Rep. Nancy Mace broke with Republican messaging on Thursday to say that she is opposed to sending U.S. troops to Iran and accused Donald Trump of wanting Americans to “die for the price of oil.”
The Republican congresswoman, who is running for governor of South Carolina, made the news in a text message to Axios on Thursday morning.
“I’m not voting to send South Carolina’s sons and daughters into battle to die for the price of oil,” Mace told the Washington-based outlet.
Mace spoke to The Independent during votes on Thursday afternoon.
“President Trump has done a phenomenal job,” she said. “So far, he’s been excellent, but I am deeply concerned about the Washington war machine, getting their talons into the White House and getting us into a protracted and elongated and endless war with Iran.”
Mace’s statement marks a clear break from the Republican mainstream, which remains largely supportive of the president’s war with Iran. Her opposition to continuing the war comes as the House and Senate have been asked by the Pentagon to provide a $200 billion package to fund ongoing military actions while Democrats are pushing efforts to restrict Trump’s warmaking through legal means.
Her opposition wasn’t completely a surprise after she abruptly left a meeting of the House Armed Services Committee on Wednesday and complained to reporters that the administration wasn’t supplying Congress with sufficient rationalization for the deployment of ground troops or further U.S. resources in and around Iran.
“I was disappointed with the lack of information we got yesterday,” she told The Independent. Mace criticized the fact that unlike previous administrations, the Trump administration had not consulted Congress.
But it was a much more hard-line and public message to both congressional GOP leaders and the White House as debate rages over whether or how to rein in Trump’s war powers.
“You go back to Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt declared war through Congress,” she said. “You look back to the [Authorization of the Use of Military Force] of 2001 and 2002 President Bush, who I vehemently disagreed with, going into Iraq, still came to Congress to get authorization, authorized use of military force.”
One of her home state senators, Lindsey Graham, is seen as one of the war’s biggest boosters. Graham responded to Mace’s comments on Thursday.
“I’ll leave it up to her. I like Nancy. We don’t agree on foreign policy sometimes, but it’s President Trump’s call, not mine,” he told The Independent.
“But what you’re doing is you’re disagreeing with him, and I am supporting him. It’s pretty clear that I think what President Trump did on Iran was necessary,” added Graham.
Even with Mace’s support, the War Powers resolution offered by Democrats will still need more Republicans on board to matter. The Senate rejected an effort to advance the measure this week, with one Democrat and one Republican, John Fetterman and Rand Paul, respectively breaking ranks on the legislation and putting a final vote at 53-47 to defeat it. In the Senate, the legislation will need 60 votes to avoid a filibuster and could still be vetoed by Trump if it was passed by both chambers.
Such a rebuke by Congress would be rare and damaging for the White House. While it remains an unlikely possibility, lawmakers are much less certain of the prospects of the Pentagon’s supplemental budget request, which is already facing opposition from both Republicans and Democrats.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune would not endorse the bill’s chances of passage earlier this week when asked about it by CNN.
“It remains to be seen,” he said of whether it could pass. “And obviously we haven’t seen any of the specifics around it yet. Saw the aggregate number they’re proposing, but we’re going to need to, obviously take a look at it.”
At a Cabinet meeting on Thursday the president and his team repeated their insistences that the war in Iran was largely over, though Trump stressed to reporters that there were more military targets that U.S. forces would hit before the war concluded.
He also rejected a report from the Wall Street Journal claiming that he was “desperate” to end the war given the ongoing political consequences his Republican Party is suffering in polls as the conflict continues.
However, his top diplomatic envoy Steve Witkoff confirmed that the Trump administration presented a 15-point peace plan to the Iranian government via the Pakistani government, which is serving as a mediator.
Just a day earlier, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt claimed that news reports detailing this 15-point plan were fake news.
“I saw a 15-point plan that was floated in the media. I would caution reporters in this room from reporting about speculative points or speculative plans from anonymous sources, the White House never confirmed that full plan,” she said. “There are elements of truth to it, but some of the stories I read were not entirely factual.”
Trump separately claimed on Thursday that U.S. forces had degraded Iran’s capability to mine the Strait of Hormuz, a key waterway and passage for global oil shipping routes which caused oil prices to spike when it was closed earlier this month.
A poll published as the strikes began in early March found that six in 10 Americans believe that the president lacks a clear plan to draw down the conflict and eventually end it.
