Trump likely to get free hand on Iran from badly divided Congress

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The Hill's Headlines — March 3, 2026

Deep partisan divisions over how to respond to President Trump’s war against Iran are likely to give the president a free hand to launch missile strikes and bombing missions as he sees fit for weeks longer.

A bipartisan resolution under the War Powers Act to stop further military action against Iran, which will receive a vote in the Senate on Wednesday, has yet to pick up any GOP support beyond its one Republican co-sponsor: Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.).

Republican senators are instead rallying around the argument that Trump has all the authority he needs under the Constitution to bombard Iran, asserting that many other U.S. presidents have conducted bombing campaigns without permission from Capitol Hill.

Asked if Trump needs Congress’s permission to carry out strikes against Iran beyond the 60-day window set by the 1973 War Powers Act, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) responded emphatically: “No.”

“I think the president has the authority that he needs to conduct the activities, the operations that are currently underway there,” Thune said after the weekly Senate GOP policy lunch.

“As you know, there’s a lot of controversy around, questions around the War Powers Act, but I think the president is acting in the best interests of the nation and our national security interests by ensuring that he’s protecting Americans and American bases and installations in the region as well as those of our allies,” Thune said.

Other Republicans are embracing that argument.

“I think a fair-minded person will conclude that our founders intended to give both Congress and the president a role, and I happen to believe they left it intentionally vague,” said Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.), a member of the Judiciary Committee.

“I’m not aware of any instance where a president — and there have been many of them, Republican and Democrat — has bombed an adversary that is trying to hurt the United States — I’m not aware of any Supreme Court case that says the president cannot do that,” he added. “I think that’s what we’re doing here.”

Republicans across the political spectrum have defended the joint U.S.-Israeli operation as justified by Iran’s decades-long sponsorship of terrorism, its huge missile arsenal and its pursuit of a nuclear weapon.

Democrats have criticized Trump’s strikes, arguing that he doesn’t have a clear plan for ending the conflict and that U.S. forces in the region didn’t face an imminent threat until Israel and the United States launched preemptive attacks.

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) said “most Americans” oppose the war, pointing to recent polls.

“If the case for war were strong, it would be consistent. Instead, the rationales change by the hour: Regime change, nuclear weapons, missiles, defense, preemptive — which is it? When the justification keeps shifting, the strategy is missing,” he said.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll of 1,282 U.S. adults nationwide found that only 27 percent of respondents approved of the strikes against Iran, while 43 percent disapproved and 29 percent were unsure.

Sen. Angus King (Maine), an independent who caucuses with Democrats, said Tuesday at an Armed Services Committee hearing that he was stunned by Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s explanation that the administration felt compelled to launch strikes against Iran because Israel was planning to attack and American troops would have faced retaliation.

“Have we now delegated the most solemn decision that can be made in our society, the decision to go to war, to another country?” King asked Elbridge Colby, the under secretary of Defense for policy, at the hearing. “That’s the implication, the breathtaking implication of Secretary Rubio’s statement.”

Sen. Tim Kaine (Va.), the lead Democratic sponsor of the war powers resolution, argued Tuesday that the law only allows the president to deploy military forces for 60 days in a defensive action and framed the current U.S. action as an unprovoked attack.

“Haven’t we learned anything from 25 years of the wars in the Middle East? More than 14,000 U.S. troops and contractors killed, more than 65,000 troops and contractors injured,” he said. “What did we get out of it?”

The Democratic arguments, however, have failed to gain much traction with GOP colleagues.

Moderate Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), who voted to advance a war powers resolution in January to block Trump from taking further military action against Venezuela, declined to say Tuesday afternoon how they would vote on the Iran resolution.

Two other Republicans who voted in January to discharge the Venezuela war powers resolution out of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in January but then voted to block the measure after facing an intense backlash from Trump — Sens. Todd Young (Ind.) and Josh Hawley (Mo.) — are expected to vote against the Iran measure.

Young told reporters after the Senate GOP luncheon that he’s inclined to oppose the resolution, and Hawley argued that Trump has so far complied with the War Powers Act’s requirement that he formally notify Congress of military action within 48 hours.

“I think the administration is in compliance with the War Powers Act. The president has 60 days under the War Powers Act to conduct operations before having to come back to Congress. I’ve always said that committing ground troops would be something I think that would require immediately a congressional authorization,” but that doesn’t seem likely, Hawley added.

Republican Sens. Mike Lee (Utah), Jerry Moran (Kan.) and Bill Cassidy (La.), who voted in February of 2020, during Trump’s first term, to pass a war powers resolution prohibiting use of military force against Iran without congressional approval, have also declined to endorse the new measure.

Asked if Congress would need to authorize military action against Iran beyond 60 days, Moran said he would need to research the law and the facts of the military conflict before drawing a conclusion and said he hoped to learn more at a classified briefing Tuesday afternoon.

Democrats, meanwhile, with the exception of Sen. John Fetterman (Pa.), who has applauded the military action against Iran, are expected to vote overwhelmingly to block Trump from continuing the military campaign.

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