In the span of two days, the U.S. bombed three nuclear sites in Iran, Iran retaliated and President Donald Trump declared a ceasefire in the region — all without Congress ever having a say.
Lawmakers are used to it.
In interviews, members of both parties responded to the weekend’s events as spectators rather than participants in the government’s decisions about war. Republicans mostly supported Trump, and some Democrats said he’d made the right move, too. Others repeated calls for Congress to be more active in these decisions — the same calls that have gone unanswered for more than two decades, as presidents of both parties have waged myriad foreign conflicts, without any new declarations of war from Congress or specific authorizations for the use of military force.