Is It Constitutional? (Hour 3)

Transcript

Is It Constitutional? (Hour 3)

Daybreak w/ Brian and Jamie · Mon Mar 2, 2026

Kathryn Lake

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It's 8-06

right now.

We hope that you are having a great start to your Monday.

Thank you so much for joining us.

I'm Jamie Martenson.

And I'm Brian Noonan.

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This is a morning of breaking news.

Things are happening all the time.

We told you Pete Hegseth and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Senator Dan Cain, gave a press conference a little bit ago in that press conference.

The General Cain said that the U.S.

has air superiority over Iran and that, quote, the combined impact of these strikes, swift, precise, and overwhelming, has resulted in the establishment of local air superiority.

This air superiority will not only enhance the protection of our forces, but also allow them to continue the work over Iran.

So that just happened.

A lot of breaking news,

Jamie.

Yeah, Pete Hegseth also part of that press conference this morning with General Dan Cain.

Hegseth called on the Iranian people to take advantage of opportunity for a regime change.

He said that President Trump has been clear.

Now is your time saying that many of the Iranian people seek a change there.

This is their moment to take advantage of it.

so irresponsible

to

say because as we talked about, the line of succession for the power in Iran, despite how many people were taken out, including Ali Khamenei, the leadership is still intact.

Maybe not the exact people, but the structure and the foundation of that leadership that has oppressed all these people for so long.

To just say, okay, hey.

we took out this guy you should be able to start your own government right now

yeah

is it shows how how ill informed and inexperienced and over their heads they are

In other headlines this morning, Iranians top official said that Tehran will not negotiate with the U.S.

explosions that have been heard in the Gulf cities, including Dubai and Abu Dhabi, while Israel and Hezbollah are now trading blows as this conflict widens.

There are fighter jets that have been shot down.

In fact, three of them were actually shot down by Kuwait air defenses in an apparent friendly fire incident according to the U.S.

military.

All crews have been recovered and are in stable condition.

At least 555 people have also died in Iran as of this morning.

That is since those strikes began.

According to the Red Crescent Society, President Trump acknowledged that there could be more casualties after the initial three U.S.

troops were killed in Kuwait.

And then of course, Qatar...

I was just going to say Qatar State Run Energy Company has stopped its production of liquefied natural gas following an Iranian attack on its facility.

Qatar accounts for about 20% of global exports.

So those are some of the big headlines as of this morning as this military strike plays out across most of the Middle East at this point in time.

About five minutes ago the UN warned the against attacking educational infrastructure.

So stop bombing schools despite One of the first one of the first casualties being 160 some people killed at a girls elementary school in Iran so that's going on and it just keeps things just keep changing and expanding and We'll see what happens according to CNN's reporting that

Gulf experts in the region have said that Iran has now lost all goodwill in the region I don't know how much goodwill they had but whatever they had is is done and now The other thing that Dan Cain said General Dan Cain the chairman of the joint chiefs He addressed the American people straight up and said that we are part of this too We're obviously not we have not we have yet to hear from the president explaining why this was necessary

So we are not part of this we are part of this in the fact that our men and women who serve in the military have been thrust into this But the rest of us have no idea really why this is going on why it had to happen right now,

right?

And I think those are going to be questions over the next few days, over the probably the next few weeks.

And in fact, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has now come out with a public statement this morning saying that President Trump has failed to provide justification for the Iran strikes.

Jeffries, who is set to attend a gang of eight meeting later this morning, said that he will continue to look for information to suggest that there was intelligence indicating that Iran

was prepared to strike the United States, he says, quote, nothing has been presented to justify what's taking place up until this point.

We're gonna actually be joined by Professor Emeritus from the University of Wisconsin, Howard Schwaeber, later this morning.

We're gonna talk about this war powers resolution, what authority the president had in his actions, what happens next, what Congress can actually do.

That'll be a discussion that we have after 8.30 this morning with Professor Schwaeber, which I think is an

important conversation

Kathryn Lake

at

this given moment in time and where we're at.

