Why Congress Can’t Claw Back War Powers From Trump
WSJ
Jan-23-2026
In a dizzying three weeks on the world stage, President Trump deposed Venezuela’s leader, threatened its neighbors with military action, raised the specter of new strikes on Iran and ignited—then tamped down—a diplomatic crisis with Europe over his efforts to acquire Greenland.
At each fresh turn, Congress has found itself scrambling to keep up, sparking new debates among lawmakers about how to claw back constitutional powers from the presidency over matters of foreign policy in the Trump era.
On Thursday, the Republican-led House defeated a resolution that would restrict Trump’s ability to deploy troops to Venezuela—a full 19 days after the audacious military raid that captured the country’s president. The vote was a tie, 215-215.
That action follows a bipartisan Congressional visit to Denmark last week at the height of a diplomatic row between Washington and one of its closest allies that shows how many U.S. lawmakers—Democrats and a small but growing number of Republicans—are searching for ways to rein in the president. At stake, they say, is the U.S.-led global order that’s been in place since the end of World War II.
“Congress has ceded its authority in far too many areas,” said Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R., Alaska), during the two-day trip to Copenhagen to calm officials over Greenland. “We’re the ones that have to speak up for our role,” added Murkowski, who didn’t support Trump’s re-election. “We can’t just complain that there’s executive overreach.”
So far, these lawmakers concede they are failing. The latest Republican-controlled Congress has accelerated a decadeslong shift giving the White House greater authority to take on America’s adversaries and even some allies. Threats from terror groups and foreign entities have fueled the dynamic by blurring the clear lines between war and peace. The Supreme Court has generally, but not always, favored a strong executive in this arena.
The current dynamic is “f—ing ridiculous,” said Rep. Sara Jacobs (D., Calif.), who traveled to Copenhagen. “But it’s not just because of this president. It is because of decades of Congress just completely abrogating its responsibility. And that’s true of both parties in Congress, and it’s true of presidents of both parties.”
Many of Trump’s Republican allies have cheered his aggressive use of the executive branch to swiftly reshape the federal government and drastically alter U.S. foreign policy to a more MAGA agenda.
“President Trump was not elected to preserve the status quo,” White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said. “Many of this President’s predecessors recognized the strategic logic of acquiring Greenland, but only President Trump has had the courage to pursue this seriously.”
Only a handful of Republicans have publicly rebuked the president on his foreign policy, while others air their grievances behind the scenes. Some Republicans have endorsed Trump’s efforts to acquire Greenland, saying it is integral for U.S. strategic interests in the Arctic and modern missile defense needs.
“The same people who are pearl clutching about ‘undermining the NATO Alliance’ are the same people who never demand European NATO countries step up in a more meaningful way for the defense of their own continent,” Republican Sen. Eric Schmitt of Missouri said in a post on X.
These debates have resurrected questions that date to the birth of the U.S. 250 years ago, when the Founding Fathers first wrestled with where the president’s powers should stop and Congress’ should start on matters of foreign trade, declaring war and expanding the country’s borders.
Rep. Don Bacon (R., Neb.) said Congress needs to do more to restore the original vision. “We’re not an equal branch right now,” he said. Bacon, who is retiring, was one of only two Republicans who voted “yes” on the war-powers resolution that failed Thursday in the House.
Checks and balances
The framers sought to limit precipitous foreign interventions. The system of checks and balances gives Congress the power to raise armies and declare war, but makes the president commander in chief of the armed forces.
In 1787, two decades before becoming president himself, James Madison proposed adjusting the U.S. Constitution to give Congress the power to “declare war” rather than “make war”—allowing the president to respond quickly to any attacks without waiting for congressional approval. The change stuck.
Congress flexed its muscles on military and security matters early and often. In 1805, President Thomas Jefferson asked Congress to authorize military action against Spain over territorial disputes involving Florida, but lawmakers refused. In 1831, President Andrew Jackson pushed the U.S. to the brink of armed conflict with France when that country refused to pay the U.S. damage claims dating back to the Napoleonic wars. Congress rebuffed him.
