process that was put in place with the War Powers Act.

The issue that they're going to have-- Now, there's special-- These kinds of resolutions have special privilege in the House, meaning if they're introduced in a committee and they sit there for 15 days, they can be called up to the floor. However, politically, realistically, given the makeup of the Congress, these are not expected to pass, but they do have some bipartisan support. It's not just Democrats that think the president should have sought congressional authority to launch strikes on Iran. It's more of symbolic and asserting the views of these lawmakers rather than something that actually is probably going to happen.

Brian Lehrer: Let's get into some of the history of how Congress has partially lost its grip on the power to declare war. You remind your readers in a recent piece, "Article I of the Constitution makes it clear Congress and no other part of the federal government has the power to declare war." You also wrote, "Though Congress acted after the US withdrew from Vietnam to restrain presidents in their use of military force, recent decades have seen presidents push against those restraints." Should we use Vietnam as a starting point for the contemporary debate around this?

Carol E. Lee: Sure, yes. I think this is something that, again, has been going, trending in the direction of taking authorities away from Congress back decades. I think the real tipping point was with-- In 2001, when President George W. Bush wanted to-- After 9/11, he got an authorization for the use of military force from the Congress to do that. Then, in 2002, got the same one, another AUMF, as they're called, from Congress to invade Iraq.

Since then, presidents have done two things. They've leaned on those two, one or the other, AUMF as the legal justification for launching strikes. President Obama did it. President Trump did it in his first term. It's been this combination of that plus saying executive authority allows not to declare war, but to make war. There's a rhetorical or word difference there.

Brian Lehrer: Wow, what a distinction.

Carol E. Lee: Yes, it is. What we've seen is not, since Iraq and Afghanistan, these full-scale invasions where the US is going in and there are boots on the ground and all of that in a really big way. We, obviously, have troops still in Iraq and in Syria that were reintroduced there to fight ISIS in 2014. What presidents have done in recent years is use their-- say they have Article II authority, and/or lean on one of these AUMFs for more counterterrorism stuff. Preemptive, like with Iran, the administration saying Iran's nuclear program was a threat and they needed to go in and take it out.

That's different than saying, "We're going to go in and overthrow the government of Iran and invade the country." That's the distinction that folks make when they say the president has the authorization to do this, even if he hasn't gone to Congress.

Brian Lehrer: One piece of history. In 2014, President Obama asked Congress for a war resolution to give him authority to fight ISIS. In December of that year, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee passed that resolution on a party-line vote, an outline giving the Obama administration power to act. Congress adjourned and never actually took up the measure in the full Congress. This, according to a recent history in the Washington Post. How much is Congress gradually losing its relevance here to rein in the powers of the president by being so divided along party lines?

Carol E. Lee: Yes, it's a great question. It's not just divided among party lines, because I think there's-- Both parties, to a certain extent, at different moments in time, share this view, which is since the Iraq War, when that vote became such a problem politically for candidates. Remember Hillary Clinton versus Barack Obama in the 2008 primary. That was one of the big things. She voted to support that when she was a senator to go invade Iraq, and Barack Obama had been against it.

There's a certain number of lawmakers who don't actually want to take these votes because they're hard votes. They can go completely in the wrong direction for things that are unforeseen. They also can-- If you say you don't support-- A lawmaker doesn't support it, then that can be used against them if something is a success or if they're in a campaign where whether or not they're tough against adversaries is a real issue. Congress hasn't exactly just been railroaded here. They've played a role in it themselves, and just being a little skittish, a little unwilling to take these hard votes and really push them through.

Now, there are lawmakers who've been very consistent in saying that Congress needs to rein in this authority. Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia, a Democrat, has been on this for years, including when the president's-- a member of his own party, saying that Congress needed to reassert itself on these issues and really vote and claim back some of this authority that had been ceded to the executive branch. It's not real popular.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take a phone call. Tina in Central Harlem, you're on WNYC with NBC News Washington Managing Editor Carol Lee. Hi, Tina.

Tina: Hi, Brian. Hi, Carol. Thanks for taking my call. I've often thought about this question, and I think if you consider the two factors that I want to mention, things become a little more clear in that when Congress is empowered to declare war, those were old days, and information did not fly like it does now. There was time to discuss, even in secret or amongst themselves, before news would travel, decisions that they wanted to make.

Right now, consider what happened when Trump just dropped these bombs. They had to fly a ruse flight from, I guess it was Missouri, to have the B2s go one way, another B2s go the other way, so as to pretend that this was not something out of the ordinary, when they had flew 37 hours or whatever it was to Iran and dropped the bombs. There would have been no secrecy had that been discussed in Congress. The speed at which information travels now, I think it's just pretty hard to hamstring a president, even if it is Trump and his predilections to knee-jerk reactions. I think it's got to be a part of the conversation.

Brian Lehrer: That's interesting, Tina. Tina, how would you, and then I'll ask Carol. How would you react to this text that another listener just wrote, says, "84 years after Pearl Harbor, America sides with a sneak attack," obviously being critical of that.