Now mind you, Congress is not scheduled to vote on the president's authority until at this point that we know until at least Thursday.

That is when they will bring a congressional vote to the table.

And essentially it feels like it's gonna be a very ceremonial vote.

Even if it does pass both chambers, I believe the president will veto that particular act.

And he will continue to make the decisions that he and his administration are currently making.

It will be a very, but it will put Congress, your Congress people on record, which, you know, depending on where you stand on the issues over the weekend, it's good to know that, you know, where your Congress people are also voting on and on the, at this particular time.

Will they just keep rubber stamping?

I think so.

A lot of them will.

It seems like a lot of Wisconsin's representatives, especially on the Republican side, will continue to rubber stamp what this president is doing at this current time.

Yes.

I was just waiting.

Just waiting.

No, you're right.

I think I'm like a lot of Democrats who are tired of these strongly written statements from Hakeem Jeffries and Democratic leadership.

I can't understand why we're waiting till Thursday, but...

OK, if that's what we have to do, we'll wait till Thursday.

The one thing that nobody's talking about anymore today, today was supposed to be the day that Donald Trump was going to consider an executive order declaring a national emergency over the 2026 midterms.

There was a 17 page draft.

that was going around and somehow got released.

Somebody leaked it and it's out and we saw it and then now it's oh no and the release contained a number of different things.

It would have required hand counting of paper ballots across the nation mandating voter ID requiring voters to re-register with proof of citizenship and expanding federal control over the election process.

Maybe somebody talked to him and said listen even though you're going to start bombing places

We still had an election during the Civil War.

There was no national emergency.

This is not going to hold water.

And this elections are clearly spelled out in the Constitution that states run the elections.

So it probably would have been a very hard sell.

Now he may be hoping that if we are in...

a war or a military action or whatever you want to label it, that he and his people will find some justification

to

even stretch the law enough to put this in play before it goes to court.

100% will.

Yeah.

And on Friday, he basically told the press at the time while he was on the tarmac getting ready to board Air Force One on his way to Mar-a-Lago that he is not considering declaring a national emergency.

And essentially, this draft just argued that foreign interference threatens election integrity and suggests that by declaring a national emergency, the president could expand federal control over the states.

Now, under the Constitution, Brian, we all know

that states actually run elections and legal experts say a president cannot simply take control of state-run voting systems by declaring some sort of emergency.

Any such attempt would almost certainly face immediate court challenges.

But we've seen this administration, they've...

they argue that the president has authority under the National Emergencies Act.

And when I say this administration, let's be clear, these are some people on the peripheral, the people who drafted this executive order and who worked on it.

Yeah,

run down some of those names.

Oh,

yeah.

Let's share who is involved in this because they are a top tier brain trust

of constitutional

law.

Mike Flynn, do you remember that name?

Yep, General Flynn, he is part of...

this also, uh, he sold you a lot of pillows at one time at point in time.

But then, you know, his, his thoughts on the 2020 election and the fact he couldn't sell his pillows anymore, made him go bankrupt.

We're talking about the former CEO of my pillow, Mike Lindell, also involved in writing up this particular executive order.

Now.

Trump has already signed an executive order adding proof of citizenship to federal voter registration forms.

That is now being challenged in court.

And the Republican-led House has also passed that Save America Act, which would require documentary proof of citizenship and also stricter voter ID nationwide.

It faces some hurdles right now in the Senate.

They have not brought that up for a vote yet.

This week, the administration officials met with more than 100 state election leaders to

discussed preparations for the midterms, some of the topics that they...

discussed included using a federal citizenship database to verify voter rolls and the possibility of hand counting, as you mentioned.

Now, officials on that particular call told election leaders that ICE agents, this is going to be key, would not be stationed outside polling locations during the midterms.

However, during Friday's White House briefing, press secretary Caroline Levitt declined to guarantee that would happen in the future, saying she had not heard any plans that would not rule anything out.