At the end of World War I, Congress refused to ratify the Treaty of Versailles and join the League of Nations, the brainchild of President Woodrow Wilson and forerunner to the United Nations.
President Harry S. Truman denied the U.S. was in a war in 1950 when he sent U.S. forces to repel the Communist invasion of South Korea. He agreed when a reporter asked if it should be called a “police action.” Congress never declared war, but later approved funds to support the campaign, which cost the U.S. more than 36,000 lives.
After the Vietnam War became unpopular, Congress passed the 1973 War Powers Act over then-President Nixon’s veto, to limit the executive’s ability to commit troops overseas without congressional approval. The law requires the president to notify Congress within 48 hours of deploying U.S. forces and requires the removal of troops after 60 days unless Congress votes to declare war or approve the use of force.
But Congress has never successfully used the War Powers Act to rein in a president. Even the few times when war-powers resolutions that would force a president to remove troops have managed to pass both chambers, they have been unable to garner the two-thirds supermajorities necessary to overcome vetoes. The Trump administration has argued the law is unconstitutional.
In the modern era, national security has become significantly more complex, blurring the lines between the president’s authority and that of Congress in ways the Founding Fathers couldn’t have envisioned.
Nonstate actors such as terror groups don’t formally declare war before launching attacks. Trade and national security are increasingly interwoven, and presidents—including Trump—have seized on the global dominance of the dollar to wage economic warfare against adversaries through sanctions, tariffs and export controls, sometimes without congressional consent or input.
After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Congress voted to give the executive branch broad authority to wage war in Afghanistan and Iraq. Those authorizations to use military force, or AUMFs, had no expiration dates.
A Marine’s take
Republican Sen. Todd Young, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran from Indiana, served as a congressional aide after 9/11. He said no one on Capitol Hill at the time thought the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan would last as long as they did. “If we had it to do all over again, would we do it the same way? Hell no,” he said.
More than two decades later, as a member of Congress himself, Young would work with Democrats to repeal the 2002 authorization for the Iraq war and the 1991 authorization for the First Gulf War. When the effort finally succeeded, with large bipartisan majorities, in last year’s annual defense policy bill, it was the first time Congress had repealed a war authorization in more than 50 years.
Even repeal of such an authorization doesn’t guarantee that Congress can stop a war already under way. In 1971, Congress repealed the Tonkin Gulf Resolution that in 1964 handed President Lyndon Johnson a blank check to fight the Vietnam War. Nixon signed the repeal—but continued pressing the war until Congress cut off funding in 1973. American forces didn’t fully withdraw until 1975, when South Vietnam’s U.S.-backed government fell to Communist North Vietnam.
Young is frustrated with what he sees as a broad abdication of Congress’s responsibilities in foreign affairs and defense.
“When you ask for the hearings, you don’t get them, or they’re so delayed that they’re not helpful anymore,” said Young, who didn’t endorse Trump in 2024. “So do we have power? It’s still there, but we’ve got to assert ourselves,” he added.
In closed-door meetings with senior Danish and Greenlandic officials during the trip, Sen. Thom Tillis (R., N.C.) said if Trump ever made an aggressive move against Greenland, a veto-proof majority in the Senate could pass legislation to curb his war powers, according to people in the meetings.
“We have always heard about these checks and balances in American politics, and I mean now it’s time for Congress and the Senate to live up to their responsibility,” said Jan Jørgensen, a Danish member of parliament.
Several other senior European officials said they appreciated the Congressional outreach but that Trump’s aggressive rhetoric overshadowed the lawmakers’ efforts.
On Wednesday, Trump announced he had “formed a framework for a future deal” on Greenland and would halt a plan to impose tariffs on European countries who opposed his efforts as his administration started negotiations. His announcement followed a speech at a confab of global elites in Switzerland where he ruled out the prospect of taking the island by force.
