On February 28, 2026, the United States launched a massive military attack on Iran alongside Israel. The operation, called Epic Fury, killed Iran’s supreme leader, struck hundreds of military targets, and drew Iranian counterattacks that have so far killed at least 13 American service members[s]. What it did not include was congressional war authorization – a vote by the people’s elected representatives to approve the conflict.
Congressional War Authorization: What the Constitution Says
The Constitution is clear on one point: only Congress can declare war. The framers deliberately placed this power with the legislative branch, not the president, because they had seen European monarchs drag their nations into conflicts on personal whims. James Madison warned that war is “the true nurse of executive aggrandizement” and that the temptation to wage it would be too great “for any one man.”[s]
In practice, this means that before American troops are sent into major combat, Congress is supposed to debate, vote, and grant approval. The last time Congress formally declared war was in 1941, after Pearl Harbor. Since then, lawmakers have sometimes passed authorizations for the use of military force, as they did for the 1990 Gulf War and the post-9/11 wars in Afghanistan and Iraq[s]. But for Operation Epic Fury, no such authorization exists.
What Happened Instead of a Vote
Rather than seeking congressional war authorization, the Trump administration notified a small group of congressional leaders – the so-called Gang of EightA select group of eight congressional leaders who receive classified intelligence briefings on the most sensitive national security matters. – shortly before bombs started falling[s]. President Trump then filed a two-page report to Congress citing “collective self-defenseThe legal principle under international law allowing a state to use military force in defense of an ally under attack.,” as required by the 1973 War Powers ResolutionA 1973 law requiring the president to notify Congress within 48 hours of deploying forces and withdraw them within 60 days without congressional approval.[s].
Legal experts say that briefing a handful of leaders does not satisfy the law. “This is an introduction of U.S. forces into hostilities,” said retired Air Force Lt. Col. Rachel VanLandingham, former chief of international law at U.S. Central Command. “It absolutely triggers the 48-hour notice requirement”[s] – and far more broadly, the constitutional requirement for Congress to decide when American lives are placed at risk in offensive wars.
Congress Tried to Push Back – and Failed
Lawmakers did attempt to reassert their authority through the War Powers Resolution, a 1973 law that allows Congress to force the president to withdraw troops from unauthorized conflicts. In the week after the strikes began, both chambers voted on bipartisan resolutions to halt the war without congressional war authorization.
Both failed. The Senate voted the resolution down 47 to 53[s], largely along party lines, with Republican Sen. Rand Paul voting for the resolution and Democratic Sen. John Fetterman voting against it. The House rejected its resolution 212 to 219[s].
These were not the first failures. Since Trump’s second term began, war powers resolutions have failed after strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities in June 2025, after the Venezuela operation in January 2026, and again in a repeat Senate vote in late March – bringing the total to five failed attempts[s] to reclaim congressional authority over military action.
Why This Matters for Ordinary Americans
The absence of congressional war authorization is not a technicality. It means the decision to send Americans into harm’s way – and to spend billions of taxpayer dollars – was made by one person, without public debate. As the Project on Government Oversight’s David Janovsky put it[s]: “We need the people’s representatives to weigh in on whether we, the people, are going to war right now.”
One month in, 61% of Americans disapprove of the war[s], according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll. At least 13 U.S. troops have been killed. The Pentagon has deployed additional troops to the region, raising the prospect of a ground deployment. And the administration has already signaled it will need Congress to approve billions in supplemental funding – meaning lawmakers who were not asked to authorize the war will be asked to pay for it[s].
The Bigger Picture
Operation Epic Fury is, by CNN’s assessment, “by far the most extensive military operation undertaken without a use of force authorization by Congress.”[s] It represents the culmination of decades of erosion in congressional war authorization – from Korea to Vietnam to Libya – but at a scale that dwarfs those precedents.
Whether Congress will find the will to reclaim its constitutional role remains an open question. Democrats have promised weekly votes. But as the war continues with no defined endgame and no congressional stamp of approval, the question is no longer just about Iran. It is about whether the constitutional requirement for congressional war authorization still means anything at all.
On February 28, 2026, the United States and Israel launched Operation Epic Fury, a coordinated military campaign against Iran that killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, struck hundreds of targets across the country, and triggered Iranian counterattacks on U.S. installations across the Gulf. One month later, at least 13 U.S. service members are dead and nearly 2,000 Iranians killed[s]. The operation was launched without congressional war authorization – and every legislative attempt to require it has failed.
Congressional War Authorization: The Constitutional Framework
Article I, Section 8, Clause 11 of the Constitution vests the power to “declare War” exclusively in Congress. Article II designates the president as commander in chief, but the framers understood this as authority to direct military operations after Congress had authorized them. The sole exception, as Madison and Elbridge Gerry articulated at the Constitutional Convention, was the power to “repel sudden attacks”[s] on the United States when Congress could not convene in time.
