US House to vote on Trump's war powers after Senate Republicans block legislation

2026-03-05 - 09:13

WASHINGTON — The House of Representatives is preparing to vote Thursday on a war powers resolution to halt President Donald Trump's attack on Iran after Senate Republicans voted down similar measure along party lines on Wednesday. The measure comes amid unease in Congress over the rapidly widening conflict that is reordering US priorities at home and abroad.The tally in the House is expected to be tight, but the outcome will provide an early snapshot of the political support, or opposition, to the US-Israel military operation and Trump's rationale for bypassing Congress, which alone has the power to declare war. “Donald Trump is not a king, and if he believes the war with Iran is in our national interest, then he must come to Congress and make the case," said Rep. Gregory Meeks, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Meeks said in his nearly three decades in Congress, the hardest votes he has taken have been deciding whether to send U.S. troops to war.The roll calls are a clarifying moment for the president and the parties just days into the overseas conflict that has quickly carried echoes of the longUS wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Many veterans of those wars have since run for office and now serve in Congress. Trump’s Republican Party, which narrowly controls the House and Senate, largely sees the conflict with Iran not as the start of a new war, but the end of a regime that for decades has long menaced the West. Rep. Brian Mast of Florida, the GOP chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, publicly thanked Trump for taking action against Iran, saying the president is using his own constitutional authority to defend the US against the “imminent threat” the country posed. Mast, an Army veteran who worked as a bomb disposal expert in Afghanistan, said the war powers resolution was effectively asking “that the president do nothing.” For Democrats, Trump's war with Iran, influenced by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is a war of choice that is testing the balance of powers in the US Constitution. “The framers weren’t fooling around,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., arguing that the Constitution is clear that only Congress can decide matters of war. He said whether lawmakers support or oppose the Trump administration's military action, they should have the debate. “It’s up to us, we’ve got to vote on it.” While views in Congress are largely falling along party lines, there are crossover coalitions. Both the House and Senate resolutions were bipartisan, and are drawing bipartisan support and opposition. The House is also voting on a separate resolution affirming that Iran is the largest state sponsor of terrorism. The war powers resolution, if signed into law, would immediately halt Trump's ability to conduct the war unless Congress approved the military action. The president would likely veto the measure. As an alternative, a small group of Democrats has proposed a separate war powers resolution that would allow the president to continue the war for 30 days before he must seek congressional approval. It is not expected to come yet for a vote. After launching a surprise attack against Iran on Saturday, Trump has scrambled to win support for a conflict that Americans of all political persuasions were already wary of entering. Trump administration officials spent hours behind closed doors on Capitol Hill this week trying to reassure lawmakers that they have the situation under control. "This administration can't even give us a straight answer of as to why we launched this preemptive war," said Rep. Thomas Massie, the Republican from Kentucky who is often an outlier in his party. Massie and Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., who had teamed up to release the Jeffrey Epstein files, also forced the war powers resolution to the floor, pushing past objections from House Speaker Mike Johnson. Johnson has warned that it would be “dangerous” to limit the president's authority while the US military is already in conflict.In the Senate, Republican leaders have successfully, though narrowly, defeated a series of war powers resolutions pertaining to several other conflicts during Trump's second term. The legislation that failed on a 47-53 vote tally would have limited Trump's power to carry out further attacks without congressional approval.The decision comes after Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth announced on Wednesday that the war could be extended by eight week, twice as long as the president first estimated. On Wednesday, Hegseth told reporters at the Pentagon that the United States has spared "no expense of capability" to enhance air defence systems to protect US forces and allies in the Middle East, while acknowledging that some Iranian attacks may still hit their targets. “This does not mean we can stop everything, but we ensured that the maximum possible defense and maximum possible force protection was set up before we went on offence,” he said. While Trump praised the US military for "doing very well on the war front," the absence of a clear exit plan has fuelled concern among many Americans, who were already wary of entering the conflict. Aerial attacks continued for a sixth day, with Iran launching missiles at Israel early on Thursday after a US submarine torpedoed an Iranian warship, which sunk in international waters off Sri Lanka's coast. Shortly after the Israeli military announced it began new strikes against Hezbollah in Beirut's suburbs in Lebanon, air sirens sounded across Tel Aviv and Jersalem. Meanwhile, Iran has continued launching strikes across the Gulf states, with reported strikes on Kuwait and Bahrain.According to authorities, more than 1,000 people were reportedly killed in Iran, over 70 in Lebanon and around a dozen in Israel since the start of the war on Saturday. The escalating conflict has also disrupted the supply of world's oil and gas, as well as international shipping, resulted in airspace closures and flight cancellations and caused widespread travel disruption across the Middle East. Iran said Thursday it had targeted headquarters of Kurdish forces in Iraqi Kurdistan, according to Iranian state media. "We targeted the headquarters of Kurdish groups opposed to the revolution in Iraqi Kurdistan with three missiles," Iran's official IRNA news agency posted on Telegram, quoting a military statement. In recent days, Kurdish opposition groups have been in contact with the US for a potential cross-border military operation in Iran. Several Kurdish opposition groups that are exiled in Iraq announced the formation of a political coalition last month with the goal of overthrowing the Islamic republic and achieving self-determination. — Agencies