Today marks Day 56 since the Department of Homeland Security activated emergency authorities related to the Iran conflict and Day 42 since the War Powers Resolution clock started ticking. In that time, Congress has logged approximately 15 legislative days. Not one of them has included a floor vote on war authorization.

The reason is not inaction so much as misdirection. The legislative calendar has been consumed by three overlapping crises that each demand urgent attention: FISA reauthorization, DHS appropriations, and tariff policy related to the broader economic fallout from the blockade [1]. Each fight absorbs committee time, floor hours, and political capital that might otherwise force a reckoning on the constitutional question of who authorized this war.

KPMG's congressional tracker confirms the bandwidth crunch. This week's agenda includes DHS and defense funding markups, a FISA floor vote that has already collapsed once, and preliminary tariff hearings that both parties are using for positioning ahead of midterm primaries [2]. War powers is listed nowhere.

The constitutional architecture is clear. The War Powers Resolution requires the president to withdraw forces after 60 days absent congressional authorization. That deadline arrives in early May. But the resolution has never been enforced through litigation, and no president of either party has conceded its binding authority.

The pattern is familiar. Congress fills its calendar with urgent-but-manageable fights while the existential question, whether this war is legal, drifts toward a deadline no one intends to meet.

-- SAMUEL CRANE, Washington