Congress has several tools at its disposal to limit the president’s ability to wage war. Will they be used?
The year is 2006. Democrats surge to power in the midterm elections after a Republican administration unleashed an unpopular conflict in a Middle Eastern nation. Yet the opposition remains cautious and fails to assert Congress’s constitutional check on the president. The year is 2026. Democrats surge again in the midterms after a Republican administration launched an unpopular war in a Middle Eastern country. What comes next?
Although President Donald Trump has insisted that his “foray” into Iran would differ from the Iraq invasion, the domestic political dynamics are alarmingly familiar. The failures of the war itself and the economic toll of inflaming a resource-rich region became significant liabilities for the president’s party. Exit polls indicate that 62 percent of voters view the war as a mistake, and 74 percent say it was a major factor in their voting decisions. Several newly elected Democrats were newcomers who capitalized on the antiwar mood in the primaries to top established figures deemed complicit with the war.
“If it is still ongoing next term, on day one, Democrats will pass a bill to end the Iran war,” Rep. Ted Lieu (D–Calif.) told The New Republic in July 2026.
Turning that public mandate into policy is easier said than done. Trump has demonstrated repeatedly that the president can simply veto or ignore war powers resolutions from Congress demanding an end to the fighting. Congress’s only direct leverage lies in the military budget—and threatening to withhold funds is itself a politically risky gambit, as newly elected lawmakers learned after 2006. A leadership willing to challenge Republicans’ handling of the war may not share a deeply principled antiwar stance.
“I had serious misgivings about the decision of this administration to go forward and still do. But it comes down to this. We have to decide whether or not we will provide the funds necessary to support the men and women in uniform…I don’t support a precipitous withdrawal,” Sen. Dick Durbin (D–Ill.) told NPR in May 2006, a few months before the midterms. He remains the Senate Democratic whip to this day.
Of course, there are notable differences between then and now. The Iraq War enjoyed broad initial popularity and only later became unpopular, whereas the Iran war is the first United States conflict to begin without majority backing since opinion polling began. Rather than building legal grounds through a congressional authorization—as President George W. Bush did for Iraq—the Trump administration launched a surprise strike and then challenged Congress to halt it.
From the outset, the administration said it entered the war “at the request of and in the collective self-defense of its Israeli ally,” tying the decision to a foreign partner that has become a contentious topic in American politics. And unlike Iraq, where U.S. forces quickly secured the country and then faced guerrilla resistance, the U.S. military is currently involved in an intermittent naval and aerial standoff with a still-functioning Iranian government.
Nevertheless, the same instruments available to Congress then remain accessible now. “I would halt the funding. The House and the Senate should freeze the money for any further actions in the Iran war. That’s what we did to stop the Vietnam War,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D–Calif.) told Fox News the week before the midterms. (After Vietnam’s 1973 ceasefire, lawmakers prohibited the Nixon administration from using any military funds to resume the war.)
On paper, Khanna’s camp can win this struggle. Even some Republicans were stunned by the Trump administration’s initial $200 billion request for Iran-war funding in March 2026. The cost was later folded into the general defense budget, and all but six Democrats voted against that bill in the House. Democrats now hold at least a seven-seat edge in the House, a figure AP News suggested would grow in the early hours after the vote tallies.
Yet they do not possess the two-thirds majority required to override a presidential veto—and history shows that such a hurdle can doom any bid to defund the war. In 2007, the Bush administration asked Parliament for $93.4 billion to sustain U.S. forces in Iraq. Democrats initially approved a $123 billion package that gave the military until September 2008 to withdraw. Bush vetoed it, arguing that the “terrorists” would simply “mark their calendars and gather their strength.” Facing the choice between a blank check for the president or risking military funding shortfalls, Democrats chose to back down and passed a war budget without a deadline. U.S. troops remained for the duration of the Bush presidency.