The 1973 War Powers ResolutionA 1973 law requiring the president to notify Congress within 48 hours of deploying forces and withdraw them within 60 days without congressional approval. attempted to codify this framework. It requires the president to notify Congress within 48 hours of introducing forces into hostilities and to withdraw forces within 60 days[s] absent congressional war authorization or a formal declaration. The president may extend this window once by 30 days. Trump has claimed the Iran operation could conclude within five weeks, staying within that 60-day threshold[s] – though one month in, no end is in sight.
The Administration’s Legal Rationale
The Trump administration has advanced several justifications for bypassing congressional war authorization. The primary claim rests on Article II commander-in-chief authority and the doctrine of “collective self-defenseThe legal principle under international law allowing a state to use military force in defense of an ally under attack.” – a term drawn from Article 51 of the UN Charter that permits military action in defense of allies facing armed attack[s].
Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters the administration had “overcomplied with the law”[s] by briefing the Gang of EightA select group of eight congressional leaders who receive classified intelligence briefings on the most sensitive national security matters. before the strikes. The administration has also offered shifting supplementary rationales: Iran’s alleged nuclear reconstitution, its development of long-range missiles, and – in a claim Trump himself later contradicted – Secretary Rubio’s assertion that Israel was about to attack Iran unilaterally[s].
These arguments face substantial legal scrutiny. Retired Air Force Lt. Col. Rachel VanLandingham, former chief of international law at U.S. Central Command, told The Intercept that the strikes “clearly violate the U.S. Constitution and the War Powers Resolution”[s] as well as international law. Legal experts note that Gang of Eight briefings do not satisfy the War Powers Resolution’s requirement for a formal written report to Congress as an institution. Senator Tim Kaine stated that “even in a classified setting”[s], the administration “could produce no evidence, none, that the US was under an imminent threat of attack from Iran.”
Five Failed War Powers Votes
Since the start of Trump’s second term, Congress has attempted to reassert its authority over military action through war powers resolutions five times – and failed every time.
The pattern began in June 2025 after U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, when a Senate war powers resolution was voted down. In January 2026, a Venezuela-focused resolution initially advanced in the Senate but ultimately failed to pass[s]. After Operation Epic Fury, the Senate rejected the Kaine-Paul resolution 47-53 on March 4[s], followed by a 212-219 House defeat on March 5[s]. A repeat Senate vote in late March produced the identical 47-53 result.
Even if a resolution had passed both chambers, the constitutional math is brutal: overriding a presidential veto requires two-thirds majorities in both houses – a threshold Congress is nowhere near reaching[s]. The Brennan Center noted that this level of “congressional submission is new – and alarming”[s], contrasting it with instances where Congress did push back, including against Obama in Libya and against Trump himself during his first term over Yemen and the Soleimani strike.
The Funding Lever Congress Has Not Yet Pulled
The Constitution provides Congress with a second mechanism to check unauthorized wars: the power of the purse. As Berkeley law professor John Yoo – who helped draft the Bush administration’s 2001 and 2002 use-of-force authorizations – noted, “Congress, they know how to stop this if they want to.”[s] The Vietnam War ultimately ended after Congress pulled funding.
This lever may soon be tested. The ACLU has noted that the administration is already running out of war funding[s] and will need to request a supplemental appropriations bill, likely worth billions. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s reported request for $200 billion[s] has already generated friction within Republican ranks, with some members calling it antithetical to Trump’s “America First” pledges.
The Erosion of Congressional War Authorization in Historical Context
The erosion of congressional war authorization did not begin with Trump. The United States has not issued a formal declaration of war since 1941. President Truman committed forces to a three-year war in Korea without congressional approval[s], calling it a “police action.” The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, based on attacks that were later found to have been misrepresented, authorized escalation in Vietnam. Obama bombed Libya without congressional authorization[s] and continued air campaigns against ISIS in Syria for three years while Congress declined to vote on his own request for an AUMF.
But Operation Epic Fury represents a qualitative escalation. As CNN’s analysis put it, this is “by far the most extensive military operation undertaken without a use of force authorization by Congress.”[s] Previous unauthorized actions – Panama, Libya, Syria strikes – were limited in scope and duration. The Iran campaign involves coordinated air operations across an entire country, the assassination of a head of state, regional counterattacks, growing American casualties, and no defined endpoint.
What Comes Next
Democrats have pledged weekly Senate votes on war powers resolutions. House Democrats reportedly have the votes to pass their own resolution[s] but leadership has backed away from forcing a vote – a calculation that some analysts read as preferring to let Trump suffer politically rather than compelling members to take a firm stance.
The 60-day War Powers Resolution clock, which started on February 28, expires in late April. If forces remain deployed past that deadline without congressional war authorization, the administration will face an explicit statutory violation – though the resolution’s enforcement mechanism has never been tested in court. The supplemental funding vote, whenever it arrives, may prove to be the more consequential moment: the point where Congress must decide whether to bankroll a war it never authorized.
The constitutional question at the heart of this conflict is not new. But the answer Congress is giving – silence, acquiescence, and party-line votes to preserve presidential prerogative – marks a low point in the institution’s willingness to exercise its most solemn power. As the Brennan Center warned: if Congress fails to act, “the message to the president will be clear: He is empowered to use the military whenever he would like, however he would like, regardless of the Constitution’s demands.[s]“
