As expected, on Wednesday the U.S. Senate rejected Tim Kaine’s War Powers Act resolution ordering Donald Trump to cease attacks on Iran within 30 days unless he gets congressional authorization. It was basically a party-line vote, with (as is often the case) Rand Paul voting with Democrats for the resolution and John Fetterman voting with Republicans to kill it. The vote was mostly symbolic anyway since the House counterpart resolution was on the road to failure, too, and Trump could veto any war-powers measure that arrived at his desk.

But what the Senate vote did establish is that Trump can conduct his war on Iran without interference from Congress indefinitely — or more specifically, until the Pentagon runs out of money to prosecute it. And once again, his party is fine with giving this supposedly peacemaking president a blank check, even though he’s done a wretched job of providing any coherent rationale for going to war, any consistent set of war aims, or any clear timetable for winding it all down. The branch of the federal government with the exclusive constitutional authority to declare war seems ready to stand aside.

If the war does drag on long enough to exhaust the vast new funding Congress gave the Pentagon last year,........

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