Before all eyes in Congress turned this weekend toward the mad dash to pass the GOP’s domestic policy agenda via its catch-all reconciliation bill, the U.S. Senate debated a war-powers resolution to prevent President Donald Trump from taking any further military actions against Iran without explicit authorization from Congress.
The Friday night vote failed almost entirely along party lines—with Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman as the lone Democrat voting against it and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul as the lone Republican voting for it. Beneath the surface, however, Democrats are far more divided following the recent strikes on Iran, while Republicans are more united than ever.
While Democrats almost unanimously agree on Trump’s lack of legal authority to bomb Iran, they are split over the underlying merits of the strike and the appropriate congressional response. Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Al Green of Texas have called for Trump to be impeached, but few of their Democratic colleagues have joined them. Nancy Pelosi, the former speaker of the House, threw cold water on the idea in the Capitol last week. “No, no, that’s a big threshold to cross,” she told Semafor when asked about calls for impeachment. “Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon.” Jerrold Nadler of New York, former chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, told The Dispatch that he thought the bombing was illegal but the strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities made sense on the merits.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington state, the former chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, didn’t say one way or the other when asked if it was an impeachable act. “To me, it was certainly unconstitutional,” Jayapal told The Dispatch in the Capitol.
Jayapal told The Dispatch she also intends to introduce a resolution repealing the 2001 Authorization of Use of Military Force (AUMF), which some legal thinkers have argued covered the strike on Iran. The AUMF not only authorized military action against al-Qaeda, it authorized force against nations and organizations that “harbored” al-Qaeda and authorized force “in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.” Iran has harbored al-Qaeda leaders and been responsible for decades of terrorism against Americans. Nevertheless, Jayapal says the 2001 AUMF needs to go, with a replacement to be determined later. “It has been used by too many presidents on both sides. I’ve been very consistent in calling out Democratic presidents as well as Republican presidents,” Jayapal told The Dispatch. “It was far too broad. It’s been used to sort of justify anything in the way it’s written.”
Most Republicans, however, argue the president didn’t even need the AUMF to strike Iran, but rather had the inherent authority to do so as commander in chief. “I think he’s got a strong argument on Article II; I think he’s got a strong argument under the ’73 War Powers Resolution,” Jim Jordan, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, told The Dispatch. Despite a few outliers, Jordan’s view was widely shared across the ideological spectrum inside the GOP. Andy Harris, chairman of the staunchly pro-Trump House Freedom Caucus, told The Dispatch the president had the inherent authority to strike Iran. Republican Mitch McConnell, former Senate majority leader, said in a statement: “In what ways does this discrete and limited exercise of American power exceed the limits within which President Clinton directed operations in Kosovo or President Obama in Libya? In what ways does it differ from the strikes in Syria or Yemen for which President Biden invoked his Article II authorities?” As conservative legal scholar Jack Goldsmith noted after the Iran strike, there is indeed a long history of presidents taking unilateral military actions, and it is unclear whether the Constitution permits such actions.
The party-line vote in the Senate on the Iran war-powers resolution marked a significant shift for some Republicans from 2020, when the Senate passed—with the support of seven Republican senators—a nearly identical resolution following the U.S. strike killing Iranian Gen. Qassem Suleimani.
The GOP senators who supported the 2020 resolution but opposed the 2025 resolution said they supported Trump’s strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, and their concerns about broader war were allayed by the ceasefire that ensued.
Susan Collins of Maine, one of the seven Republicans who voted for the 2020 war-powers resolution, said in a statement: “There has always been a Constitutional tension between Article I vesting in Congress the power to declare war and Article II designating the President as Commander-in-Chief. I continue to believe that Congress has an important responsibility to authorize the sustained use of military force. That is not the situation we are facing now. The President has the authority to defend our nation and our troops around the world against the threat of attack.”
Todd Young of Indiana, another Republican who voted for the 2020 war-powers resolution but against the 2025 resolution, said in a statement: “Following recent briefings, I feel confident that Iran was prepared to pose a significant threat to the security of the United States and Israel, making the president’s decision to pursue limited, targeted action necessary and based on the appropriate legal foundation.” Young added: “Based on President Trump’s stated goal of no further military action against Iran and conversations with senior national security officials regarding the administration’s future intentions, I do not believe this resolution is necessary at this time.”
The shift among Republicans is due in no small part to the success of the operation against Iran. The loudest voice on the right opposing a strike on Iran by the United States or Israel was Tucker Carlson, who predicted a strike on Iran “almost certainly result in thousands of American deaths at bases throughout the Middle East” and could very likely spark a world war that the United States would lose. In reality, the symbolic Iranian response to the bombing of its nuclear facilities resulted in no U.S. fatalities, and was followed by a ceasefire between Iran and Israel a few days later. The only immediate damage done was to the nuclear program of a regime with a policy of “death to America.” Though it is unknown just how far back the Iranian nuclear program was set back, there’s no denying that the attack was far more successful than many opponents predicted a short time ago, and it’s hard to argue with success.