“It’s being negotiated, and let’s see what happens,” Trump told reporters. “I think it’ll be good.”
Danish Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen said Trump’s announcement was a “positive step” but didn’t allay all of Denmark’s concerns. “What is quite clear after this speech is that the president’s ambition remains intact,” he said. “It doesn’t make the problem go away.”
Act of defiance
In a rare act of defiance, one week before the bipartisan delegation of lawmakers left for Copenhagen, a handful of Republican senators voted to advance a resolution that would limit Trump war powers in Venezuela, 52-47. Among them was Young.
Trump’s response was swift. He raged at all five Republican defectors, declaring in a post on Truth Social that they “should never be elected to office again.” The president also called the senators to rebuke them personally, The Wall Street Journal reported. The administration has characterized the raid to capture Maduro’s Venezuela as a law-enforcement operation rather than a military offensive.
Last week, Young and Sen. Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) both made an about-face and voted to kill the Venezuela war-powers resolution they’d recently helped advance. They said they’d been satisfied by the administration’s assurances that the U.S. has no plans to deploy ground troops or pursue a military occupation.
The way Young saw it, he’d gotten the best deal he could. After “countless” phone calls and text messages with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and administration lawyers, he said he’d negotiated a written commitment from Rubio that the Trump administration would come to Congress for formal authorization before any major military operations in Venezuela. Rubio also agreed to testify about Venezuela at a Senate committee hearing next week.
“I think we played our hand well,” Young told reporters after the vote.
Critics said it was just another example of Republicans caving to pressure from Trump. Ahead of Thursday’s House vote, Rep. Thomas Massie (R., Ky.), a libertarian who has frequently clashed with Trump, warned that GOP lawmakers risk rendering their own branch of government impotent—and they may come to regret it.
“Some of my Republican colleagues may feel obligated to acquiesce, because it’s our party occupying the White House, it’s our party who is the commander in chief,” said Massie, who voted to pass the House war-powers resolution.
“But the precedents we tolerate today will inevitably be used against us tomorrow, when the reins of power change hands,” Massie added.
Jan-23-2026
In a dizzying three weeks on the world stage, President Trump deposed Venezuela’s leader, threatened its neighbors with military action, raised the specter of new strikes on Iran and ignited—then tamped down—a diplomatic crisis with Europe over his efforts to acquire Greenland.
At each fresh turn, Congress has found itself scrambling to keep up, sparking new debates among lawmakers about how to claw back constitutional powers from the presidency over matters of foreign policy in the Trump era.
On Thursday, the Republican-led House defeated a resolution that would restrict Trump’s ability to deploy troops to Venezuela—a full 19 days after the audacious military raid that captured the country’s president. The vote was a tie, 215-215.
That action follows a bipartisan Congressional visit to Denmark last week at the height of a diplomatic row between Washington and one of its closest allies that shows how many U.S. lawmakers—Democrats and a small but growing number of Republicans—are searching for ways to rein in the president. At stake, they say, is the U.S.-led global order that’s been in place since the end of World War II.
“Congress has ceded its authority in far too many areas,” said Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R., Alaska), during the two-day trip to Copenhagen to calm officials over Greenland. “We’re the ones that have to speak up for our role,” added Murkowski, who didn’t support Trump’s re-election. “We can’t just complain that there’s executive overreach.”
So far, these lawmakers concede they are failing. The latest Republican-controlled Congress has accelerated a decadeslong shift giving the White House greater authority to take on America’s adversaries and even some allies. Threats from terror groups and foreign entities have fueled the dynamic by blurring the clear lines between war and peace. The Supreme Court has generally, but not always, favored a strong executive in this arena.
The current dynamic is “f—ing ridiculous,” said Rep. Sara Jacobs (D., Calif.), who traveled to Copenhagen. “But it’s not just because of this president. It is because of decades of Congress just completely abrogating its responsibility. And that’s true of both parties in Congress, and it’s true of presidents of both parties.”
