Congress Weekly: Fast Break

The Big Five

1. Project Freedom: The Fast Break the Bench Never Saw

On Monday, May 4, in the morning press briefing at the White House, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced Project Freedom — described as a new, defensive military operation in the Strait of Hormuz, “separate and distinct” from the ongoing Iran air campaign that began on March 2. “Project Freedom is defensive in nature, focused in scope and temporary in duration, with one mission: Protecting innocent commercial shipping from Iranian aggression,” Hegseth said. “We have established a powerful red, white and blue dome over the strait. American destroyers are on stations supported by hundreds of fighter jets, helicopters, drones and surveillance aircraft, providing 24/7 overwatch for peaceful commercial vessels.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio called it the “first step” toward fully reopening the waterway, and said the February combat operations “had concluded.”

The French defense ministry put out a statement the same day saying the operation “brings together more than forty nations” and is “distinct from the military operations initiated in the region.” The German Bundeswehr’s minesweeping vessel Fulda was photographed leaving Kiel that Monday morning, redeploying to the Mediterranean to be in position to join when the operation launches.

By Tuesday night, Trump had hit the brakes. The President announced he was pausing the U.S. effort to escort commercial shipping through the strait while the full naval blockade remained in force pending negotiations. By Wednesday, he had reversed again, telling reporters that if Iran did not agree to U.S. terms, bombing would continue at “a much higher level and intensity than it was before.”

The small business angle: If you are a sub-tier defense supplier with anything in the Strait of Hormuz / minesweeping / unmanned surface vessel / aerial-overwatch / counter-mine value chain, this is the most important defense announcement of the calendar year for your sector. A 40-nation coalition operation requires interoperability work the U.S. DoD has been talking about since at least 2018 and will now have to actually fund. The follow-on supplemental request that Chairman Calvert flagged at the FY27 Air Force / Space Force budget hearing on April 30 is going to swallow a lot of this. If you have a SAM.gov filter set up for “Operation Epic Fury,” add “Project Freedom,” “Strait of Hormuz,” and the relevant NAICS codes (336612, 541330, 541715, 561621) today. If you have an in-place IDIQ in the Fifth Fleet AOR, call your KO Monday morning before your competitor does.

2. The Closeout: Warsh’s Confirmation Vote, Fetterman’s Crossover

The Senate returns from recess Monday, May 11, at 3:00 p.m. The Kevin Warsh confirmation vote — to Chair the Federal Reserve Board of Governors and to fill a 14-year term as a Member of the Board — is teed up for the week of May 11. Banking Committee discharged him on April 29 by a 13–11 strict party-line vote — the first fully partisan committee vote on a Fed Chair nominee in the committee’s history. Majority Leader Thune filed cloture on April 30.

Two procedural points worth knowing. First, the Fed Chair is a Level I Executive Schedule position — the same tier as Cabinet secretaries. A 2019 Senate precedent change cut post-cloture debate to two hours for most executive nominees but explicitly excluded Level I positions. So Warsh’s confirmation is entitled to up to 30 hours of post-cloture debate. Senate Democrats have signaled they will use every minute, which means the actual confirmation vote occurs late in the week of May 11, not on Monday.

Second, the headline crossover: Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) has signaled to Semafor that he will vote yes on Warsh. Fetterman has been the only Democrat voting no on every Iran war powers resolution since March, the only Democrat voting yes on the $70B DHS/ICE reconciliation budget, and is now the only Democrat signaling yes on Warsh. The Democratic caucus, which has by now exhausted its options for pretending this is a fluke, has decided to find it endearing. The Pennsylvania general is in 2028.

The fallback: If Warsh is not confirmed before Powell’s term ends May 15, Powell stays. Powell at the March Fed meeting: “If my successor is not confirmed by the time my term ends, I will serve as Chair pro tem until my successor is confirmed. That is what the law calls for, that’s what we’ve done on several occasions — including involving me — and that’s what we’re going to do in this situation.” There is no Fed Chair gap. There is potentially a 30-hour Senate floor debate, during which the markets will price the variance.

