As President Donald Trump wages a military campaign against Iran, key Democrats on Capitol Hill are growing increasingly frustrated with what the administration is sharing with them.
Or, more precisely, what the administration isn’t sharing.
It’s a concern that predates the Iran conflict — and, to some extent, the current White House. But when lawmakers have gathered recently behind closed doors to hear from administration officials about ongoing operations, Democrats say they’ve been struck by the dearth of new information they’re receiving.
“I don’t think you, at the end, get really anything more in these classified briefings with the Trump administration than you would by watching MS NOW or CNN,” said Rep. Joseph Morelle, D-N.Y., who serves on the House Appropriations subcommittee that deals with defense spending.
“There’s no sort of real in-depth analysis or information that you couldn’t get by reading the paper or looking at the news,” he said.
Ahead of the latest round of closed-door briefings last week, Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., predicted the gathering wouldn’t be especially illuminating. He told reporters that White House officials often filibuster in private and then publicly claim they’ve fulfilled their obligation to keep Congress informed.
“The administration comes in,” Kaine said. “They bring a lot of briefers. They say they’re going to be there for an hour. The briefers take up 45 minutes or so, and then 100 senators who all have questions, just a few of them get their questions answered.”
“Then they walk out and say, ‘See? We’ve been keeping Congress informed,’” Kaine said.
Kaine made those comments before the White House visited Capitol Hill last week. But his description appeared to match the experience many lawmakers had after officials like Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Dan Caine, briefed members on Tuesday.
“Virtually nothing in these stupid briefings is actually classified,” Rep. Jared Huffman, D-Calif., told MS NOW.
Huffman said recent briefings on both Venezuela and Iran have followed a familiar pattern.
“Gen. Caine and Hegseth try to dazzle us with how amazing our military is. The Republicans all clap. And then Rubio does a bunch of fast talk,” Huffman said.
He added that there’s “virtually no detail” and rarely enough time for questions. And because Republicans ask roughly half the questions, he said, “50% of the questions are just echo chamber cheerleading.”
“It’s really quite useless,” Huffman said.
“They tell you everything you’ve already read in the media, but they dramatize it as ‘this is all very hush-hush classified,’” he continued.
Asked what genuinely classified information is shared, Huffman said briefers sometimes include “a nugget or two that isn’t in the media,” but that it’s typically related to specific military equipment used in an operation.
“It’s all part of the show. It’s not anything that would really inform Congress’ judgment into these matters,” he said, characterizing the briefings as filibustering.
But Rep. Pat Ryan, D-N.Y., an Iraq war veteran, said describing the Trump administration briefers as “filibustering” would be “generous.”
Ryan accused the administration officials of trying to “overwhelm” lawmakers with “minutia.”
“Now two wars — Venezuela and this — I’ve stood up, waited in line, and never been able to ask a single question,” Ryan told MS NOW. “They just run out the clock.”
Ryan also accused Rubio of previously lying to him and other lawmakers in a classified setting, suggesting the secretary misled members about the administration’s plans for regime change in Venezuela.
Rep. Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y. — the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee — also agreed that the administration is far from forthcoming.
“They do filibustering in the beginning. They tell you, right now, they’re going to do just an hour,” Meeks said, adding that they then try to “get out and not answer questions.”
Before administration officials talked during this most recent briefing, Meeks actually told them he didn’t want them to filibuster, according to a lawmaker who was present.
It seems the administration officials didn’t heed that request.
Meeks, who has served in Congress since 1998, told MS NOW that the last administration led by a Republican, George W. Bush, behaved “completely different” and was more “open.”
“In other administrations, at the very least, you have hearings in committees, both classified and unclassified,” Meeks said. “There was times I wanted a briefer — someone from the State Department — and I was prepared to go to their office. They said, ‘Oh no, Congressman, we’ll come to you.’”
That said, at least one Democrat who is no stranger to these sorts of classified briefings — the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va. — said filibustering is not “unique” to the Trump team.
While Warner told MS NOW, “Trump 2 has taken it to a new level,” he said, “Trump 1, Obama, Biden — it’s rare that we get to questions within the first half hour.”
Morelle said the larger briefings for the entire House or Senate tend to be “less informative” and “pretty partisan.”
“When I’m in a classified briefing for Defense Appropriations — much better,” he said. “You almost couldn’t tell who the Democrat and who the Republican was in those briefings.”
Of course, some of the frustration these lawmakers are expressing is derived from more than just the briefing format or potential lapses in the constitutional order; many are concerned about the conflict itself and its potential ripple effects.
Ryan, who has joined other Democratic veterans in Congress to warn that Iran could devolve into another “forever war,” said he and other lawmakers left the Tuesday briefing in the House “with more concern, more questions, and very pissed off.”
“Rubio in particular was so arrogant and so dismissive,” Ryan said, adding that, “at several points,” the Secretary of State tried to make jokes.
Still, Kaine told MS NOW that Tuesday’s Senate briefing went better than past gatherings — with more time for lawmakers to get their questions answered.
He remained frustrated, however, by the administration’s “unusual” reliance on classified gatherings, arguing it leaves him unable to “answer questions of Virginians whose families are deployed.”
“All these families all over Virginia, whose sailors are on the Ford and they’ve been deployed for months and months — what’s going to happen?” Kaine said.
Exiting the briefings this week, many Republicans struck a decidedly different tone, claiming the briefings were informative and — as Kaine hinted they might — suggesting the administration had fulfilled its constitutional role in advising Congress.
The congressional GOP has almost universally stood with Trump as he continues military operations in Iran. They successfully voted down war powers resolutions in both chambers last week, and many reasoned that they didn’t need to rein in the president because the administration was keeping Congress informed.
Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla. — who has since been pegged as the president’s new pick to lead the Department of Homeland Security — said he “learned some stuff” in the all-senators briefing on Tuesday.
“Everyone was very, very brief. Gen. Caine laid the operations out, so he was a little longer than most,” Mullin said. “The questions were very straightforward.”
Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., called it a “good briefing,” saying the administration officials “added clarity to exactly what they’re doing.”
And Rep. Derek Schmidt, R-Kan. — a member of the House Armed Services Committee — said he has found the briefings “reassuring.” He pushed back on the notion of the administrationing filibusters.
“I think they’ve been direct and responsive,” he said.
Matt Fuller contributed to this report.
Kevin Frey is a congressional reporter for MS NOW.