Hmmm: House GOP Punts War Powers Vote to June

Two months ago, Donald Trump had the luxury of time while the regime in Iran had little to none left. Has Trump’s lengthy ceasefire flipped that around?

Republican leadership in the House must think so. Democrats forced a vote in the lower chamber on a resolution to force an end to military action against Iran. The GOP has been able to defeat a long string of such efforts since the war began on February 28th, but this time, enough Republicans may have peeled away to gain passage.

Speaker Mike Johnson kicked that can down the road to June, but the message is clear. Trump may have outdid himself in seeking a deal, and in doing so, exhausted the patience of Congress before he exhausted the IRGC:

Republicans struggled Thursday to find the votes to dismiss legislation that would compel President Donald Trump to withdraw from the war with Iran, delaying planned votes on the matter into June.

The House had scheduled a vote on a war powers resolution, brought by Democrats, that would rein in Trump’s military campaign. But as it became clear that Republicans would not have the numbers to defeat the bill, GOP leaders declined to hold a vote on it. It was the latest sign of the slipping support in Congress for a war that Trump launched more than two months ago without congressional approval. …

Republicans in the Senate are also working to ensure they have the votes to dismiss another war powers resolution that advanced to a final vote earlier this week, when four GOP senators supported the resolution and three others were absent from the vote.

The actions by congressional leaders showed Republicans are struggling to maintain political backing for Trump’s handling of the war. Rank-and-file Republicans are increasingly willing to defy the president over the conflict.

Let’s put this in perspective. First, a resolution demanding an end to hostilities has to pass both chambers, and as the AP reports, it’s not clear whether one can pass the Senate yet, or even the House, until next month now. Second, that bill is still subject to a presidential veto. Unless both chambers can then summon the necessary two-thirds votes to override a veto, the bill will have no effect. And even then, the legality of such an order from Congress has never been tested in court, and neither has the War Powers Resolution (or Act) since Congress passed it by overriding Richard Nixon’s veto in 1973.  

Legally, this vote would provide no impediment to Trump’s actions. Politically, however, it demonstrates that his support within his own party for the war is starting to erode. That may well be a result of Trump’s revenge on a handful of Republicans in the House and Senate in the midterm primaries; pettiness is an ever-present quality in American politics, after all. This kind of shift has a tendency to cascade. Ask George W. Bush about support for a war over time in relation to both Iraq and Afghanistan, and in both of those cases, we had succeeded in regime change.

This shift isn’t because we’re losing the war; it’s because Trump isn’t fighting it or withdrawing from it. The lengthy and obviously useless ceasefire has allowed the IRGC to continue obstructing the Strait of Hormuz, and to allow them to stall long enough to exhaust Western patience with the war. Trump continues to insist that we are on the verge of a deal, while the IRGC and regime remnants insist they are on the verge of victory by default. 

The regime made it clear again yesterday that it would not even discuss concessions on Trump’s nuclear red line:

🚨 JUST IN: Iran supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei ORDERS near-weapons grade uranium to be kept inside Iran — Reuters

Iran is also “reviewing” President Trump’s latest proposal, per Fox

47 is prepared for FIRE AND FURY if it’s clear to him they’re not making a deal! 🔥

The… pic.twitter.com/7ODi25WbwR

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) May 21, 2026

Trump won’t back down from that demand, he reiterated yesterday:

US President Donald Trump vowed on Thursday that the United States will eventually recover Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium despite comments from Iran that it will not hand over the material.

“We will get it. We don’t need it, we don’t want it. We’ll probably destroy it after we get it, but we’re not going to let them have it,” Trump told reporters at the White House.

Iran is believed to possess about 900 pounds of highly enriched uranium, which Trump says was buried by US and Israeli airstrikes nearly a year ago.

Retrieving the uranium is part of Trump’s central objective in his war on Iran, that Tehran will not be allowed to develop a nuclear weapon.

“I can think of nothing more important than the fact that we cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon,” Trump said.

This is exactly the same position both sides have taken since the start of the ceasefire. Nothing has changed, and it’s becoming clear that nothing will change in negotiations. The Pakistanis and the Qataris want to keep talking for the sake of talking, and – one suspects – to protect their franchises as mediators between the IRGC and the West. If the regime collapses in Tehran and a popular government replaces it, the successors may not be terribly inclined toward close relations with those who enabled their previous oppressors. 

Johnson has given Trump a brief reprieve, perhaps only a couple of weeks, before a potentially embarrassing vote of confidence in his war leadership. He should take that time to put an end to the IRGC’s stall tactics and perfidies and make it clear that the IRGC has no choice but to meet the US and Israel on our terms. 

Editor’s Note: For decades, former presidents have been all talk and no action. Now, Donald Trump is eliminating the threat from Iran once and for all. 

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