5 questions on Iran as the House returns to Washington

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The Hill's Headlines — March 3, 2026

The Hill's Headlines — March 3, 2026

House lawmakers returned to Washington on Tuesday to confront the Iran conflict and joust over Congress’s role, or lack thereof, in governing the terms of the fight.

President Trump launched the Iran operations with a hail of strikes early Saturday, after weeks of threats and a massive buildup of military power in the surrounding region. But the administration has struggled to articulate a number of details related to the campaign, including the rationale behind it; the expected duration of the operations; and the objectives — near and long term — that drove the decision.  

Republicans have rallied behind the president, saying he’s acting solely in the interests of national security. But the attack has infuriated Democrats, who have long sought to reassert Congress’s role as the sole authority when it comes to declaring war. A pair of congressional briefings by top Trump officials on Tuesday seemed only to aggravate the Democratic concerns and fuel their push for legislation to curb Trump’s military powers.

Democrats have been joined in their criticisms by a small but vocal group of conservative Republicans and MAGA loyalists, who were drawn to Trump’s campaign promise to end “forever wars” in the Middle East and now fear he might have started one.

Here are five questions hanging over Congress as the House returns to Capitol Hill.

What will Congress do? 

Even before the strikes, Democrats were pushing a war powers resolution designed to limit Trump’s unilateral authority to conduct military operations in Iran. Saturday’s attack has added a new urgency to that effort, solidifying Democratic support for the measure just as it’s expected to hit the floor this week. 

Sponsored by Reps. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), the resolution is no longer relevant for its initial purpose, which was to preempt Trump from attacking Tehran without explicit congressional approval. But supporters, including the Democratic brass, are pushing ahead nonetheless, saying Congress still retains the power to halt the attacks until the administration can justify them.

“Every member of Congress needs to go on record,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) told reporters Tuesday in the Capitol.

Supporters have a tough road to passing the resolution. 

While two Republicans — Massie and Rep. Warren Davidson (Ohio) — say they’ll support the measure, at least two Democrats — Reps. Josh Gottheimer (N.J.) and Jared Moskowitz (Fla.) — are vowing to oppose it. That sets the stage for the measure to fail in a chamber where GOP leaders are warning against tying Trump’s hands amid the fight.

“The idea that we would take the ability of our commander in chief, the president, take his authority away right now to finish this job, is a frightening prospect to me,” Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) told reporters Monday.

The debate took a twist Tuesday, when six Democrats, including Gottheimer and Moskowitz, introduced an alternative war powers resolution that would give the administration a 30-day window to wind down operations or come to Congress for approval. 

Still, Democratic leaders say they remain focused on the Khanna-Massie resolution, which is set to hit the floor Thursday, and they’re pushing every one of their members to get on board. 

“We’ll continue to make the strongest possible case,” Jeffries said. 

Another funding fight coming?

With the war powers resolution facing long odds, Democrats are also eyeing another strategy for curbing Trump’s military designs in Iran: the power of the purse. 

Several Democratic senators are already forecasting a willingness to use their filibuster powers in the upper chamber to deny Trump additional funding for the Iran campaign. And the idea is likely to have plenty of support in the more liberal House.

“When the bill comes to pay for the replenishment of interceptors and munitions the middle eastern countries that we have been protecting need to pay for it,” Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) posted this week on the social platform X. “We aren’t cutting more Medicaid, food stamps for protecting these countries in a war of choice and not in our interest.”

That fight, in a typical year, wouldn’t play out until the next Pentagon funding deadline, on Sept. 30. But the timeline could be condensed considerably if the Iran fight drags on, weapons are depleted, and Trump comes to Congress asking for more funding to continue the campaign.

Indeed, the possibility of a supplemental defense spending bill is already under discussion at the highest levels of Congress and the administration. 

“It depends upon how long the operation goes and what the need is. But our appropriators certainly asked that question,” Johnson said Monday after huddling with top administration officials. “I think it’ll be some time before we can put a fine number on it.” 

As a preview of a potential fight ahead, Democrats are already balking. 

“The nerve of these extremists to want to raise the possibility of coming to Congress for supplemental funding related to a war that we haven’t even authorized yet,” Jeffries said.  

Will it affect the Homeland Security shutdown?

The Iran strikes came in the midst of a weeks-long impasse over funding for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which was sparked by the killing of two U.S. citizens at the hands of federal immigration officers in Minneapolis in January. Democrats are demanding tougher rules for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other DHS agencies, which Republicans have so far rejected.

Republicans this week are leaning on the Iran attack to pressure Democrats to reopen DHS, warning that the conflict has put Americans at greater risk of being the targets of terrorist violence. They’re putting the DHS funding bill on the floor on Thursday and are all but daring Democrats to oppose it.

“Put the safety and security of the American people first and stop playing political games to appease the far-left base, especially at a time like this,” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) told Fox News on Tuesday.

Democratic leaders say they won’t cave to the pressure, arguing that Trump’s attacks on Iran have no bearing on their efforts to rein in the president’s militant approach to deportations. 

“[Trump] wants to use his unauthorized war as an excuse to continue spending taxpayer dollars to brutalize or kill American citizens by continuing to unleash ICE without restrictions on the American people,” Jeffries told reporters in the Capitol. “The whole thing is insane. Make it make sense, because it does not.”

It remains unclear, however, if more centrist Democrats might reconsider their opposition to a DHS bill in light of the Iran attacks, particularly in the Senate. 

Trump rose to power a decade ago partly by attacking previous presidents for supporting drawn-out wars in the Middle East and vowing to shift those resources to tackle domestic problems instead. 

The Iran strikes have challenged that “America First” narrative, and a number of staunch conservatives — including some of his most loyal MAGA followers — have spoken out in ways that are threatening to fray his coalition on an issue that’s typically held it together. 

Driving those criticisms has been the argument, advanced by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other top officials, that Trump was compelled to strike Iran because Israel was planning its own attack against Tehran, which would have sparked retaliation against American troops and assets. That explanation has infuriated some of the MAGA faithful, who are now accusing Trump of allowing Israel to drive the U.S. to war. 

“No one should have to die for a foreign country,” Megyn Kelly, the former Fox News host, said on her eponymous news show on Monday. 

Tucker Carlson, another former Fox News superstar, reportedly visited the White House numerous times in an unsuccessful effort to talk Trump out of the strikes.

“This happened because Israel wanted it to happen,” Carlson said in his own video Monday. 

The backlash from top conservative voices is creating more headaches for GOP leaders trying to unite Republicans heading into November’s midterm elections, when control of the House is up for grabs.

But the political reverberations from Trump’s venture into Iran are already extending far beyond the grumbling of the online pundits.

Trump, aside from a noninterventionist policy abroad, had vowed to bring down costs at home. But markets like stability, not the chaos of conflict, and the disruptions caused by the Iran attacks have threatened to raise prices on consumers. Interruptions of oil and gas exports from the Middle East, for instance, sent gas prices rising by more than 10 cents a gallon across the U.S. on Tuesday.

How far those trends extend, and how much they will influence the thinking of voters in the midterms, will likely be dependent on how long the Iran operations endure and how stable the region is in their wake. Democrats, though, are already pouncing on the opportunity to highlight Trump’s campaign promises to focus on the economic challenges facing working-class people.

“Why are we spending taxpayer dollars, billions of dollars to bomb Iran as part of some regime change effort that the American people want no part of at this point in time, as opposed to actually driving down the high cost of living?” Jeffries asked Tuesday.

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