On a Saturday in late February, President Donald Trump announced that the United States had joined Israel in launching a war against Iran. Standing before the nation—or rather, appearing in a video posted to social media wearing a white “USA” ball cap—he declared that the threat from Tehran was “imminent” and that the operation was an act of self-defense.

Three weeks later, six American service members are dead. Oil prices have soared past $100 a barrel. The Strait of Hormuz, through which onefifth of the world’s oil passes, is a war zone. And the United States Congress—the branch of government the Constitution explicitly vests with the power to declare war—has been reduced to a spectator, its members told by their own leadership that public oversight would be “unhealthy” and “counterproductive.”

This is not how a constitutional republic is supposed to function. This is how a monarchy functions. And it is precisely why the “No Kings” movement—which has brought millions into the streets in the largest singleday protests in American history—is not merely justified but essential. The war in Iran is not an isolated foreign policy decision. It is the clearest, most dangerous expression yet of an executive branch that has decided it answers to no one.

The Constitution is unambiguous: Article I grants Congress the power to declare war. The Framers, having fought a revolution against a king, were determined that no single person would possess the authority to plunge the nation into armed conflict. Yet on March 5, 2026, the House of Representatives voted 219212 against a bipartisan resolution that would have required President Trump to seek congressional authorization before continuing military operations against Iran. The Senate had rejected a similar measure the day before.

The arguments against the resolution revealed the depth of Congress’s selfemasculation. Speaker Mike Johnson called the very attempt to limit the president’s authority “dangerous” and insisted, remarkably, that “we are not at war”—even as American bombs fell on Iranian targets and American bases came under retaliatory fire. Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin argued that oversight would be harmful because “you don’t want to show that kind of division to your enemy.” Let that reasoning sink in: the solution to wartime disagreement, in this view, is not to resolve it through democratic deliberation but to silence it entirely.

Representative Brian Mast, the Florida........

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