1. United States
2. Mass.
3. Letter

Congress must immediately invoke and enforce the War Powers Resolution to end President Trump’s unauthorized war with Iran unless Congress openly debates and specifically authorizes continued hostilities. This is not a technicality. It is one of the central constitutional safeguards of our democracy. The Framers gave Congress, not the president, the power to decide whether the United States goes to war. The War Powers Resolution exists because presidents of both parties have tried to evade that limit. It requires the president to notify Congress when U.S. forces are introduced into hostilities, and it requires those hostilities to end within 60 days unless Congress declares war or grants specific authorization. That 60-day clock is now expiring. Congress cannot allow the deadline to pass as if silence were consent. Trump justified his attack on Iran by claiming an imminent threat. His own intelligence community reportedly contradicted that claim. Since then, the public has been offered shifting rationales, vague promises, and no clear strategy. Seven weeks into this conflict, only 38 percent of Americans support the strikes, a majority say the war is not in the interests of the American people, and 41 percent say Trump does not have a plan for resolving it. Only 15 percent believe he has achieved his goals. Congress should not allow an unpopular, unauthorized war to continue by inertia. This war is also making America less safe. Iran did not have a nuclear weapon before Trump launched this conflict. But every strike, threat, and blockade strengthens the argument among Iranian hardliners that only a nuclear deterrent can protect them from future attack. Bombs can damage facilities. They cannot erase knowledge, expertise, or incentive. A war sold as nonproliferation may instead become a recruitment poster for proliferation, while teaching other countries that the lesson of Iran is not to avoid nuclear weapons, but to acquire them faster. Now Trump appears to be searching for an off-ramp from the crisis he created. Reports indicate Iran has proposed reopening the Strait of Hormuz and ending hostilities while postponing nuclear talks. If Trump accepts that as “victory,” then the war will have failed on its own stated terms: no congressional authorization, no clear plan, no durable nuclear agreement, and no explanation for why Americans were dragged into a conflict whose best-case exit may be a return to the status quo before the shooting started. Congress cannot keep pretending to be a spectator. If members support continuing hostilities with Iran, they should vote to authorize them. If they do not, they should vote to stop them. What they cannot do is hide behind silence while the president wages war without constitutional authority. Invoke the War Powers Resolution. Require a public vote. End unauthorized hostilities with Iran now.