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Sullivan was elected to be more than a lobbyist
- Rich Moniak
- 1 day ago
- 3 min read
By Rick Moniak
Sen. Dan Sullivan said he “relentlessly pushed for” the emergency Clean Air Act waiver the Environmental Protection Agency granted last week. It will “unlock tens of thousands of gallons per day” in North Slope refining capacity. And “bring relief for Alaska’s families facing high energy costs.”
But if he was really concerned about the economic struggles of Alaskans, he would have voted to end two unconstitutional wars President Donald Trump has been waging.
As Sen. Lisa Murkowski told Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth this week, the War Powers Resolution Congress passed in 1973 “is not ambiguous. It requires the president to terminate hostilities within 60 days, absent congressional authorization.”
The War Powers Resolution was crafted in response to President Richard Nixon’s secret bombing of Cambodia. He vetoed it, but it was overridden by a bipartisan Congress committed to defending its constitutional authority to declare war. It clearly states the President can only introduce U.S. military forces into hostilities following a congressional declaration of war, a specific statutory authorization — as was done for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—or an attack on the United States, its territories or possessions.
None of those conditions existed when Trump ordered a military assault against Iran. He didn’t even bother to consult with Congress.
On top of that, his justification for starting the war is forever changing. And the cease-fire agreements that were frequently broken proved his early declarations that it was over were nonsense.
During the first nine weeks of the war, fuel prices rose more than 50%. They began to drop as hints of a negotiated peace deal emerged.
In June, Trump signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Iranian leaders he described as “very rational people” who were “nice to deal with.” It was intended to establish a firm cease fire while two sides negotiated a lasting peace. But when hostilities resumed three weeks later, he called the Iranians “scum.” The MOU, which he claimed “achieves everything we set out to accomplish,” achieved absolutely nothing.
And fuel prices began climbing again.
None of that mattered to Sullivan on Thursday when, for the eleventh time, he voted against a War Powers Resolution directing the President to remove U.S. forces “from hostilities within or against” Iran.
Sullivan has tolerated similar levels of Trump’s ignorance and strategic incompetence in what the Wall Street Journal dubbed the “Dumbest Trade War in History.
That story actually begins in January 2020 when Trump signed the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement. He called it “the largest, fairest, most balanced, and modern trade agreement ever achieved.” But two weeks after he returned to the White House, he violated it by imposing tariffs on Canada and Mexico. Then he hit every country in the world with tariffs that were inexplicably based on trade deficits.
Like the war with Iran, the trade war has been an on-again-off-again affair. Then last week Trump threatened Canada with new tariffs to compensate for the “filthy, polluted, and unhealthy air” drifting into the U.S. from wildfires that he thinks were caused by the “Willful Negligence” of its government. And on Monday, claiming the authority under Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930, he retaliated with a 50% tariff on more than 500 Canadian imports.
Trump ignorantly insists the cost of his tariffs is primarily borne by the foreign businesses exporting their goods to America. But as Republican senators told him a decade ago, American importers would be footing the bill. And according to the non-partisan Tax Foundation, the average American household has had $1,700 of those costs passed on to them.
Sullivan knows that. He’d been a free trade advocate until Trump came along. But he’s opposed every attempt by Congress to take back its constitutional authority "to regulate Commerce with foreign Nations.”
His supporters like to shield him from such criticism by pointing out how much he’s done for Alaska. But a U.S. Senator needs to be more than an effective lobbyist. They take an oath to defend the Constitution. Its system of checks and balances was meant to be a bulwark against any branch becoming too powerful.
Instead, Sullivan and most of his party have ceded their constitutional power to declare war and regulate trade with foreign nations to a president who has proven again and again to be dishonest, incompetent, and transparently corrupt. And we’re all paying the price.
• Rich Moniak is a Juneau resident and retired civil engineer with more than 25 years of experience working in the public sector.