Cut three, please.

Steve Bannon recently said, quote, we're going to have ice around the polls come November.

Is that something that the president is considering?

That's not something I've ever heard the president consider.

No, I

guarantee to the American public that ice will not be.

around polling locations or voting locations in November?

I can't guarantee that an ICE agent won't be around a polling location in November.

I mean, that's frankly a very silly hypothetical question.

But what I can tell you is I haven't heard the president discuss any formal plans to put ICE outside of polling locations.

It's a disingenuous question.

Is it?

No,

I don't believe it is.

Not with this administration.

No, it's

not

disingenuous.

How do you how do you?

Continuously just allow and good for these reporters for pushing, but they're starting for

fine They're starting

they're starting to show a little bit of backbone and they're starting to push back But yeah, it's not a silly question one of the guys who Used to be used to have the presidency or we don't know how much if any influence Steve Bannon still

Kathryn Lake

has

but if he says that and

we know from past experience the president loves to watch TV and and some of the things that he hears on TV within hours or days he puts into action.

He's done it before with things that he's heard on Fox where suddenly then he is repeating that.

So he is not above that and if he thinks if he sees it or hears it on TV and thinks it's a good idea I would not put it past this administration to say you know what we have to secure

our elections.

And so we are going to send ICE there and you know what that's going to do?

It's going to scare off all the illegal people that are going to try to vote and throw our election.

Even though it wasn't, that's not foreign interference.

They're arguing about all this foreign interference.

Well, that comes through hacking and all of this.

I doubt there was a lot of foreign interference of people just wandering up to their local park district building or school to throw a cast of vote.

Dave from New Berlin is chiming in on the text line this morning saying, not surprising, he doesn't want people to vote.

You know, and that's just it.

If you eliminate a lot of the people who didn't vote for him,

then it probably feels like to this administration, you know, there's not a repeat of 2020.

And we wouldn't be relitigating something that has been litigated multiple times.

It's like we talk in circles.

It's 8.19 right now.

You're listening to Daybreak.

I'm Jamie Martin, Sid.

And this is the Civic Media Network.

Kathryn Lake

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Now

back to Brian and Jamie.

It's 8.22 right now.

We hope you are having a great morning.

Thank you so much for joining us.

I mean, with all the news, Brian, at least the sun is shining today.

We'll try to find a positive or two.

I'm going to check.

I don't believe anything coming from the mainstream media anymore.

Okay, okay.

That's legit.

That

is backed up.

I will back that.

I fact checked your comment.

Yes, their sun is shining.

And it's supposed to warm up this week.

So those are all good things.

But if you're going to get gas, I would buy it today.

Yeah.

Thank you, Parker, for throwing up on the live stream.

We can look outside.

That is very good.

We are fact checking that too.

Cars still running, but those cars are going to be running on more expensive

gas pretty soon and that is not thanks Joe Biden for raising our because that's coming soon too.

So here's you.

Here's what's going to happen.

Our strikes along with Israel's on Iran are expected to spark a surge in oil prices.

That was that started coming a little bit yesterday when the markets opened.

OPEC and the allies said yesterday that it would raise its daily output

to 206,000 barrels a day after they pursued incremental production increases earlier in the week.

That might not be enough, though, because the Straits of Hormuz is being shut down, and that is where most of the oil from that region flows through.

So even though OPEC is going to increase their production,

there's no way to get it anywhere.

Right.

And when it comes to the Strait of Hormuz, it's a narrow but really crucial waterway if you don't know your geography.

And it's off Iran, off Iran's southern coast.

About 20 million barrels of oil per day go through the strait.

That's about 20% of the world's supply.

So it's considered one of the most important oil, essentially choke points on the entire planet.

It's also one of the essential choke points for

most of the trade that comes out of the Middle East because it all goes through the Strait of Hormuz.

Iran controls the northern side of the Strait and has previously threatened to shut it down during these conflicts.

