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The House Voted to End the Iran War. Now the Real Battle Begins.

Congress took an important symbolic step toward reasserting its authority over war powers. But much, much more needs to be done.

Marco Rubio, Donald Trump, and Pete Hegseth during a cabinet meeting at the White House, on May 27, 2026.

The anti-war cause won a rare and heartening victory on Wednesday when the House of Representatives passed a measure, the Iran War Powers Resolution, calling on Donald Trump to “remove United States Armed Forces from hostilities against the Islamic Republic of Iran.” The resolution passed by a vote of 215 to 208, winning bipartisan support from 211 Democrats and 4 Republicans who broke with the president—Thomas Massie of Kentucky, Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, Tom Barrett of Michigan, and Warren Davidson of Ohio. While Massie and Davidson are long known for being staunchly anti-interventionist libertarians, the defections of the two other Republicans are significant because they are moderates who represent swing districts.

Fitzpatrick and Madison were surely motivated in part by the fact that the Iran war is overwhelmingly unpopular. A new poll by The Economist/YouGov shows that 68 percent of voters believe Trump “should make a deal to end the war in Iran as quickly as possible.” They and the rest of the bill’s supporters did well to pass a resolution that not only reflects popular opinion but also reasserts the constitutional role of Congress over the waging of war.

Yet passing a resolution is easier than enforcing it.

As The New York Times reports:

The House’s vote was only the first step in a complicated and likely uphill path for the resolution. It now heads to the Senate, which under the war powers law must take it up within roughly two and a half weeks. It does not need a presidential signature, but even if Congress were to clear the measure, its legal force would remain uncertain.

The House’s vote was only the first step in a complicated and likely uphill path for the resolution. It now heads to the Senate, which under the war powers law must take it up within roughly two and a half weeks. It does not need a presidential signature, but even if Congress were to clear the measure, its legal force would remain uncertain.

Getting the Senate to pass the measure could be difficult, but it is not impossible. Last month the Senate passed a similar resolution by a vote of 50 to 47, with four Republicans joining almost all Democrats (John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, now an infamous buffoon, being the sole member of his party to vote against the resolution).

If both the House and the Senate pass the resolution, it will not need the president’s support because it will be what is known as a “concurrent resolution”—in effect, a legislative veto. But what happens next is less certain, because it is unclear whether a concurrent resolution used in this manner is constitutional.

The Constitution could not be more explicit that the responsibility for declaring war rests with Congress. Yet, in practice, this power has been eroded by the massive expansion of the national security state, which has led to a centralization of power in the executive branch. The result is an imperial presidency that frequently wages war with minimal consultation with Congress, let alone explicit........

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