Middle East Eye
On the cusp of reining in Trump, House Republicans cancel war powers vote
On the cusp of reining in Trump, House Republicans cancel war powers vote
Submitted by
Yasmine El-Sabawi
on
Fri, 05/22/2026 - 18:01
The unexpected move on Thursday came as the Senate advanced a similar resolution
US House Speaker Mike Johnson talks with reporters outside his office on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on 14 May 2026 (Kylie Cooper/Reuters)
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The Republican-led House of Representatives on Thursday unexpectedly cancelled a war powers vote that could have reined in US President Donald Trump's ability to resume hostilities against Iran.
It was to be the fourth attempt under the 1973 War Powers Act since February.
The vote was scheduled to be among the last on the agenda before lawmakers went away for the extended Memorial Day holiday - and it was likely to be a successful one, given a similar vote held just a week ago came down to a 212-212 tie, when three Republicans joined Democrats in support of asserting congressional authority over war.
"We had the votes to pass it today. Every Democrat was on board. We had the sufficient number of Republicans on board,” Congressman Gregory Meeks, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told reporters on Thursday.
"Republicans pulled this vote because they knew they were going to lose it. They know this war is a political and strategic disaster," he added.
Congressman Steve Scalise, the House Majority Leader, told reporters the vote is being delayed until next month because several Republican lawmakers have been absent and therefore unable to vote.
Earlier this week, the Senate advanced its own war powers resolution 50-47, but that was because three Republicans were not present to vote. Among them was Thom Tillis, who is no longer running for re-election after becoming a target of Trump's attacks, and John Cornyn, who lost Trump's endorsement for his Texas primary this week to an opponent far more loyal to the president.
What the law says
The 1973 War Powers Act allows any senator to introduce a resolution to withdraw US armed forces from a conflict not authorised by Congress. The legislative branch, which acts as the country’s purse, is supposed to be the one that declares war - not the executive branch.
"There are some things about the Constitution [that] are not clear [but] this point is crystal, crystal clear," Chris Edelson, a constitutional scholar at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, told Middle East Eye.
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"The framers of the Constitution debated war power. They gave Congress the power to declare war," he said. "The one exception was if the United States is attacked, the president could act to defend the country... and of course that's not what happened here."
Since the 9/11 attacks in particular, the foggy nature of the so-called "war on terror" has enabled the White House to call the shots, especially as Washington has carried out air strikes in countries from Somalia to Pakistan without an official declaration of war.
The 1973 statute notably does make room for the president to take 60 days of military action before either formally ending hostilities, seeking authorisation from Congress, or asking for an extension for another 30 days - though Edelson argued that it is too "ambiguously worded" to be a law that supercedes the Constitution itself.
On 30 April, some three weeks after Pakistan brokered a ceasefire between the US and Iran, a US administration official told the Reuters news agency: "For War Powers Resolution purposes, the hostilities that began on Saturday, February 28, have terminated."
It followed remarks at a Senate hearing by Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, who indicated that the 60-day war window for the president is automatically frozen when a ceasefire is called.
Democrats, and some Republicans, rejected that assessment.
While the ceasefire has held, it remains fragile, with Trump just this week calling off the resumption of a "full, large scale" war on Iran, after Gulf leaders urged him to hold off until after the Hajj season.
At the start of the year, not all those on the Democratic side were against a war on Iran.
In the weeks leading up to the first strikes on 28 February, reports emerged that Democratic leadership was trying to curb efforts to impose congressional war powers.
Establishment Democrats, many of whom failed to condemn Israel for what the world's foremost scholars and the United Nations have called a genocide in Gaza, have also not shied away from consistent condemnation of Iran. They believe that if not now, then at some point it would have to be confronted militarily anyway.
That outlook changed as multiple polls demonstrated the war's unpopularity among the American public, followed by a steep rise in petrol prices just as the spring and summer road trip season was kicking off.
"It's clear it didn't go well. Who wants to be seen as supporting this?" Edelson told MEE. "I mean, there are Republicans who do, but even for some Republicans, it's getting hard."
The November midterms, which are congressional, gubernatorial, and local elections held halfway through a president's term, will be the first major litmus test of Trump's second presidency.
In 2020, after Trump targeted and killed top Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani, both the House and Senate voted to limit his war powers.
Trump vetoed the resolution.
War on Iran
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