The United States has been at war with Iran for over 100 days under a legal justification the administration refuses to explain publicly, pursuing a deal whose text Congress hasn't been allowed to read, and on Tuesday the Senate voted, by a single vote, to keep it that way. Forty-eight senators looked at all of that and said: seems fine. One of them was a Democrat.
One Vote. One Democrat. One Colossal Cave.
CBS News reports the final tally was 47 to 48, with four Republicans crossing the aisle to support the resolution: Susan Collins of Maine, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and Rand Paul of Kentucky. That's it. Four Republicans who apparently still own a copy of the Constitution.
The sole Democrat to vote against the resolution was Pennsylvania's John Fetterman. Whatever you think of Fetterman's politics at this point, that vote handed the Trump administration its margin of victory on a war powers question. A single Democratic defection. One vote. That's the ballgame.
The resolution, led by Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia, would have directed the president to pull U.S. armed forces from hostilities with Iran unless Congress explicitly authorized the conflict through a formal declaration of war or an Authorization for Use of Military Force. That's not a radical ask. That's the literal text of how the Constitution says this is supposed to work.
109 Days of War and Congress Still Hasn't Read the Deal
Here is where things get genuinely surreal. Trump is out here touting a framework agreement with Iran to end what Warnock called "109 days of a failed war." Great. Terrific. Except Congress has not seen it. The text of the deal is secret. The terms are secret. Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters Tuesday he had requested the text and a briefing from the administration. He had to ask. He did not have it.
This matters for a specific legal reason beyond just general outrage. In 2015, Congress passed the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act, which requires any deal touching Iran's nuclear program to be submitted to Congress for review before any sanctions can be lifted. That law is still on the books. The administration appears to be treating it the way it treats most laws: as a suggestion aimed at other people.
Warnock put it plainly on the Senate floor: "After 109 days of a failed war, and now a fragile, temporary, but welcome truce, will my Republican colleagues choose today to finally stand up to this president?" Forty-four of them answered that question pretty definitively.
The Administration's Legal Theory Is Genuinely Unhinged
The Trump administration's position on the War Powers Resolution of 1973 is, and this is a direct characterization of their stated view, that it is unconstitutional. Not inconvenient. Not a stretch. Unconstitutional. A law passed by Congress to limit a president's ability to wage unauthorized war is, according to the people currently waging an unauthorized war, illegal.
Beyond that, the administration has argued that the 60-day statutory deadline for the president to terminate use of force without congressional authorization was somehow paused by a ceasefire declared in early April. CBS News reports that both sides have carried out attacks since that ceasefire announcement, which raises the obvious question of what exactly is being paused.
A group of Democratic senators, led by Adam Schiff of California, sent a letter to the president earlier this month shredding this logic. Their letter pointed out that the U.S., Iran, and their assorted partners and proxies have continued using lethal force since the supposed ceasefire, and that the president has repeatedly threatened to return to major combat operations at any moment. The letter was direct: the 60-day clock "does not have a pause button." The administration has not publicly released its legal theory explaining why it believes otherwise.
The Cracks Are Showing, But Not Enough
To be fair to the broader picture, Republican support for this war has been eroding. CBS News notes that last month, the Senate advanced a separate war powers resolution for the first time, clearing a procedural vote 50 to 47 after seven previous failed attempts. That was a genuine shift. Those same four Republicans have been consistent.
The House passed its own resolution earlier this month to force Trump to end the conflict without further congressional authorization, which was also a first in the lower chamber. The Senate has not taken that measure up. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said at a news conference that Democrats want to make sure they have the votes before pushing the Kaine resolution forward. "It's up to Republicans," Schumer said.
That's technically true and also a remarkable sentence to say out loud during an unauthorized war. The question of whether the president gets to keep fighting is, apparently, up to whether a handful of Republicans eventually feel bad enough about it. History suggests we should not hold our breath.
The Dingo Take
Let's be clear about what happened Tuesday. The Senate had an opportunity, by a simple majority vote, to assert that the branch of government the Constitution explicitly empowers to declare war should have some say in an ongoing military conflict. They declined. By one vote. Because one Democrat decided this was the hill he was comfortable dying on.
The administration's legal position here deserves to be stated plainly and repeatedly: they are arguing that a law Congress passed to limit presidential war powers is unconstitutional, that a ceasefire no one is actually observing somehow stops the legal clock that would require them to come to Congress, and that the text of a deal affecting nuclear weapons and international sanctions is none of the legislature's business. They have not explained this in public. They apparently do not feel they need to.
Four Republicans voted correctly. Forty-four did not. One Democrat helped them get there. The war goes on. The deal stays secret. The clock, according to everyone except the people currently in charge of it, is still running.