Many of Trump’s Republican allies have cheered his aggressive use of the executive branch to swiftly reshape the federal government and drastically alter U.S. foreign policy to a more MAGA agenda.
“President Trump was not elected to preserve the status quo,” White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said. “Many of this President’s predecessors recognized the strategic logic of acquiring Greenland, but only President Trump has had the courage to pursue this seriously.”
Only a handful of Republicans have publicly rebuked the president on his foreign policy, while others air their grievances behind the scenes. Some Republicans have endorsed Trump’s efforts to acquire Greenland, saying it is integral for U.S. strategic interests in the Arctic and modern missile defense needs.
“The same people who are pearl clutching about ‘undermining the NATO Alliance’ are the same people who never demand European NATO countries step up in a more meaningful way for the defense of their own continent,” Republican Sen. Eric Schmitt of Missouri said in a post on X.
These debates have resurrected questions that date to the birth of the U.S. 250 years ago, when the Founding Fathers first wrestled with where the president’s powers should stop and Congress’ should start on matters of foreign trade, declaring war and expanding the country’s borders.
Rep. Don Bacon (R., Neb.) said Congress needs to do more to restore the original vision. “We’re not an equal branch right now,” he said. Bacon, who is retiring, was one of only two Republicans who voted “yes” on the war-powers resolution that failed Thursday in the House.
Checks and balances
The framers sought to limit precipitous foreign interventions. The system of checks and balances gives Congress the power to raise armies and declare war, but makes the president commander in chief of the armed forces.
In 1787, two decades before becoming president himself, James Madison proposed adjusting the U.S. Constitution to give Congress the power to “declare war” rather than “make war”—allowing the president to respond quickly to any attacks without waiting for congressional approval. The change stuck.
Congress flexed its muscles on military and security matters early and often. In 1805, President Thomas Jefferson asked Congress to authorize military action against Spain over territorial disputes involving Florida, but lawmakers refused. In 1831, President Andrew Jackson pushed the U.S. to the brink of armed conflict with France when that country refused to pay the U.S. damage claims dating back to the Napoleonic wars. Congress rebuffed him.
At the end of World War I, Congress refused to ratify the Treaty of Versailles and join the League of Nations, the brainchild of President Woodrow Wilson and forerunner to the United Nations.
President Harry S. Truman denied the U.S. was in a war in 1950 when he sent U.S. forces to repel the Communist invasion of South Korea. He agreed when a reporter asked if it should be called a “police action.” Congress never declared war, but later approved funds to support the campaign, which cost the U.S. more than 36,000 lives.
After the Vietnam War became unpopular, Congress passed the 1973 War Powers Act over then-President Nixon’s veto, to limit the executive’s ability to commit troops overseas without congressional approval. The law requires the president to notify Congress within 48 hours of deploying U.S. forces and requires the removal of troops after 60 days unless Congress votes to declare war or approve the use of force.
But Congress has never successfully used the War Powers Act to rein in a president. Even the few times when war-powers resolutions that would force a president to remove troops have managed to pass both chambers, they have been unable to garner the two-thirds supermajorities necessary to overcome vetoes. The Trump administration has argued the law is unconstitutional.
In the modern era, national security has become significantly more complex, blurring the lines between the president’s authority and that of Congress in ways the Founding Fathers couldn’t have envisioned.
Nonstate actors such as terror groups don’t formally declare war before launching attacks. Trade and national security are increasingly interwoven, and presidents—including Trump—have seized on the global dominance of the dollar to wage economic warfare against adversaries through sanctions, tariffs and export controls, sometimes without congressional consent or input.
After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Congress voted to give the executive branch broad authority to wage war in Afghanistan and Iraq. Those authorizations to use military force, or AUMFs, had no expiration dates.
A Marine’s take
Republican Sen. Todd Young, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran from Indiana, served as a congressional aide after 9/11. He said no one on Capitol Hill at the time thought the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan would last as long as they did. “If we had it to do all over again, would we do it the same way? Hell no,” he said.