If shipping were to be disrupted, even if it's just briefly, analysis say oil prices could spike sharply, possibly past $100 a barrel.

There are also fears that oil production facilities in Saudi Arabia could

become targets, which would even further tighten our global supply.

Now, countries in Asia, including China and India, would be especially vulnerable if the Strait of Hormuz were closed.

A scramble for alternate supplies could send global prices even higher.

How does this get spun?

Because there's no accountability for this administration.

Nothing is ever on them.

So how does this get spun?

to, they love to blame Biden, but the president also likes to go back and blame Obama

Kathryn Lake

for stuff.

So how are we, how are we, speaking as the administration, going to spin this to make it look like this is somebody else's fault?

Because, you know, you could blame, you can blame Iran and say, oh,

Kathryn Lake

it's their

fault for closing the straight.

Okay, fair enough.

But they don't like to do that.

They always like to make themselves look good.

The past administrations look bad, but I don't see a way to spin this.

As you're talking I'm trying to go through the mental gymnastics that it would Physically take to get there to blame either President Biden or former President Obama like I'm trying to I don't know how you do I'm sure there will be a way that they do it.

I just don't know how a logical person makes that connection I don't know how you do

it.

We're not talking about logic.

This is true

This is also true.

I mean,

it's gonna be interesting to see.

At the end of the day, if the oil prices spike, Americans are gonna feel this immediately.

And so no matter what you feel about what's happening in the Middle East right now,

At the gas pump and grocery prices, in shipping costs, small businesses will feel it, farmers will feel it, and families across the country are also going to feel it.

And we've been here before.

This is

Kathryn Lake

nothing new

for us, right?

The Strait of Hormuz is one of the most sensitive pressure points in the global economy.

And if that shipping lane is disrupted, even if it's brief,

oil prices are going to jump.

And when oil prices jump, then we know everything else follows.

And that's just how the economics of the country continually work.

And globe, it's not just this country, it's going to be global.

There'll be global ramifications from what's happening in the Middle East, if that potential straight is closed even for a short amount of time.

Well, that's in the 12 days where there was a

war before a 12-day conflict last year with Israel, Goldman Sachs said that the gas oil did go up to over $100 a barrel.

And so there's no estimate now if this is extended, because as we said, the president said a month, Iran is saying they're ready for a long conflict.

there's no estimate on how high it could go if the oil can't leave the region.

They're like you said, everything is going to be affected.

And that on top of now with those reports that Amazon's data center over there was hit, things shipping in all areas is going to be disrupted.

This is this is going to have wide ranging ramifications.

And again, I go back to the fact that there was

You know, it's it's funny.

There's always a tweet with Trump.

He tweeted long ago that because Obama's approval ratings were in the tank, he was going to start a war with Iran.

Right.

Well, guess what?

Flip the script.

Here we go.

But if he thinks this is going to be beneficial to him, because the old the old thinking was you don't change a horse in the middle of the river.

So you don't vote for somebody new.

But that's only with the president.

Right.

The midterms do not have that kind of logic attached to them.

So this is not going to bode well.

No.

For Republicans in November.

I mean, especially since we've been told over and over, the economy is booming.

Remember the Dow at 50,000 points?

It was at 50.

An

affordability is imagined.

Right.

Decisions made over the weekend by this administration, though, are going to have real consequences at home.

And I'm not sure if this administration is prepared

for those particular consequences based on their actions.

It's easy to blame the guy before you, right?

It's easy to blame the egg prices and the beef prices on the guy before you, but now these are actions you took under your administration and at some point you're going to have to be accountable.

It's 829 right now.

You are listening to

Daybreak.

Local voices and statewide impact.

It's Daybreak with Brian and Jamie.

Thank you so much for joining us this morning.

You are listening to the Civic Media Network.

If you are listening in Wausau on WXCO or in La Crosse on WLCX, we are so glad that you're here.

My name is Jamie Martinson.

And I'm Brian Noona.

