For the second time in two days, Congress has refused to rein in President Donald Trump’s authority to wage war against Iran.
The House voted 219-212 on Thursday along party lines to reject a war powers resolution that would have required Trump to seek congressional approval for the ongoing military campaign, which entered its seventh day with no end in sight.
The vote came just 24 hours after the Senate rejected a similar measure 47-53. Together, the twin defeats mark a decisive congressional surrender of its constitutional authority to declare war — at least for now.
Democratic Rep. Gregory Meeks, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, put it bluntly before the vote: “Donald Trump is not a king. He is the president of the United States, an office with awesome powers but also with constitutional limits. The idea that he can wage war against a country of 90 million people without ever coming to Congress for authorization is an offense to our Constitution and a danger to our democracy”.
The Vote
The resolution failed along strict party lines, with every Republican voting no and every Democrat voting yes. Independent Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan also voted no.
House Speaker Mike Johnson led the opposition, arguing that tying the president’s hands during active combat would be irresponsible.
“The idea that we would take the ability of our commander in chief, the president, take his authority away right now to finish this job, is a frightening prospect to me,” Johnson told reporters.
The administration now says the war could last eight weeks — almost double the duration Trump mentioned over the weekend.
The Legal Debate
Democrats have argued that Trump launched strikes without congressional approval and failed to demonstrate the kind of “imminent” threat that would legally allow a president to take military action on his own.
Republican Sen. Mike Lee, who voted against the Senate resolution, expressed similar concerns after a classified briefing, telling reporters the administration “could produce no evidence, none, that the U.S. was under an imminent threat of attack from Iran”.
But Trump administration officials maintain they complied with all legal requirements. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a former senator, noted that no president has ever accepted the War Powers Act as constitutional.
“To begin with, no presidential administration has ever accepted the War Powers Act as constitutional – not Republican presidents, not Democratic presidents,” Rubio said.
The War Powers Resolution of 1973 requires the president to notify Congress within 48 hours of hostilities and limits unauthorized military action to 60 days. Trump submitted a formal notification to Congress on Tuesday, arguing the threat from Iran had been “untenable” despite diplomatic efforts.
‘Gang of 8’ Notification
Johnson said the administration had notified the “Gang of 8” — the bipartisan group of top congressional leaders — ahead of the strikes, satisfying the notification requirement.
But Democrats argue notification is not the same as authorization. “We were informed, not consulted,” one Democratic aide told reporters.
Rep. Ro Khanna, who co-sponsored the House resolution, said the vote was about restoring constitutional balance. “The founders were clear: the power to take the country to war belongs to Congress, not the president alone,” he said in a statement.
What Comes Next
The failed resolutions do not legally constrain Trump, who has previously ordered military action without congressional approval — including strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities last year and the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in January.
But some Republicans in both chambers signaled they could change course if the war expands. Their votes against the resolutions were for now, they said — not necessarily forever.
For now, the campaign continues. The bombs keep falling on Tehran. U.S. service members keep dying. And Congress, having twice refused to act, has effectively given Trump a blank check.
“Have we learned nothing from 25 years of war in the Middle East?” Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine asked Wednesday after the Senate vote. “14,000 American troops and contractors killed in Iran and Afghanistan … hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths … more than $8 trillion spent that could have been spent on American health care, on American housing, on American education”.
The answer, for now, appears to be no.