More than two decades later, as a member of Congress himself, Young would work with Democrats to repeal the 2002 authorization for the Iraq war and the 1991 authorization for the First Gulf War. When the effort finally succeeded, with large bipartisan majorities, in last year’s annual defense policy bill, it was the first time Congress had repealed a war authorization in more than 50 years.
Even repeal of such an authorization doesn’t guarantee that Congress can stop a war already under way. In 1971, Congress repealed the Tonkin Gulf Resolution that in 1964 handed President Lyndon Johnson a blank check to fight the Vietnam War. Nixon signed the repeal—but continued pressing the war until Congress cut off funding in 1973. American forces didn’t fully withdraw until 1975, when South Vietnam’s U.S.-backed government fell to Communist North Vietnam.
Young is frustrated with what he sees as a broad abdication of Congress’s responsibilities in foreign affairs and defense.
“When you ask for the hearings, you don’t get them, or they’re so delayed that they’re not helpful anymore,” said Young, who didn’t endorse Trump in 2024. “So do we have power? It’s still there, but we’ve got to assert ourselves,” he added.
In closed-door meetings with senior Danish and Greenlandic officials during the trip, Sen. Thom Tillis (R., N.C.) said if Trump ever made an aggressive move against Greenland, a veto-proof majority in the Senate could pass legislation to curb his war powers, according to people in the meetings.
“We have always heard about these checks and balances in American politics, and I mean now it’s time for Congress and the Senate to live up to their responsibility,” said Jan Jørgensen, a Danish member of parliament.
Several other senior European officials said they appreciated the Congressional outreach but that Trump’s aggressive rhetoric overshadowed the lawmakers’ efforts.
On Wednesday, Trump announced he had “formed a framework for a future deal” on Greenland and would halt a plan to impose tariffs on European countries who opposed his efforts as his administration started negotiations. His announcement followed a speech at a confab of global elites in Switzerland where he ruled out the prospect of taking the island by force.
“It’s being negotiated, and let’s see what happens,” Trump told reporters. “I think it’ll be good.”
Danish Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen said Trump’s announcement was a “positive step” but didn’t allay all of Denmark’s concerns. “What is quite clear after this speech is that the president’s ambition remains intact,” he said. “It doesn’t make the problem go away.”
Act of defiance
In a rare act of defiance, one week before the bipartisan delegation of lawmakers left for Copenhagen, a handful of Republican senators voted to advance a resolution that would limit Trump war powers in Venezuela, 52-47. Among them was Young.
Trump’s response was swift. He raged at all five Republican defectors, declaring in a post on Truth Social that they “should never be elected to office again.” The president also called the senators to rebuke them personally, The Wall Street Journal reported. The administration has characterized the raid to capture Maduro’s Venezuela as a law-enforcement operation rather than a military offensive.
Last week, Young and Sen. Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) both made an about-face and voted to kill the Venezuela war-powers resolution they’d recently helped advance. They said they’d been satisfied by the administration’s assurances that the U.S. has no plans to deploy ground troops or pursue a military occupation.
The way Young saw it, he’d gotten the best deal he could. After “countless” phone calls and text messages with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and administration lawyers, he said he’d negotiated a written commitment from Rubio that the Trump administration would come to Congress for formal authorization before any major military operations in Venezuela. Rubio also agreed to testify about Venezuela at a Senate committee hearing next week.
“I think we played our hand well,” Young told reporters after the vote.
Critics said it was just another example of Republicans caving to pressure from Trump. Ahead of Thursday’s House vote, Rep. Thomas Massie (R., Ky.), a libertarian who has frequently clashed with Trump, warned that GOP lawmakers risk rendering their own branch of government impotent—and they may come to regret it.
“Some of my Republican colleagues may feel obligated to acquiesce, because it’s our party occupying the White House, it’s our party who is the commander in chief,” said Massie, who voted to pass the House war-powers resolution.
“But the precedents we tolerate today will inevitably be used against us tomorrow, when the reins of power change hands,” Massie added.