Good morning.

We know what's going on in Iran.

All weekend there has been a lot of discussion.

Was this legal for the United States to go in?

Was it legal for

President Trump to decide unilaterally to Join into these airstrikes with Israel and bomber and well, I don't know I I know what I read you may think you know what you read Howard Schwabber though.

Oh, this guy knows Provees professor emeritus of American politics and political theory at the University of Wisconsin Madison teaches courses focusing on constitutional law and legal and political theory Just the man we need this morning Howard.

Thank you for being here

I guess we'll just, plain and simple, was the president within his legal authority to initiate this military action in Iran?

Well, thanks for having me.

I have to start with one of my all-time favorite quotations, which is when Theodore Roosevelt, having seized the Panama Canal Zone in order to build the canal, asked his attorney general, man named Philander Knox, whether this action was legal.

And Knox replied, Mr. President,

do not let so great an accomplishment suffer from any taint of legality.

There's a long history.

I mean, we can go back further when Thomas Jefferson executed Louisiana Purchase.

He said, I'm not at all sure this is legal, but Congress will let me know after the fact.

So presence and legality have always been two things that mix awkwardly.

And at various times in the United States, we've tried to make laws to bind or constrain presidents in the exercise of military action, foreign affairs, or any of the sort of traditional presidential areas.

And it's never been terribly effective.

I realize that's evading the question, but I thought that should be laid out at the beginning.

This question is in some ways theoretical.

All right, what's the what's the state of the law?

That's a perfectly fair question in 1973 Congress adopted the War Powers Act in response to what had happened in Vietnam and more particularly in Laos and Cambodia the so-called secret wars They were secret to everybody except the people on whom bombs were being dropped The the War Powers Act says that the first of all the War Powers Act is understood as a constraint on a pre-existing presidential authority

Now, this is debatable, but the dominant understanding is that before that law, presidents simply had the authority as commander-in-chief to send troops anywhere they wanted to, pretty much any time they wanted to.

Only Congress can declare war, and we've had half a dozen declared wars, but we've had more than a hundred military engagements in our history, and I think it's the case that every single president has at least once sent troops somewhere to do something.

And obviously the vast majority of those appeared without any declaration of war.

So one starting question is when the Constitution says only Congress can declare war, what does that mean?

And then a second question is this modern statute.

The fact that only Congress can declare war does not answer the question despite the fact that some politicians sort of throw that around as though that that resolves the question isn't it clear?

It's not.

A legal declaration of war by Congress triggers all sorts of things, all sorts of emergency powers, hundreds of statutes that take effect at that moment.

Things like declaring emergencies or martial law or seizing control of industries or intervening in the economy, just a whole enormous array.

The absence of a declaration of war means those things can't occur.

So in the Korean War, for example, Harry Truman tried to seize the steel industry and the Supreme Court said, no, you can't do that.

This is not a declared war.

That wasn't the whole opinion, but that was part of it.

So that doesn't really answer the question.

Now we get to the actual current state of... I'm sorry for all that.

No,

we need that

background.

That's

why you're here, Howard, to

give us

that background.

Eventually we'll get to James Polk invading Mexico in the 1840s.

I was hoping.

I know.

Hotly debated in Congress at the time.

So the War Powers Act says that if a president sends American forces into hostilities, or a situation of imminent hostility, within 48 hours the president must notify Congress.

If Congress doesn't do anything, then within 60 days the troops have to be withdrawn.

Congress can extend that to 90 days without doing anything else.

And at the end of 90 days, if Congress hasn't acted to authorize the operation, it has to come to an end.

In that 60 days, Congress can take action to stop the operation.

They can adopt, it's just like adopting, it's just the law.

In fact, there's a bill right now that some Democrats have in the Senate.

It operates like an ordinary law, has to pass the House, pass the Senate, it was the president for veto.

Obviously, Trump would veto this one.

But in that 60 day period, Congress can pass an ordinary law that says, you have to stop this military operation and the president is bound to do so.