Tina: I think that if you study battles and war, sneak attacks, surprise attacks, are often what make determining factors in their outcomes.

Brian Lehrer: Tina, thank you for your call. Carol, anything on Tina's call, or for that matter, that text about Pearl Harbor?

Carol E. Lee: Yes. I would say the element of surprise is real and important in certain scenarios. One of the things when we were talking about Congress and its role, there's a lot of frustration on Congress within the Congress that there was not even, for them, for some of those top lawmakers, the so-called Gang of Eight, who are supposed to get briefed on things like this, there was not a lot of advance notice, or they weren't looped in, or heads-up. That's also raising and fueling some of the consternation on the Hill.

Brian Lehrer: What about the fact that Trump faked out Iran? They also faked out the press, including us and the world in general, in two ways. One, by launching, if I have this right, B2 bombers to the west toward the Pacific, seeming like they were just sending them to the region when really they were also sending them to the east, directly to Iran to stage that attack. The other was that whole feint about two weeks. That triggered discussion here and many other places about how Trump always says, "Oh, I'm going to do this big thing, and in about two weeks I'll decide, or in about two weeks I'll announce." That's a way of wriggling out of things that he really doesn't want to or can't do.

Then, of course, the next day, he actually hit them. How are people reacting to that in Washington? Are they feeling that that was unfair, even in war, to Iran, to fake them out like that, especially in the context of us not being at war with Iran, of Trump supposedly trying to still come to a diplomatic solution at that time?

Carol E. Lee: One of the things that it's raised is this question of trust. Part of the president's whole goal here was hit Iran's nuclear program and then hopefully get them back to the table to negotiate on whatever else is left and wherever they feel like they need to go forward. From the Iranians' perspective, they said this even before the US got involved in this war. The Iranian foreign minister did an interview with NBC on Friday before the strikes were launched. He said that there was no trust between the two countries. They couldn't trust the US anymore because the US was negotiating with Iran, and then Israel hit Iran in the middle of that.

Then you fast forward to where you have the president-- I think to answer your question about the view in Washington, there's not a lot of sympathy for Iran in Washington writ large. There is a lot of respect for the military and the strategy, and the decoy planes in the operation. I think the question now is because the-- One, the president really tried to fake out everybody by saying that he would give Iran up to two weeks. There were people who thought that that was meant that there was a pause here. He was thinking about maybe pulling back. There's that question about it.

Also, what does this mean going forward? For one, whether we in the press like how we read him in terms of what he's saying about his intentions, but most importantly, how Iran and other countries are going to view the US in terms of whether what they're saying is actually what they mean.

Brian Lehrer: Carol, last question for you as Washington Managing Editor for NBC News. I don't know if this is at all on your beat, and if you have nothing on this, you have nothing. I'm wondering if and how Washington is buzzing with the news of Zohran Mamdani's win in the Democratic primary for New York City mayor, especially Democratic establishment Washington.

Carol E. Lee: Senator Chuck Schumer just put out a statement where he congratulated him on his victory, but did not endorse him. That's getting some notice. I think from the Republican side of the ledger, they're looking to say this is the vision of the party. This is to paint the whole party as this in terms of his views and someone who was endorsed by Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The Democrats are like "Oo", trying to figure out how to navigate this, and the Republicans are enjoying it.

Brian Lehrer: When you say Schumer-- This is news to me this morning. Schumer congratulated him but didn't endorse him. He's going to be the Democratic nominee for mayor. Cuomo may or may not run on an independent line. Eric Adams, the current mayor, who has left the Democratic Party to run as an independent. There's some buzz in New York that he may even wind up on the Republican line. Zohran Mamdani is the Democratic nominee. Is there any interpretation yet of Schumer not endorsing him in that context or holding that back for the moment?

Carol E. Lee: It's happened just in the last, I don't know, 20, 30 minutes. The initial reaction is just noting that he didn't endorse him, as you note, as you say, as one of the Democratic Party's big leaders. What he does say is he ran an impressive campaign, and that he spoke with him this morning, and he's looking forward to getting together with him soon. Now, this sets the stage for the-- now everybody's going to be asking the question, "Do you endorse him? Are you going to support him?" We'll see where it goes. It's an interesting data point in this broader issue that the Democrats are grappling with, which is they're trying to find direction in the party and unity.

There's concern about how to navigate this, because Republicans are trying to paint the party, "See, we told you this is a party that's socialist and that's going to implement all these policies that aren't going to help the American people." This statement from Senator Schumer is definitely going to raise more questions than not.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, now I see the tweet, and it does look like probably he's setting up to endorse him. As you were quoting, he said, "I have known Zohran Mamdani since we worked together to provide debt relief for thousands of beleaguered taxi drivers and fought to stop a fracked gas plant in Astoria. He ran an impressive campaign that connected with New Yorkers about affordability, fairness, and opportunity." It sounds like he's setting himself up for an endorsement. It's just the morning after. I guess we will see. Carol E. Lee, Washington Managing Editor for NBC News, thanks for coming on and talking about these multiple topics.

Carol E. Lee: Thanks so much for having me. Appreciate it.

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