In theory, Congress is a separate and coequal branch of the United States government. The U.S. Constitution, the American republic’s most sacred document, vests extraordinary power in the men and women who occupy seats in the legislature, including writing laws and establishing the tax code, funding federal agencies, and overseeing how the executive branch implements policy. The founders were enlightened enough to realize that power is both intoxicating and corrupting, and it is best spread out over several competing players to ensure everybody in the system is kept honest.
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Yet as the nation hits the 250th anniversary of its independence this July 4, this remains a work in progress. Our politics now operate in the gutter, with politicians and candidates slinging substance-free arrows at each other and playing to the most extreme partisans on both ends of the political spectrum. Cooperation across the aisle, once a common occurrence on Capitol Hill, is now a rarity. And Congress, that most hallowed institution, consistently comes up short on one of its most consequential — if not the most consequential — duties: authorizing when the United States goes to war.
The Constitution is quite clear on the matter: Although the president is the commander in chief of U.S. armed forces, the legislative branch is the body responsible for determining if the United States transitions from a country at peace to one at war. The framers of the Constitution had numerous reasons for doing this.
First, because members of Congress were directly elected by the American people, they had the ear of the country and therefore had a better understanding of the public mood. Second, the decision to go to war is of such monumental importance that it should not be left to a single individual behind closed doors, outside the confines of public debate. And third, handing war powers over to Congress would serve as a check on a rash president who was eager to plunge the country into a conflict.
“The constitution supposes, what the History of all governments demonstrates, that the Executive is the branch of power most interested in war, and most prone to it,” James Madison wrote in a April 2, 1798, letter to Thomas Jefferson. “It has accordingly with studied care, vested the question of war in the Legislature.”
Fast-forward to 2026, and the reality couldn’t be further from Madison’s words. Decades of precedent, the executive branch’s twisting of the law, and Congress’s inability to stand up for itself have turned the president into a modern-day czar who gets to shovel U.S. military assets and American troops into conflicts as he sees fit. Without fail, lawmakers of the president’s party reflexively go along with whatever the White House believes is in the nation’s interest. The opposition party, meanwhile, is left with little recourse beyond jumping on cable TV to complain or filing periodic war powers resolutions that go nowhere.
In short, instead of the country debating whether war is necessary and justified as Madison and the rest of the framers intended, the executive branch is acting as judge, jury, and executioner. And lawmakers, petrified of being on the wrong side of a war-related vote, choose to take the path of least resistance by tacitly acceding to the president’s judgment like good little boys and girls. Meanwhile, those who actually care about the Constitution, such as Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) or Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA), are relegated to a slim minority, outmanned and outgunned by peers who are seemingly content with spending more of their time in television studios than on the Senate floor.
Of course, Donald Trump is not the first U.S. president to take the nation to war without congressional authorization. Harry Truman fought a three-war conflict on the Korean Peninsula without bothering to ask for congressional approval. Lyndon Johnson expanded the war in Vietnam by deploying hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops there, notwithstanding the fact that lawmakers at the time could hardly anticipate that the so-called Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in 1964 would be used to allow for such an escalation. Johnson’s successor, Richard Nixon, ordered a U.S. ground invasion of Cambodia on his own.
Presidents continued to act unilaterally even after the War Powers Resolution was codified into law in 1973. This was a generational piece of legislation, an attempt by Congress to reassert its constitutional power on war and peace by cutting off any U.S. military action not previously authorized legislatively to 60 days, with one 30-day extension if the president so determines. Even so, the effectiveness of the WPR has withered over time as presidents of both parties took advantage of ambiguities in the law or re-interpreted it altogether. Ronald Reagan’s 1983 invasion of Grenada and George H.W. Bush’s 1989 invasion of Panama all concluded under the 60-day limit, leaving Congress a bystander in both.
President Bill Clinton went a step further, claiming that the 1999 NATO-led air war in Serbia and Kosovo was de facto authorized by Congress because it funded the campaign through appropriations. President Barack Obama claimed that the WPR’s 60-day clock failed to apply to the monthslong U.S. bombing campaign in Libya because the operation didn’t rise to the level of “war” in the constitutional sense. That interpretation caused so much anger at the time that the House of Representatives voted to bar the introduction of U.S. ground forces into the country. The problem: The resolution was non-binding and symbolic. Weeks later, that very same House rejected a measure to cut off funds for the Libya operation.
