The War Powers Act Is a Joke and Everyone Knows It

By Rachel Hurley March 5th, 2026 Updated September 29th, 2026

Congress has almost never actually stopped a president from going to war. So why pretend?

Let’s be honest about something everyone in Washington already knows but won’t say out loud. The War Powers Act doesn’t work. It has never worked. And today’s 53-47 Senate vote to let Trump keep bombing Iran without congressional approval is just the latest proof that the whole premise of congressional oversight on war is, at this point, a bunch of bullshit.

Tim Kaine and Rand Paul forced the vote. One Democrat, one Republican, two people who actually read the Constitution and apparently took it seriously. They got 47 votes. The other 53 senators, all but one of them Republicans, voted against pulling our forces out of a war that started in the middle of the night, when Trump posted a video to Truth Social and started dropping bombs on Tehran.

This is the eighth war powers resolution Congress has voted on since last June. Eight. All eight failed. At some point, you have to ask what exactly is being accomplished here besides getting people on record. Because here’s the thing nobody wants to say - Congress has almost never stopped a president from going to war since World War II. The big exception came in 1973, when it cut off the money for combat in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.

The 1973 War Powers Act was passed specifically to prevent exactly this kind of unilateral military action, and it has failed every single time a president decided to ignore it. Clinton bombed Yugoslavia. Obama bombed Libya. Trump bombed Iranian nuclear sites last June. None of them asked permission. None of them faced real consequences.

The courts mostly won’t touch it - judges have long been reluctant to referee war powers fights. And Congress, confronted with troops already deployed and flags being draped over coffins, reliably decides that this is not the moment to make a stand.

Six Americans are dead, killed when an Iranian projectile broke through air defenses and hit a tactical operations center in Kuwait. Eighteen more are seriously wounded. Gen. Dan Caine said Wednesday the campaign plans to “expand inland, striking progressively deeper into Iranian territory.” Trump’s war powers notice to Congress cited no existing authorization - not the 2001 AUMF, not the 2002 Iraq AUMF - just Article II of the Constitution, which his administration is treating as a blank check to wage open-ended war against sovereign nations whenever the president decides it’s time.

Senator John Curtis of Utah said he wished he’d been consulted before the war started, then voted against the resolution to require consultation. Senator Susan Collins said “providing unequivocal support to our service members is critically important” - meaning she supports the war, she just doesn’t want Congress reining it in. Senator Josh Hawley drew his personal line at ground troops, which is a completely made-up limit he invented to feel better about himself, since nobody asked him where his line was before the bombing started.

These are the people the War Powers Act is supposed to empower to check executive overreach. They are voluntarily refusing to use that power, for the same reason Congress has always refused - wars are politically dangerous to oppose once they’ve started, and the easiest vote is no vote at all.

The honest conversation this country needs to have is not whether Trump followed the rules. He didn’t - and legal scholars have objected for years to presidents claiming this kind of war power on their own. The conversation is whether those rules have any teeth left. Because at this point, a president who wants to go to war will go to war, and Congress will hold eight symbolic votes and then appropriate the money to pay for it. The War Powers Act has become a permission slip that nobody actually needs.

Kaine said Tuesday these votes are “not a one and done” and that Democrats are considering using the appropriations process to weigh in. That’s the one lever that might actually do something - you can’t bomb Tehran without a budget. But it would require a level of institutional backbone that Congress has rarely shown in the past fifty years of watching presidents start wars without them.

So here we are. Six dead, an open-ended air campaign with no stated endpoint, and a Senate that just voted to make sure nobody has to answer for any of it.

Sources

Correction, September 28th, 2026: This essay first said the Senate voted on funding the war - the vote was on pulling U.S. forces out of it. It also said this was Congress’s eighth war powers vote on Iran since June - it was the eighth war powers vote since June, covering Iran and other conflicts; misquoted Senator Susan Collins; and said Kaine spoke Wednesday - it was Tuesday.

Update, September 28th, 2026: A few lines now add caveats - Congress has almost never, rather than never, stopped a president from going to war (it cut off the money for combat in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia in 1973), courts mostly stay out of war powers fights, and it’s legal scholars who have objected for years to presidents claiming this power on their own.