The small business angle: Same as last week, but with a date. The Fed Chair transition is structurally smooth (pro tem mechanism), but the variance around policy expectations is wider than it would be if Warsh had been confirmed bipartisanly. If you have a Q3 capital purchase, get the financing locked this week, not next. Rates won’t move on the confirmation vote itself; they will move on the first Warsh press conference, which historically occurs at the FOMC meeting after the new Chair’s installation. June 17–18 is the next FOMC.

3. The Clock That Already Ran Out: Trump Calls War Powers “Unconstitutional”

The 60-day War Powers Resolution clock from Trump’s March 2 Iran notification expired Friday, May 1, at midnight. The statute, 50 U.S.C. § 1544(b), requires the President to either (a) terminate the introduction of armed forces into hostilities, or (b) file a written certification of “unavoidable military necessity respecting the safety of United States Armed Forces” that buys an additional 30 days. As of the morning of May 10, no such written certification has been filed.

This week the President was asked about it on the South Lawn. He said he considered the requirement “unconstitutional” and falsely claimed prior presidents had not sought such authorization. (They have. Bush 41 in the 1991 Gulf, Bush 43 in 2001 AUMF and 2002 Iraq AUMF, Obama in 2014 ISIL AUMF, Trump himself in earlier strike notifications under the same statute.) On April 30, before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Hegseth had dismissed the 60-day threshold: “I would defer to the White House and White House counsel on that. However, we are in a ceasefire right now, which, our understanding, means the 60-day clock pauses or stops in a ceasefire.” That phrase — “pauses or stops in a ceasefire” — does not appear in the statute. The Senate this week was on recess. There is no formal congressional response on the record.

The small business angle: This is a sentence away from being a Supreme Court case. If any plaintiff with standing — a service member, a deployed unit’s family member, a member of Congress under Raines-distinguished theory — brings a §1544 enforcement suit, the legal cloud over the operation expands. If your prime contract has a force-majeure clause that turns on the legal status of U.S. operations, ask your contracts counsel where you stand on a hypothetical injunction. Not because one is likely. Because the cost of finding out at the wrong moment is your option year.

4. The Leaked Scouting Report: CIA Says Iran Can Outlast the Blockade for Months

On Thursday, May 7, the Washington Post reported on a confidential intelligence community assessment delivered to the White House this week. The assessment’s top-line finding: Iran retains a substantial missile and drone arsenal, and can outlast Trump’s blockade for months. This contradicts the public-facing administration framing — that the campaign and the blockade have materially degraded Iran’s offensive capability and that the “ceasefire” is producing strategic patience on the U.S. side and capitulation pressure on the Iranian side.

The administration response was twofold. First, the White House said the leaker would be found. Second, on Wednesday, before the assessment landed in print, Trump had already signaled progress in the Witkoff-Kushner channel: “The war will be over quickly.” The leaked assessment lands at the moment the U.S. negotiating posture asks Iran to accept a preliminary deal in roughly the next thirty days. That posture is harder to sell at home if the IC is on record saying the leverage is overstated.

The small business angle: Sustainment demand. If the CIA assessment is correct — and the IC has been correct on Iran-arsenal questions more often than the political layer has — then the operations tempo of Project Freedom and Operation Epic Fury runs for months, not weeks. Translation: the Weapons System Sustainment ask of $24.8B that HAC-D heard last week is a floor, not a ceiling. If you have any A-10/B-1/B-52/F-15E sustainment, depot-overhaul, or munitions-replenishment capability, this is the cycle. Same goes for unmanned surface vessel sustainment, mine warfare consumables, and ISR airframe overhaul.

