The Constitution of the United States is not ambiguous on this point. Article I, Section 8 vests in Congress the power to declare war. Not the power to suggest war. Not the power to advise on war. Not the power to feel complicated about war and issue a statement. The power to declare it. George Washington — the man who commanded the Continental Army, the man who understood executive military power better than anyone alive in 1793 — wrote in a letter to William Moultrie: "No offensive expedition of importance can be undertaken until after they have deliberated upon the subject, and authorized such a measure." James Madison wrote that the executive has "no right, in any case, to decide the question, whether there is or is not cause for declaring war."James Monroe wrote that "the Executive has no right to compromit the nation, in any question of war." These are not fringe interpretations. These are the founders. In their own words. On the record. Congress declares war. The president commands the forces once war is declared. That is the design.
The design eroded slowly, then catastrophically. Korea happened without a declaration. Vietnam happened with the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution — a blank check Congress wrote in 1964 based on an attack that the Pentagon's own documents later revealed was largely fabricated, and which Congress spent the next decade watching turn into 58,000 American dead. The lesson of Vietnam, the one Congress took seriously enough to act on, was that open-ended congressional deference to the executive on questions of war produces open-ended catastrophic wars. And so in 1973, over Richard Nixon’s veto — Nixon, who had been secretly bombing Cambodia without telling Congress — they passed the War Powers Resolution. It requires the president to notify Congress within 48 hours of deploying forces into hostilities. It bars those forces from remaining in conflict for more than 60 days without a declaration of war or a specific authorization for use of military force. And it gives any member of Congress the procedural right to force a vote on removing those forces.
Every president since Nixon has either sidestepped the Resolution or called it unconstitutional. Every Congress since Nixon has largely let them. The Supreme Court has never ruled on it directly, preferring to treat war powers disputes as political questions outside its jurisdiction — which means the only institution that can enforce the Constitution’s war powers framework is the same institution that keeps waiving it. This is the loop. This is the machine that produces endless wars. Not malice, though there is malice. Not ignorance, though there is ignorance. Institutional cowardice compounded over fifty years until the branch of government designed to be the most powerful check on executive war-making has reduced itself to a spectator that occasionally holds a press conference.
Iran is the eighth country the United States military has struck during Trump’s second term. The first seven — Yemen, Somalia, Syria, Libya, Venezuela, and two separate strikes in Iraq — each passed through Congress’s hands without a meaningful vote. Since June 2025, Congress has introduced and voted on eight war powers measures related to Iran and Venezuela. All eight have failed. The Washington Post confirmed it plainly: "The war powers resolution is the eighth on which Congress has voted since June. All of them have failed."
The most recent votes, on March 4 and 5, were the clearest test yet. The Senate voted 47 to 53 to block a resolution directing the removal of US forces from hostilities in Iran. Rand Paul was the only Republican to vote yes. John Fucking Fetterman was the only Democrat to vote no. In the House the following day, a resolution sponsored by Ro Khanna and Thomas Massie — a Democrat and a Republican, together, which is not a small thing in this Congress — failed 212 to 219. Two Republicans voted yes: Massie and Warren Davidson of Ohio. Four Democrats voted no: Henry Cuellar of Texas, Jared Golden of Maine, Greg Landsman of Ohio, and Juan Vargas of California.
What the Republican leadership said on the record to justify their no votes is worth sitting with. Senate Majority Leader John Thune argued Trump’s decision to launch the war was "consistent with what previous administrations have done" and that "the president was perfectly within his rights." Thune is correct that previous presidents have stretched their war powers claims further than the Constitution plainly supports. He is using that precedent of constitutional erosion to justify further constitutional erosion, which is precisely how constitutional erosion works. Senator Bill Cassidy said he would not support the resolution because "you can’t be halfway pregnant. We’re in there." Eloquent. Cassidy’s logic is that once a president has started an unauthorized war, Congress’s job is to support it rather than to exercise the authority the Constitution gives it to end it. Senator Todd Young, who had voted in January to require congressional authorization for military action in Venezuela, reversed course for Iran, warning that limiting the president’s military options "will only grow" the danger. He did not explain why the principle he applied to Venezuela does not apply to Iran. Speaker Mike Johnson called a war powers vote "a terrible, dangerous idea" that would "empower our enemies" and "kneecap our own forces." What it would actually do is exercise the authority the Constitution places in the House of Representatives. Johnson knows this. He took a constitutional law class.
Former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell went to the floor to argue that the president has authority to use military force with or without congressional approval. He did not cite the text of the Constitution, which does not say that. He cited precedent. The precedent of presidents doing things Congress didn’t stop them from doing, which McConnell himself helped not stop them from doing, cited as evidence that it’s fine.
