U.S. Senator Bill Cassidy (R-LA) announced that he changed his vote on a War Powers resolution aimed at limiting President Trump’s authority to launch military strikes against Iran. The turnaround comes immediately after a private, late-night classified briefing at the White House, which was triggered by a high-volume argument between the senator and the president.
In an interview with CBS’s Margaret Brennan, Cassidy explained that his initial vote to restrict presidential military action was not born out of disagreement with the administration’s core foreign policy goals, but rather a frustration over being left in the dark.
“My original rationale was because we were not being briefed,” Cassidy said. “I agreed with the president’s original goals. Those were not being achieved — by my perception. And so before I could say, ‘OK, everything’s hunky-dory,’ I said, ‘I need to be briefed.'”
The shift in position followed a tense, closed-door meeting on Wednesday, where President Trump confronted the four Senate Republicans who had crossed party lines to vote for the War Powers measure. Cassidy reported that the president began verbally attacking the lawmakers, prompting a direct face-to-face confrontation.
“Frankly, I’m not there to be berated, and the president wasn’t invited to dish out verbal abuse,” Cassidy said. After asking the president if his criticisms were a rhetorical exercise or an invitation for genuine dialogue, Cassidy stood up to outline his objections regarding the war’s shifting timelines and unclear objectives.
“He began to speak over me,” Cassidy stated. “Unfortunately, I raised my volume to match his, and we spoke to each other like that — or, shall we say, spoke at each other, not to each other.” The Louisiana senator added that while neither man should have lost his temper, his own “Irish temper” took over during the shouting match.
Following the exchange, Cassidy passed a note to Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, stating he would consider altering his vote if given a proper breakdown of the administration’s strategy. Hours later, Cassidy received a specialized briefing in the Situation Room from the Vice President and Witkoff.
According to Cassidy, the intelligence briefing fundamentally altered his view of the strategy. He learned that the prospect of forcing a regime change in Iran has been removed from the administration’s agenda. Instead, officials detailed a specific four-to-five-week plan focused on destroying and degrading Iran’s nuclear capability, its ballistic missile assets, and its conventional warfare capacity.
“The regime change is off the table,” Cassidy said. “But it does seem as if, the way they laid it out, the other three objectives can be reached… they have a plausible plan by which to achieve those, and that’s what I was interested in.”
When pressed on why these vital details are being withheld from the American public through a lack of open congressional hearings, Cassidy defended the administration’s current secrecy, citing ongoing diplomatic efforts.
“They said right now the negotiations are delicate, and they could collapse if they’re not nursed along in the appropriate way,” Cassidy said. “I can accept that. Sometimes you have to have some space for people to come to an accommodation.”
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