5. The Bench: Both Chambers in Recess, Nothing Moves on the Things That Were Moving

Both chambers of Congress were on a district / state work period this week. The Senate gaveled in at 10:00 a.m. for a single pro forma session on Thursday, May 7, and adjourned. The House held no floor votes; per the House Press Gallery, the next recorded votes are expected Tuesday, May 12. There was one substantive committee activity on the calendar — a House Education and Workforce field hearing at Vincennes University’s Gibson County Center for Advanced Manufacturing and Logistics in Fort Branch, Indiana, titled “Protecting Workers and Powering America: The Future of Mining.” Critical-minerals and rare-earth language, in front of Hoosier audiences, during recess, in a presidential pre-primary state. The geography was the policy.

Everything else that was teed up last week sat. S. 874 (Expanding Whistleblower Protections for Contractors Act) — passed Senate by UC April 29, traveled to House, has not moved. FY27 Air Force/Space Force budget — HAC-D heard the witnesses April 30, no markup posted. FY27 National Security/State markup — held April 28, no public report. H.R. 7147 (the bipartisan Senate-passed DHS funding bill) still sits on the House calendar untouched on day 85 of the DHS shutdown. The Cherfilus-McCormick (D-FL) seat in Florida’s 20th is still vacant. The Mills (R-FL) expulsion calls are still on the back burner.

The small business angle: Recess is when small contractors usually catch up on the things that get drowned out during session weeks. Three things to do this week. (1) Update your DSBS profile if you haven’t since Q1; the FPDS upload runs the first week of every month. (2) If you have a teaming agreement in negotiation with a prime on an FY27 DoD or NASA workload, get the indemnification language reviewed against the new S. 874 whistleblower protections before the House moves it. (3) If you are anywhere near the critical-minerals / mining / industrial-base value chain, watch the Education and Workforce field hearing transcript when it’s released — Indiana 8th district is where this conversation is being staged for the 2028 cycle.

ICYMI

• Macron called Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian on Wednesday and told him the attacks on Emirati civilian infrastructure and ships near the Strait of Hormuz were “unjustified.” Macron also called on both the U.S. and Iran to lift their respective shipping restrictions “without any conditions.” This is the first publicly reported direct head-of-state contact between Paris and Tehran since the campaign began.
• Netanyahu, on a taped Wednesday message: “I speak with Trump almost on a daily basis. We have full coordination, there are no surprises. We share common goals, and the most important goal is to remove the enriched material from Iran, all the enriched material, and dismantle Iran’s enrichment capabilities.” The Israeli position on the negotiated curbs is therefore not “limit enrichment” but “remove enrichment.” That gap is the gap.
• UN Security Council draft resolution circulated by the U.S. with Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, and Qatar would require Iran to “cease attacks, mining, and tolling.” Rubio called it “a real test for the UN.”
• Germany’s minesweeper FGS Fulda left Kiel Monday morning, May 4, redeploying to the Mediterranean for staging.
• House Education and Workforce field hearing on “Protecting Workers and Powering America: The Future of Mining” held at Vincennes University’s Gibson County Center for Advanced Manufacturing and Logistics, Fort Branch, Indiana, Friday at 9:15 a.m. local. Critical minerals / rare-earth content, Indiana 8th congressional district, pre-2028 cycle staging.
• Witkoff & Kushner reported by Reuters to be running the Pakistani-mediated negotiations. Preliminary deal would start a 30-day clock to a full agreement covering sanctions relief, frozen-asset release, and certain nuclear curbs.
• The Confidential CIA Assessment on Iran’s blockade endurance was the lead Washington Post national-security story Thursday, May 7. White House said the leaker would be found.
• Senate adjourned after Thursday’s pro forma. Reconvenes Monday, May 11 at 3:00 p.m. Warsh confirmation vote teed up for the week.
• NBA Conference Semifinals — Thunder lead Lakers 3-0 (OKC 7-0 in the postseason), Knicks lead 76ers 3-0, Spurs lead Wolves 2-1 (Wembanyama just won DPOY), Pistons lead Cavs 2-1. The chalk is winning. The cameras have moved to the referees, which is Washington’s play this week as well.