Congress confronts wartime debate after Trump launches attacks on Iran

“It's worrisome,” Rep. Adam Smith, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, told The Associated Press on Monday.

Smith said of Trump: “He is not trying to making his case to the Congress or the American people. He unilaterally decided to do this.”

The moment is a defining one for Congress, which alone has the authority under the U.S. Constitution to declare war, and for the Republican president, who has consistently seized power during his second term with his own executive reach. Trump took the nation to war at a particularly vulnerable time, as the Department of Homeland Security is operating without routine funds because of a standoff with Democrats over their demands to restrain his immigration enforcement operations. The potential wartime costs in terms of lives lost and dollars spent are dividing the parties, and potentially Americans themselves.

“The Constitution is intended to prevent the accumulation of power in any one branch of government — and in any one person in government,” said David Janovsky, acting director of The Constitution Project at the Project on Government Oversight, a watchdog organization.

"We need the people's representatives to weigh in on whether we, the people, are going to war right now."

War powers as a check on presidential power

In the U.S., the Congress would need to affirmatively approve wartime operations, with a declaration of war, or with an authorization for the use of military force, to essentially approve of the actions. But this rarely happens.

In fact, Congress has declared war just five times in the nation's history, most recently in 1941, to enter World War II a day after the Pearl Harbor attack. Congress approved an AUMF for the 1990 Gulf War and did so again in 2001 and 2002 to launch the 9/11-era wars into Afghanistan and then Iraq.

But Congress also created the war powers resolution during the Vietnam War-era, as something of a tool of last resort — deployed to slap back a president who had embarked on military excursions without congressional approval.

Both the House and the Senate have prepared war powers resolutions for votes this week. On Monday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and others briefed congressional leaders behind closed doors, without a watchful public. All lawmakers are set to have a private briefing Tuesday.

Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said on CNN that Trump, as president, “does not have the right to do this on his own.”

While lawmakers have harshly criticized the Iranian regime over its human rights abuses and nuclear ambitions, Democrats said Trump has not provided a rationale for the war or outlined its strategy for what comes next and Trump’s MAGA coalition is splintering over what it sees as the president’s failure to keep his “America First” campaign promise by leading the U.S. toward an overseas war.

Many lawmakers are wary of a longer entanglement as the operation killed Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and hundreds of people in the region, while others insisted there is no need for American boots on the ground.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said he never bought into the you-break-it-you-own-it concept in wartime. “If there’s a threat to America, deal with it," he said over the weekend. "That doesn’t mean you own everything that follows.”

Power of the purse can stop wars

Over time, presidents of both major political parties have accumulated vast authority to engage in what are often more limited U.S. military strikes to accomplish strategic national security goals without approval from Congress. Democrat Barack Obama's military operations in Libya and Republican George H.W. Bush's incursions into Panama were conducted without the nod from Congress.

Even if Congress is able to pass a war powers resolution to curb Trump in Iran, the House and the Senate would be unlikely to tally the two-thirds majority needed to overcome a presidential veto.

Trump has shrugged at the power of Congress to dictate what he can and can’t do, in war and other matters. He made only a brief mention of Iran in his State of the Union address last week, treating lawmakers' support as an afterthought.

John Yoo, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, said the Founding Fathers set up a constitutional system in which the president and Congress would battle it out over these issues — but with Congress having one particularly powerful tool, because it controls the federal funding.

“Congress, they know how to stop this if they want to,” said Yoo, who helped draft the Bush administration's 2001 and 2002 use of force authorizations. The Vietnam War ended once Congress pulled funding, he said.

But Congress is controlled by a Republican majority that largely shares Trump's view of focusing military power against Iran, and it recently approved massive new funds for the Pentagon, some $175 billion, in the big tax cuts bill that he signed into law last year.

With the Republican president's party in power in Congress, it's no surprise they are unlikely to object, Yoo said: “They agree with him.”

Debate in Congress begins

Republican Sen. Tom Cotton, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Trump already laid out his vision for Iran during his 8-minute video address over the weekend.

Cotton said Sunday that Americans should expect to see an “extended air and naval campaign” in the region, which could result in pilots being shot down, though he said the military personnel would be recovered.

But the Trump administration has not articulated a plan for stabilizing the region as Iran names a new leader and determines how it will react to the U.S. attack.

“There’s no simple answer for what’s going to come next,” Cotton said on CBS' “Face the Nation.”