So let's break this down.

Did Trump notify Congress within 48 hours of initiating hostilities?

Sort of.

I mean, he notified some members of Congress.

I believe the gang of eight, as they're called, was brief.

There were public statements.

It's not as though anybody in Congress didn't know.

keeping in mind that the historical background of this was Nixon's secret wars, you know, the idea of notify, it's not terribly well spelled out.

Arguably, he's fine on that score.

No one in Congress can say, oh my gosh, I had no idea.

We were exactly right.

That's not really a plausible position, even for these guys who keep saying, you know, I've never heard of that, right?

Any time you ask the Republican about the Episcene 12 files, I've never heard of those.

Okay.

So Congress was notified, I think.

Right now, considering a law, as I say, even if it passes, which I think is unlikely, Trump will veto it and there's no possibility of overrunning that veto.

We can have lots of feelings about that, but that's in accordance with the procedures of the law.

So that part is legal.

And I didn't write this law.

I don't like this law.

I think it's bad in lots of ways.

I think it leaves the president far too much latitude.

But the fact is, and whatever it's worth, this is a law passed by a Democratic House, and the Democratic Senate to try and restrain a Republican president.

So it's a partisan thing matters here.

Yeah, he is acting legally under US law.

Now, that leaves two really big, big questions left.

One is what about international law?

And one is, what about assassinating a foreign leader?

Because under international law, there are principles that under international law trees, including the UN Charter, which the United States is signatory.

Kathryn Lake

There are

rules about when war is permitted, when military actions are permitted.

And assassination has always been a touchy subject.

Let me do the assassination first, because it's kind of fascinating.

Joe Ford.

issued an executive order prohibiting the United States forces from participating in assassinations.

That was in response to revelations about CIA activities in Latin America.

Carter renewed that executive order and then Reagan renewed it again.

So partisan, multiple presidents, but these are only executive orders.

Any president can issue and therefore any president can revoke an executive order literally with the stroke of a pen or even an auto pen if that's appropriate.

I'm not aware.

Trump has done some secret executive orders in his second term.

I'm not aware he's revoked executive order.

It was 12333 was the number of the order at one time.

But that's really splitting hairs.

I mean, if he neglected to officially revoke the order, but decided that he had done so, sure, that's a violation of a paperwork and record keeping regulation.

If we're going to start listening to ways in which Trump has violated record keeping and regular and paper securing regulations, we'll be here for a while.

True.

That

has to be the least of our concerns.

So under US law, there's no

particular prohibition against assassination in time of war?

Under international law, and are we at war?

That's where we

start.

That's the question.

If Congress hasn't declared war, where's the line between

war and

military action?

Nobody knows.

And there are, in fact, for whatever it's worth, there are a couple of Supreme Court cases that talk about this, and there are a couple of places where

The justices throughout history, one of the 40s, Winston Vietnam, said things like, look, we know what a declared war is and what it does.

We don't have a specific definition of what is a state of war.

That has to be a discretionary question to some extent.

Think of Korea, think of Vietnam, think of the war on terror.

And the war on terror has been a particularly thorny problem for this question because these are non-state actors.

Was the attack on the World Trade Center an act of war?

If it had been carried out by a country, of course it was.

It was carried out by a terrorist organization.

It's an act of something, global terrorism of a very high and devastating order.

So the UN Turner and other trees say you can't launch a belligerent war.

You can launch a defensive war.

And the Trump administration's position is that Iran has effectively been making war on America and our ally Israel by its terrorist proxies.

It's not a meaningless argument, particularly given that Iran launched missiles at Israel directly in 2014.

And going toward to defend our allies is not only something we're permitted to do under, for example, Section 5 of the NATO treaty, it's something we can be required to do.

It's a hazy area under international law, but it's not the case.

I mean, I'm just going to be disappointing, I think, to a lot of your listeners whom I suspect skew left or democratic.

It is not the case that there's a clear argument that this attack is illegal under international law.

