The House of Representatives killed an effort to rein in President Donald Trump’s war in Iran as Republican leadership insists that the United States is not at war.
The House voted 219 to 212 to kill a War Powers Act resolution introduced by Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Ro Khanna (D-Calif.). All but four Democrats voted for the resolution and only one other Republican, Warren Davidson of Ohio, joined Massie, a frequent critic of Trump, in voting for it.
The resolution would have required that the president inform Congress within 48 hours of troops being deployed, and would require troops be withdrawn within 60 days — with a possible 30-day extension if Congress had not declared war or had not authorized the use of military force.
But House Speaker Mike Johnson insisted ahead of time that the United States was not at war.
“We are not at war, we have no intention of being at war,” Johnson told reporters after the vote, calling the war a “limited operation.” Johnson said it would have been “a very dangerous gambit” to take away the president’s ability to execute what he has called Operatio Epic Fury.
Other Republicans have argued that the United States has been in an essentially undeclared war with Iran since 1979, when the U.S.-friendly government of the Shah was overthrown for the current regime.
Khanna criticized the move by Republicans to vote for the war.
“The Republicans now own this war,” Khanna told The Independent. He also praised some Democrats who had previously been anxious about the resolution for supporting the effort.
“But basically, now that Republicans have become the party of regime change wars and the Democrats are the anti war party.”
This came despite the fact that both Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth had characterized the operations in Iran as a “war.”
Democrats pushed back on the speaker’s characterization.
“I don’t know how tuned in Mike Johnson is with the president of the United States, but the president of the United States himself has said that we are at war and that would make his actions patently illegal,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York told The Independent.
The vote comes a day after the Senate voted down a similar War Powers Act resolution. All but one Democrat–Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania–voted for the resolution and only one Republican–Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky–opposed it.
So far, six U.S. servicemembers have been killed in the war in Kuwait.