Senator Tim Kaine, who co-sponsored the Senate resolution, said in a classified briefing that the administration "could produce no evidence, none, that the US was under an imminent threat of attack from Iran." Imminent threat is the only legal basis under which a president can constitutionally commit forces to combat without congressional authorization. No imminent threat means no constitutional authority. No constitutional authority means this war — in addition to killing thirteen Americans and more than fourteen hundred Iranians and closing the Strait of Hormuz and handing Vladimir Putin a $554-million-a-day oil windfall — is also illegal under the founding document of the United States of America. Kaine said it plainly on the Senate floor: "Acts of war need congressional approval. This is as serious as it gets. This is war and peace." The resolution failed anyway. By six votes.
There is a particularly sharp detail buried in the notification letter Trump sent to Congress on March 2, four days after the bombing started — already past the 48-hour deadline the War Powers Act requires. The letter described the mission as advancing national interests and eliminating Iran as a global threat. That language directly contradicts the administration’s public argument that the strikes were necessary to head off an imminent nuclear threat requiring immediate executive action. An imminent threat justifies bypassing Congress. Advancing national interests does not. Trump’s own legally required letter to Congress undermined his own legal justification for not asking Congress first. Democrats who read it emerged from classified briefings saying they were unconvinced an imminent threat had ever existed. The Council on Foreign Relations noted grimly that the courts are unlikely to intervene — and that Congress’s repeated failure to assert its power may be read by the courts as "effectively authorizing military operations." The silence of the institution is being mistaken for its consent.
Representative Ro Khanna, who introduced the House resolution, put the democratic stakes clearly: "Over the last year, we have seen a ludicrous increase in the speed of Congress’ abdication of authority to the executive branch. We must begin to claw back that prerogative. We must reestablish our Article I authority which grants Congress all legislative powers." Representative Gregory Meeks, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said it without decoration: "Donald Trump is not a king, and if he believes the war with Iran is in our national interest, then he must come to Congress and make the case." Thomas Massie — a Republican, the co-sponsor of the House resolution, a man who crossed his own party’s leadership to vote for it — said on the House floor: "The Constitution is clear. Our Constitution provides Congress initiatory powers of war." He was right. His party’s 217 other members who voted no were wrong. And the war continued.
It is worth noting, with no editorial softening, what Iran is: the eighth country. The eighth country this president has struck militarily in his second term without a declaration of war and without a specific authorization for use of military force. There is no AUMF for Iran. There is no AUMF for Yemen. There is no AUMF for Venezuela. There is the 2001 AUMF, passed three days after 9/11 to authorize force against al-Qaeda and those who harbored them, which has been stretched by successive administrations to cover conflicts its authors never imagined, and which Congress has never updated, revised, or repealed because doing so would require them to make a decision about war on the record. They prefer the ambiguity. The ambiguity kills people with nobody’s name on it.
Senator Chris Murphy said the quiet part directly: "We shouldn’t be acting like this is business as usual. We shouldn’t be proceeding to legislation, providing votes to proceed to legislation until they put an authorization for military force on the floor of the United States Senate." He said it. He voted right. And then Congress proceeded to legislation. And provided votes. And the war continued on day twenty-two, with no authorization and no end date and no stated objectives that have remained consistent for more than forty-eight hours.
Midterms are eight months away. The advocates who watch these votes — the ones with spreadsheets and long memories and constituents who had family members deployed — are keeping the list. Cavan Kharrazian at Demand Progress said it: "The American people will remember who voted to continue an illegal, unnecessary war." That is not a threat. That is a description of how democratic accountability is supposed to work. You vote on the record. The record is kept. The voters see it. That mechanism — imperfect, slow, insufficient for the thirteen families already grieving — is the last accountability tool the design left intact.
The 219 members of the House who voted to block the war powers resolution own this war. The 53 senators who voted to let it continue own this war. They own every day of it going forward. They own the price of oil. They own the Patriot missiles burning in the Gulf. They own the $200 billion ask. They own the children in Minab. They own every American service member who comes home in a flag-draped casket from a war no one voted for, no one authorized, and no one can explain the end of.
The Constitution gave them the power to stop it. They chose not to use it.
Eight times.
**Next in the Obliterated series: It’s been twenty-one days. Thirteen Americans are dead. The Strait of Hormuz is closed. Oil is at $111 a barrel. Russia is flush. Congress has done nothing. And somewhere under all of it, the question nobody in power will answer out loud: why did this war start when it did? (Part Seven: Why Now)
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