Senators have rejected an effort to rein in President Donald Trump’s war powers, voting down a resolution that would have blocked him from conducting future military strikes on Iran.
Friday evening’s 47-53 vote against advancing the resolution in the Senate capped off days of debate about the effectiveness of last weekend’s U.S. military strikes on three Iranian nuclear facilities and whether Iran can quickly reconstitute its nuclear program absent further U.S. military action.
And it came hours after Trump told reporters he would “without question, absolutely” consider striking Iran again if U.S. intelligence concludes Tehran is still capable of enriching uranium to high levels.
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The failure of the resolution, which lost some momentum after Trump announced a ceasefire in the conflict between Iran and Israel that the U.S. strikes were intervening in, adds to a post-Global War on Terrorism trend of Congress ceding its constitutional power to decide when to send U.S. troops into harm’s way.
The vote came a day after senators were briefed behind closed doors on the U.S. strikes. While the briefing provided little clarity on whether Iran’s nuclear program is as destroyed as the Trump administration insists, Democrats maintained the session demonstrated the need for constraining Trump’s ability to strike Iran again.
“Anyone in that meeting — anyone — if they’re being honest with themselves, their constituents, their colleagues, would know that we need to enforce the War Powers Act and force them to articulate an answer to some specific questions and a coherent strategy right away,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., told reporters Thursday.
The resolution voted on by the Senate on Friday was introduced by Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., one of the few voices left in Congress consistently arguing for the legislative branch to claw back its war powers.
“War is too big an issue to leave to the moods and the whims and the daily vibes of any one person,” Kaine said Friday on the Senate floor.
Kaine’s measure, known as a war powers resolution, would have barred Trump from conducting any further military action against Iran unless Congress specifically authorizes it. It relied on the 1973 War Powers Act, which gave Kaine the ability to force a vote despite the Senate being controlled by Republicans.
He introduced a similar resolution in 2020, during Trump’s first term, after Trump ordered the assassination of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani and Iran retaliated with a missile attack in Iraq that injured more than 100 U.S. troops.
Back then, Kaine’s resolution passed both the Senate and the House, but was vetoed by Trump. At the time, eight Senate Republicans — seven of whom are still serving now — voted with every Democrat to support Kaine’s resolution.
This time, however, Republicans were more deferential to Trump.
“When we’re talking about nuclear weapons, the president should have the discretion he needs to act,” Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., posted on social media Friday morning, announcing he planned to vote against Kaine’s resolution. Cassidy was one of the Republicans who voted in favor of Kaine’s 2020 resolution.
Ultimately, just one Republican, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, voted with Democrats in support of the resolution Friday. One Democrat, Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, voted with Republicans against the resolution.
Two war powers resolutions have also been introduced in the House — one by Reps. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., and Ro Khanna, D-Calif., and the other by House Armed Services Committee ranking member Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash.; House Foreign Affairs Committee ranking member Rep. Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y.; and House Intelligence Committee ranking member Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn.
While votes on war powers resolutions can technically be forced in the House like in the Senate, there are procedural mechanisms Republican leaders can use to prevent a vote, as they have with so-called privileged resolutions on other issues this year.
House GOP leaders have offered full-throated endorsements of Trump’s military action in Iran.
“We delivered a major setback that resulted in a feeble, face-saving response from Iran,” House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., told reporters Friday after the House’s closed-door briefing on the strikes. Earlier in the week, Johnson also questioned the constitutionality of the War Powers Act.
Rep. Bill Foster, D-Ill., who was a physicist before entering Congress, told reporters after Friday’s briefing that it is credible that centrifuges and other infrastructure at the facilities hit by U.S. strikes were “degraded substantially.” But, he added, that damage is “irrelevant” if the strikes did not destroy Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium, which reportedly was moved prior to the strikes.
“If we can somehow guarantee that we have secured or destroyed that material, the world would be a safer place,” Foster said. “If that is not what has, in fact, been accomplished here, we are not safer.”
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