As eye-watering as this history is, Trump’s war of choice in Iran is proving to be an even bigger stain on Congress than those earlier case studies. All presidents have their beefs with the legislative branch, but the Trump administration is downright contemptuous of the institution as a whole. On March 27, nearly one month into the air campaign, Trump openly stated that he purposely refused to call the conflict with Iran a war because doing so would mean Congress must be involved.
“It’s for legal reasons I say military op, because as a military operation I don’t need any approvals,” Trump told his audience. “As a war, you’re supposed to get approval from Congress, something like that. So I call it a military operation.” Trump’s most diehard opponents howled at the indignity of it all, even if his remarks were just a more direct, Trumpian version of the Obama administration’s own Libya legal memorandum filed fifteen years prior.
All presidents try to grow their power to the exclusion of the other branches. They will test what they can get away with. Trump is no different. In fact, whether it’s on immigration policy or appropriations, one can make a good argument that the Trump administration is taking the theory of the unitary executive to the absolute extreme. Trump’s view of Congress is quite similar to his view of international negotiations: Capitulate to my terms, or get out of the way.
Ideally, Congress would have the backbone to step into the breach and assert itself in response. This is precisely what the James Madisons, Thomas Jeffersons, and John Adamses of the world expected: When one branch gets too powerful, the other branches utilize their own power to place a much-needed check in the system. American elementary students are taught the concept of checks and balances for a reason, after all.
Still, the Iran war demonstrates that checks and balances only occur if the people leading those branches are willing to take their responsibilities seriously. With respect to the U.S. war in Iran, the lack of seriousness on Capitol Hill would be a joke if it weren’t so disturbing.
Loyalty to party is trumping loyalty to the country and to the Constitution. Just as Democrats during the Obama administration were willing to let the Libya operation unfold with barely a whimper, Republicans today are sitting in their offices and giving Trump the benefit of the doubt. Four separate war powers resolutions that sought to terminate hostilities unless a formal authorization for the use of military force was passed have been killed on party lines.
Concerns about the war’s cost and the Trump administration’s $98 billion war supplemental request would be more believable if the major national security committees compelled senior U.S. officials to testify about what this money is earmarked for, how the U.S. war strategy is proceeding, and what metrics the White House is using to determine success. But with the exception of Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s annual appearance in front of the House and Senate intelligence committees, not a single public hearing has actually been held on the war. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is as silent as a church mouse. The House Armed Services Committee is more occupied with figuring out how to make Trump’s obscene $1.5 trillion defense budget request a reality. The Senate Armed Services Committee was decent enough to schedule a hearing on the war, only to postpone it to a later date. Meanwhile, senators continue to plunge headfirst into meaningless busy work, like naming post offices across the land, acting as if the United States isn’t at war thousands of miles away.
Just as embarrassing as the inaction are the excuses lawmakers have used to justify it.
In March 2026, after rejecting a Democratic-led push to subpoena Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff for testimony on the Trump administration’s negotiations with Tehran, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Brian Mast (R-FL) argued that public testimony was unnecessary because lawmakers were getting all of the information they needed through private briefings. Others, like Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD), have claimed that the only reason Democrats want public hearings is to embarrass the Trump administration in front of the cameras. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) implied that basic transparency might just aid the enemy in wartime.
CONGRESS MUST DEMAND IRAN WAR ANSWERS FROM THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION
“You don’t want to show that kind of division to your enemy when you’re in the midst of a war,” Johnson told the New York Times a month after the first U.S. bombs dropped on Iranian targets.
Congress sleeping at the switch or opting to chirp from the sidelines instead of becoming a player in the game is not surprising. What is surprising is that this kind of behavior happens so frequently that it’s now treated as normal rather than the spinelessness it really is. The president may be fine with this, but the founders most certainly wouldn’t be.
Daniel R. DePetris (@DanDePetris) is a fellow at Defense Priorities, a syndicated foreign affairs columnist for the Chicago Tribune and a contributor to the Washington Examiner.