It's always a hazy argument, and this one remains hazy.

So I'm sorry, I slipped away from assassination.

What about assassination?

Well, under international law in time of war,

assassinating a civilian who plays a significant military role is permitted.

Did these guys qualify?

Arguably they did.

And the final point, I know we have to go to a break, under a long-standing international law, there's a category of global outlaw called pirates.

And you make a perfectly argument that terrorists are modern-day pirates.

And it was always permissible to kill them anytime you captured them.

I suspect the Trump administration's final line is going to sound a lot like an 18th century writer talking about pirates.

These are roads and criminals and threats of civilization and therefore we had to take them

out.

It's basically what he was saying, what he's already said.

Exactly, but at some point he'll be the lawyer to give it fancier words.

What about this justification that presidents use Howard?

And we're talking with Howard Schwaiber.

He is a professor emeritus of American politics and American theory at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Presidents often use this justification that military action was self-defense.

And so in a case like what's happening in Iran, how strong is that argument legally when there's no direct attack on the United States?

Right.

So there was a time I would have said,

incredibly weak argument.

And to be specific, Trump has made particular assertions that are false in support of his case.

But, you know, we keep coming back to Iraq, and there's a reason for that.

So in the Iraq war, we came up with the notion of preemptive self-defense.

We're launching this

Kathryn Lake

war

to defend ourselves against an attack that might come in the future.

Dick Cheney famously, right, talked about mushroom clouds.

All of that intelligence turned out to be sketchy.

if not outright manufactured.

Some of that's going on in this occasion as well.

The parallels are really in some ways quite clear, even though the specifics are different.

It becomes a fact question.

It becomes, do you think that it was plausible to say that the Iranian regime constituted an ongoing threat to the United States?

Most security analysts think the answer is no.

But the Trump administration has taken the same position the Bush administration took, which was

Well, if they ever got a nuclear weapon, that would change everything.

We think they're trying to get one.

We have to stop them.

The Trump administration has given at least four or five different justifications to be clear.

This is the weave in action.

Yes.

Yes.

One of them has been this business of, you know, a few months ago, we told you we had totally destroyed their nuclear capacity.

Well, we were wrong.

We were wrong.

And it's not.

Howard, we are going to be, I'm sure, talking to you more and more as this plays out, but thank you for clearing some things up and instilling more confusion on other topics.

But that's the way the law is for people who don't study the law.

Unlike you, Howard Schraber, professor emeritus of American politics and political theory at University of Wisconsin-Madison, teaches courses focusing on constitutional law and legal and political theory.

Howard.

Kathryn Lake

You're listening to Civic Media.

Find the latest news, information, and archives of all your favorite shows on the Civic Media website, civicmedia.us.

Now back to more of Daybreak with Brian and Jamie.

It's 8.52 right now.

We hope that your Monday is off to a great start.

Thank you so much for joining us on the Civic Media Network.

My name is Jamie Martinson.

And I'm Brian Noonan.

We're following...

Any update that comes through another sad update as far as US military personnel are concerned, 18 service members have been seriously wounded during the military operation according to

U.S.

Central Command spokesperson Captain Tim Hawkins, CENTCOM announced that three service members had died yesterday.

The count was amended this morning to up to four and sources confirm that the four dead are all from the same attack in Kuwait.

So things not getting better and of course...

We've said this all morning the president Lindsey Graham very cavalier about the fact that

yes

lives are going to be lost But that's just how it goes and you know, we're sorry, but that's the price of doing business

Also this morning we mentioned if you've been following along with the program and thank you if you have been we there was a

press conference with Pete Hagseth and also General Dan Cain this morning.

In that press conference, Pete Hagseth offered some shifting timelines for the combat operations in Iran.

He said this, quote, President Trump has all the latitude in the world to talk about how long it may or may not take.

Four weeks, two weeks, six weeks.

It could move up, it could move back.