The sporadic nature of the Iran fighting does set it apart from a protracted ground war. Aside from naval escorts for oil shipments costing around $2 billion to $3 billion per month, American forces engage primarily during flare-ups, which occur when Trump escalates. “The only surefire way to shield our troops is to end this war as quickly as possible,” argued Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer (D–N.Y.).
Israel’s role is a double-edged blade for antiwar factions. On one side, opponents can more credibly counter accusations of unpatriotism and present themselves as defending Americans’ interests against external threats. Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed contended that both Iran and Israel “have proven dangerous in their own ways” during the Michigan debate. “Let’s be honest about what happened here. Israel has pushed us to go to war in Iran,” he said. “Ask yourself, are we safer because of that war?” El-Sayed won the race and is headed to the Senate.
On the flip side, the Trump administration can argue that any decision to escalate was not entirely within its control. Politico reported before the war that several officials hoped Israel would strike first and provoke Iranian retaliation. “We knew there would be an Israeli action. We knew that would trigger an attack on American forces, and we knew that if we didn’t preemptively strike before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio asserted a few days after the conflict began.
Congress can wield investigative powers as a middle ground—stronger than mere budget restraints but not as dramatic as new war powers resolutions. To date, Democrats have sought information on U.S. troop casualties, civilian casualties, the war’s financial burden, and even the role of “extreme religious beliefs” in military briefings. With a Capitol majority, they could transform pointed inquiries into subpoenas for documents and testimony with real legal force.
And those investigations could pave the way for impeachment. “One of the first steps we’ll take in the majority is to remove [Secretary of War] Pete Hegseth from office,” House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries (D–N.Y.) declared last month, with The Telegraph noting that Democrats have already reached out to potential whistleblowers willing to testify against him. Even before the new Congress convenes, the departing libertarian-leaning Rep. Thomas Massie (R–Ky.) vowed to compel a vote on Hegseth’s impeachment.
In the end, the trajectory of Congress’s role in the war will hinge on Democrats’ resolve to push back. The week before the conflict began, Democratic leaders postponed a vote on a war powers resolution. Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D–Mich.) told Reason Editor Matt Welch on The Fifth Column there was “an under-the-surface effort to be like let’s not do it, or let’s not do it in a strong way,” because lawmakers fear the political cost. Drop Site, meanwhile, reported that many Democrats remain convinced that a war with Iran is both right policy and politically advantageous, because it would force Trump to bear the financial burden of the conflict.
In June 2025, just before Israel launched the earlier Twelve Day War against Iran, Schumer mocked “TACO Trump,” an acronym for “Trump Always Chickens Out,” for already bending in negotiations toward peace. On February 28, 2026, the day Trump initiated his current war, House leader Jeffries issued a hedged statement, conceding that Iran is a bad actor and must be confronted, but warning Trump not to wage a costly or protracted war.
In truth, at times Democratic leadership threatened to be more obstacle than catalyst for ending the war. When Trump signed a peace memorandum with Iran in June 2026, several Democrats attacked him as a weak appeaser. “This is not the art of the deal. This is the art of surrender,” Schumer proclaimed on the Capitol steps, falsely claiming the memorandum meant giving American taxpayer money to Iran and threatening to withhold any funding for it. The deal unraveled by July 2026.
The midterms proved a decisive rebuke to those tactics. El Sayed, for instance, won both the primary and the general election by portraying his rivals as complicit in the war—and dishonest in their opposition. “Now [Republican candidate] Mike Rogers wants you to believe he wasn’t fully aligned with Donald Trump on the war from the start,” El Sayed said at a September rally. “Here’s the thing about war: you can’t unring that bell.”
Yet experience since 2006 shows that talk is cheap, even when it’s about how the other side isn’t as serious. “The president may be content leaving our troops mired in an open-ended civil conflict, but that’s not the case for us, and it isn’t for most Americans,” said the late Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D–Nev.) in May 2007, two months ahead of the vote to allow Bush to maintain U.S. troops in the war without a clear deadline.
