House Dems to announce new national security task force

House Democrats will form a new national security task force Tuesday in an effort to create a foreign policy separate from the Republican-led Congress and White House, CNN reported.

The task force will be announced Tuesday by three junior congressmen with Pentagon and military experience and will be led by Rep. Seth Moulton (Mass.), a Marine Corps veteran of the Iraq War.

Freshmen Reps. Stephanie Murphy (D-Fla.) and Jimmy Panetta (D-Calif.) will lead the task force along with Moulton. Murphy worked as a civilian at the Pentagon, and Panetta is a Navy veteran who served overseas and is the son of former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta.

House Democratic Caucus Chairman Joe Crowley (N.Y.) formally endorsed the push for the task force.

With the Democrats out of power in both the White House and Congress, party leadership is looking to form a foreign policy that appeals to both its moderate and progressive wings.

While some of President Trump’s foreign policy decisions, such as the airstrikes against Syrian government forces, received bipartisan praise, Democrats see an opportunity to provide alternatives to Republican policies.

“We’ve been right on a lot of issues, but we haven’t been leaders on this,” Moulton said in an interview. “In many ways, the Republican Party has taken the mantle of national security leadership, even though a lot of their decisions and policies have been detrimental.”

Foreign policy has already been a focus of at least one 2017 special election. In the special congressional election in Georgia, Democrat Jon Osoff has been accused of inflating his national security credentials as a former congressional staffer.