He went on to say that at this time that

the Department of Defense and the U.S.

government is going to execute at his command all of the objectives that they've set out to achieve in the Middle East and that he has shown, and what he has shown as an ability to do what other presidents, he being President Trump, what other presidents can't quite seem to have been able to do in the Middle East.

That was according to Pete Hague Seth during the...

press conference this morning with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dan Cain.

So we went from four weeks in that pre-recorded video this weekend that went on to Truth Social.

And now Pete Higgseth is saying, could be shorter, could be longer.

Do you get the feeling they don't really know?

They have no, they don't know.

And I don't think they expected it to spread across the region as quickly as it has.

Right.

This has turned out, you know,

we're gonna we're gonna drop do a strike the people of Iran the leadership of Iran is going to come back to the table even though negotiations were still ongoing which to me if you're negotiating and then you bomb somebody

you've lost all credibility when it comes to your ability to negotiate.

Suddenly, you're not a country or a person of your word.

And as soon as you get frustrated, you're going to drop some bombs because your buddy over here really wants that regime to be changed too.

So why wait?

We're at that point now where we know

There are not going to be further negotiations based on what Iran has said, that they don't trust Trump as someone they can deal with in good faith.

And they probably thought, well, listen, if we do this strike, the leadership is going to be so rattled, and they are going to just fold, and we'll be able to impose our will on them.

Obviously, even someone with the most cursory knowledge

of Middle Eastern politics knows that's not how it works over there.

You're not going to scare them by dropping a bomb on them.

You're just going to make them dig in harder because as we heard earlier in the program, for Iran, it's either fight or cease to be a state.

And so they are not going to give in.

No, absolutely.

And we've got some people chiming in on the text line this morning, Cindy from Appleton asking, what are the objectives?

It's a good question, Cindy.

I'm not sure if we know what the objectives.

We've been told it's because of the nuclear threat, even though in summer, during the summer when there were initial strikes in the region, we were told that all of the nuclear sites had basically been...

destroyed.

And now we're, we're being led to believe that they were able to, uh, you know, re-up their, their nuclear program in, in Iran this quickly, that, uh, these justifications of strikes came again.

Uh, Tiffany from River Falls listening on 93.5 the tap, uh, was listening to a podcast and, uh, the main Senate candidate, Graham Plattner talked about his time in service in Afghanistan and Iraq.

And he also went on to say,

Tiffany's pointing out how he came to realize he was lied to about the goal of war by the U.S.

leaders.

And she points out that this seems a little relevant based on what's happening in the region right

now.

Listen, you could go back.

You could go back to Vietnam.

You could probably go back to other than World War II, where it was pretty obvious what our goals were in that war, and even World War I. But you go back to Vietnam.

The soldiers were either lied to, depending on your outlook.

I'm

going to jump in here really quickly.

ABC News now reporting that congressional staff were told by the Trump administration officials in private briefing Sunday that Iran was not preparing to launch a preemptive strike against U.S.

interests based on U.S.

intelligence reports, according to four people familiar with that briefing.

This conflicts with what President Donald Trump and senior Trump administration officials have been saying over the weekend and even this morning in that press conference.

with Pete Higgseth and General Dan Cain.

The administration official said there were indicators that Iranians could launch

Kathryn Lake

a

preemptive attack against U.S.

forces and allies in the region.

Of course, we saw the president in his video addressed to the nation on Saturday say our objective is to defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime.

We are finding out that those comments were not true over the weekend.

And those and those were even then that was in direct contrast with what our own intelligence agencies were saying.

So man, their lies just always catch up and they circle back and it's rough and we will keep an eye on

the president will be addressing the country at scheduled at this point in about an hour from the White House.

That's what we're being told at this time.

Alright, we'll talk about that tomorrow and keep you posted on all of this.

Have a great rest of your day.

Leave the worry to us.

We'll get

back to you.

We'll do that for you.

We'll do that for you.

This is Daybreak on the

Kathryn Lake

Civic Media Network.

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