The Bipartisan Effort to Rein in Presidential Military Power

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

News, Wnyc, David, Arts, Yorker, Society & Culture, Storytelling, Books, New, Remnick, Politics

4.2 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 25 April 2023

⏱️ 23 minutes

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Summary

Just three days after 9/11, Congress authorized a major expansion of executive power: the President could now wage war against terrorism without prior approval. The resolution was called the Authorization for Use of Military Force, and it passed almost unanimously. Its reauthorization, in 2002, brought our country to war with Iraq, and has been used to deploy American forces all over the world. More than twenty years later, the mood in the country has changed dramatically, and lawmakers in both parties are pushing to roll back the President’s discretion to use force. A bill to revoke the A.U.M.F. passed the Senate 66–30 a few weeks ago, and it is expected to pass the House as well. David Remnick talks with the senators who led that effort—Tim Kaine, a Virginia Democrat, and Todd Young, a Republican from Indiana—and with Representative Barbara Lee of California, who, in 2001, cast the sole dissenting vote in all of Congress. Plus, David Remnick remembers the beloved cartoonist Ed Koren, a fixture of the magazine for more than half a century.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.
0:12.9	This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick.
0:17.9	Hello again, everybody. This is Peter Jennings in New York, and you were looking at the scene
0:21.8	and there are a very cloudy and occasionally drizzly, rainy day here in New York City. This is
0:27.5	intended to be in New York and in Washington today, a national day of prayer and remembrance,
0:33.7	which means, of course, just three days after 9-11, on a day when the nation was mourning the victims of those attacks,
0:40.5	Congress passed a joint resolution of enormous gravity. In just 60 words, representatives gave to the
0:47.7	president the power to use all necessary and appropriate force against whoever had perpetrated or aided the attack.
0:56.1	And not only that, he could also use military force to prevent future attacks of international
1:01.1	terrorism. The president could now make war without having to go back to Congress, which is what
1:07.7	the Constitution had always demanded. The resolution was called the authorization for the use of military force, or AUMF, and it eventually
1:17.7	brought our country to war with Iraq and was used to deploy American forces all over the
1:23.4	world. The vote for AUMF in 2001 was unanimous, almost. In the entire House and the
1:31.3	entire Senate, there was just one representative who voted no, Barbara Lee of California.
1:40.0	What do you remember about that day, describe the lead-up to the vote and the reaction you got?
1:45.5	I always remember standing with Elijah Cummins in the cloakroom in the back of the House chamber,
1:52.7	talking to Elijah, telling him how sad and how angry I was because of what had taken place,
1:59.9	but how I knew that we had to respond
2:04.9	appropriately. I, like everyone else in the country, were very sad and really grieving and
2:12.2	thinking about Flight 93 because I was sitting in the Capitol and had to evacuate that morning,
2:18.2	and my chief of staff's cousin, Wanda Green, was a flight attendant on that flight.
2:24.5	And she, of course, as they took down that plane, which probably saved our lives, my life,
	...

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