On 28th February 2026, the United States went to war. No congressional debate. No public deliberation. No formal declaration. Just a midnight operation, with top lawmakers notified only minutes before the bombs fell, announcing that American aircraft were already striking Tehran. This is not how a republic wages war. This is how a king does.

The strikes on Iran — codenamed Operation Epic Fury— killed Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and multiple senior officials, put American lives in harm’s way without a single vote of the people’s representatives, and shook global energy markets to their foundations.

Article I of the Constitution gives Congress, not the president, the power to declare war. Trump did it anyway. And in doing so, he did not merely break a rule — he broke the foundational compact of American self-governance.

Article I of the Constitution gives Congress, not the president, the power to declare war. Trump did it anyway. And in doing so, he did not merely break a rule — he broke the foundational compact of American self-governance.

The White House’s legal rationale was collective self-defence under the UN Charter. But the United States was not under attack. Iran had not struck American soil. Administration officials released conflicting statements about the aims of the operation, ranging from ending Iran’s nuclear program to outright regime change — language that has no grounding in any congressional mandate or democratic debate. As Senator Andy Kim told TIME, lawmakers and the American public were being asked to accept military escalation without understanding the endgame: “The President has really boxed us in and put us on the hook for things that we haven’t discussed as a country.” When senators demanded classified........

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