A number of Democrats in the Senate are threatening to do everything they can to shut down business in the Senate unless Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and other top officials come testify under oath before key committees on issues regarding the military conflict with Iran.

“We have collectively agreed that we’re going to use the levers that we have,” Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) said Monday evening. “We should be having hearings on the biggest military engagement since the war in Afghanistan,” according to The Hill.

“Each individual senator has a tremendous amount of power to disrupt the normal functioning of the Senate as well as certain privileges that we can exercise, and what we have agreed right now is that we’re not going to let the Senate continue business as usual, which seems to be ignoring the urgent issues the American people are dealing with,” he said.

The senators want to question Rubio and Hegseth in front of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the Senate Armed Services Committee over issues such as the cost, the duration, the endgame and the rules of engagement. 

The senators threatening to hold up Senate business include Booker and Sen. Chris Murphy (Conn.), Sen. Tim Kaine (Va.), Sen. Tammy Duckworth (Ill.), an Iraq War veteran and Purple Heart recipient; and Sens. Adam Schiff (Calif.) and Tammy Baldwin (Wisc.).

“As senators we have the right to force a vote and debate every single day in the Senate. That’s not a right under the rules, by the way, granted to us by the majority. That’s a right given to us by the statute,” Murphy said, in reference to the 1973 War Powers Act. 

“What we’re saying is we’re not going to let the Senate be silent. We want there to be a hearing so that the American public can hear from their leaders why they think this war is in the national interest. I think they’ll fail in that exercise,” he added.