The House is set to take up a new test of how far Congress can limit President Donald Trump’s authority in the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran after the Senate voted down a Democratic measure intended to cap him “at least theoretically.” The dispute comes at a time when Congress has periodically debated presidential military power during Trump’s second presidency, first in Latin America and now in the Middle East, according to the reporting.
The constitutional tension at the center of the fight is longstanding. Article I states that Congress “shall have power … to declare war,” while Article II makes the chief executive the “commander in chief of the Army and Navy.” The Constitution also gives lawmakers oversight roles through the military budget. Trump, however, has argued for broad control over U.S. forces, maintaining he would not sign anything that limits his options.
A military historian, Peter Mansoor of Ohio State University and a retired U.S. Army colonel, said the Constitution “gives war powers to two different branches of government.” Mansoor argued that “the pendulum has swung towards the executive,” adding that “the framers meant for Congress to be the most powerful branch,” positioning the current fight as part of a longer shift in practice.
The Senate debate that shaped the next step included sharply worded exchanges from members on opposite sides of the war powers question. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., described the debate as an “elaborate song and dance,” saying it was “an absurdity” to argue that Trump’s actions were anything other than waging war. Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, the Democrat who sponsored Venezuela and Iran war powers resolutions, said the latest version failed 47-53 and that it would prevent a presidential “end-run around the Constitution.”
Congress’s difficulty in using formal declarations of war is a recurring theme in the debate. The story says Congress has declared war against 11 nations across five wars—three declarations in the 19th century, two during World War I and six during World War II—and that there have been no declarations since World War II. Yet the same period has still seen U.S. troops fight and die in full-scale conflicts, including Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, among other places.
The reporting points to Congress’s frequent reliance on authorizing force without a declaration as a key pathway for presidents to act outside the formal wartime label. It says that early measures often allowed specific naval actions tied to protecting U.S. commercial interests and that, later, this approach became a “roadmap” in the post-World War II era.
The Korean War is described as a turning point in how the U.S. engaged troops, with the United Nations voting to act and asking member nations to assist in 1950. The reporting says President Harry Truman deployed U.S. troops as part of a so-called “police action” without seeking lawmakers’ approval first, later citing congressional approval of the Defense Production Act as an after-the-fact endorsement of Truman’s decision. It also says that the approach was framed with U.N. involvement rather than a congressional declaration.
Vietnam and the era of the War Powers Resolution are presented as the next stage in the evolution of executive and congressional authority. The reporting says Lyndon Johnson persuaded Congress to pass the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in 1964 and used it to accelerate U.S. involvement, quoting the resolution’s language that Congress approved “the determination of the President, as Commander-in-Chief,” to repel armed attacks and prevent further aggression. It adds that Congress repealed the measure in 1971 but that Richard Nixon did not withdraw.
Mansoor also argued that war declarations define not only when a conflict starts but also effectively require an official end, including the Senate’s role in ratifying peace treaties—describing how avoiding those legal bookends can contribute to what he called “forever wars.” He said sidestepping those legal endpoints is part of the mechanism by which conflicts can continue for long periods.
Against that backdrop, the War Powers Resolution of 1973 is described as Congress’s attempt to impose guardrails as the U.S. moved toward a Vietnam exit—requiring certain communications to lawmakers and allowing Congress votes setting parameters for military action. The reporting says that this legislative trigger is at issue again in failed Venezuela resolutions and the Iran resolutions and that, in practice, the War Powers Resolution has not served as a functional check on executive power, including during a 2020 House measure that Democrats intended to curtail Trump’s powers against Iran.
The story also describes how presidents have continued to assert broad commander-in-chief authority after Vietnam through notifications to Congress, U.N.-backed actions, and requests for support or appropriations rather than explicit authorizations. It cites examples including Ronald Reagan’s troop deployment to Lebanon in 1982, George H.W. Bush’s troop dispatch to the Middle East after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, and Bill Clinton’s troop deployments—along with disputes over whether presidents must seek authorization for strikes, like the episode in 1998 that lawmakers pressed after Clinton’s decision to interpret his presidential authority.
The current debate in Congress comes as Trump’s actions in the Iran war have produced ongoing casualties. The reporting says that, as of Wednesday, six U.S. service members had died in the Iran war, and it also recounts another episode from Trump’s presidency in which an Army pilot was injured and Trump awarded the Medal of Honor, described in the story as legally restricted to actions taken when fighting a foreign enemy.