The Tuesday morning Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee hearing on the Pentagon's $1.45 trillion fiscal-year 2027 budget request opened with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, acting Comptroller Jules Hurst, and Joint Chiefs Chairman General Dan Caine in the witness chairs. The Iran-war exchange that became the day's most-watched legislative document ran roughly four minutes [1]. It picked up where the paper's deadline-day account left off: a Murkowski AUMF push that still lacked a Senate vehicle.

Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) framed it as a constitutional question. "I have been talking about an authorization of use of military force," she said. "I understand that the administration has made clear that you believe that the actions taken thus far fall under the president's Article II authority. I think reasonable people have disagreed about the boundaries of presidential war powers for a long time" [2]. She then walked Hegseth through the statute. "The War Powers Resolution is pretty clear here. It requires the president to terminate hostilities within 60 days absent congressional authorization. I think it's important that we in Congress actually assert our own role and responsibility to this. That 60-day clock expired April 28th, and then on the 1st, the administration sent letters to congressional leaders asserting that the hostilities have ended" [2].

Murkowski then enumerated the operating war. "I think where there is confusion is when the president says hostilities have ended, we still have 15,000 troops that are forward deployed, more than 20 warships in an active naval blockade. CENTCOM has redirected 61 commercial vessels and disabled tankers. In other words, it doesn't appear that hostilities have ended." She asked the procedural question: "Whether or not the administration has considered or has intended to seek an authorization of use of military force from Congress" [2].

Hegseth: "Senator, our view is that should the president make the decision to recommence, we would have all the authorities necessary to do so." [2]

Murkowski tried again. "Do you think that it would be helpful to the president if it was made clear that, in fact, Congress did provide an AUMF?"

Hegseth: "I think the president — our view is that he has all the authorities he needs under Article II to execute." [1]

The Article II answer twice — once preemptively, once when invited — is the operative paragraph. The administration's legal posture is the May 1 termination doctrine plus the Article II constitutional baseline. Murkowski's framing was that the statute and the doctrine cannot both be true while 15,000 forward-deployed troops, a naval blockade, and 61 redirected commercial vessels operate as facts. The paper's May 13 piece named the missing bill number as the institutional silence; today's exchange named the institutional answer. They are different facts that produce the same authorization vacuum.

Murkowski first pledged the AUMF on April 30 in a floor statement: "if we pass this 60-day mark from the start of hostilities with still a lack of a credible plan and information from the administration, it is something that I intend to introduce once the Senate reconvenes" [3]. The Senate reconvened May 11. The week-of-May-11 deadline she set publicly came and went. Tuesday's hearing was Day 1 of week-of-May-11. As of Thursday, no Senate bill has been filed under Murkowski's name on the AUMF question. The Senate Banking website shows no committee referral. The Senate Legislative Information System shows no record-vote number assigned. Two of the Republican senators who voted with Democrats on the most recent War Powers Resolution — Susan Collins of Maine, who chairs the full Appropriations Committee, and Murkowski herself — sit on the defense subcommittee that questioned Hegseth Tuesday. Neither raised the AUMF as a filing intention during the hearing.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, according to The Hill, "has yet to schedule a floor vote due to concerns about the political liability of putting GOP lawmakers on the record about the war ahead of the midterms" [4]. The political math runs against the procedural calendar. The November midterms are six months away. Polls have shown the Iran war below 50% approval since week six. The Republican caucus does not want a vote on it.

Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA), who has authored five of the six failed War Powers Resolutions, told Fox News on May 11: "I see almost no circumstance in which Republicans would want to have a vote on that in committee or on the floor. They are actively trying to avoid accountability for the war" [4]. Kaine's interpretation is that the AUMF Murkowski has promised is also the AUMF Republican leadership will not schedule. The institutional silence is now bilateral: the administration has refused to seek authorization, and the Senate leadership has refused to schedule one.

Hegseth's reasoning on the underlying termination doctrine carried through to a separate exchange Tuesday. The administration's May 1 letter, signed by the President, declared that "the hostilities that began on February 28, 2026 have terminated" and that the 60-day clock no longer applies. Murkowski's enumeration of forward-deployed troops, warships, and redirected commercial vessels was a direct rebuttal to that doctrine on the public record of a Senate Appropriations hearing. It did not move Hegseth's answer. Hegseth on the naval blockade in a separate exchange: "as you know, for the most part, ceasefire means fire is ceasing" [5]. Asked about Project Freedom — the one-day humanitarian-convoy operation through Hormuz — Hegseth described it as "paused" and "an option we could always recommence."

The May 12 hearing record now reads as the third public document in the war-authorization thread the paper has been tracking: the administration's May 1 letter, Murkowski's April 30 floor statement, and Tuesday's Article-II-twice exchange. Three records of institutional position. Zero filed bills. One operating war.

The procedural watch for the rest of the week: whether Murkowski files the AUMF before recess Friday, whether Senate Banking or Senate Foreign Relations holds a referral hearing, whether any second Republican senator joins her, and whether the supplemental-funding question that the House Appropriations Defense subcommittee put on a June 11 deadline pulls the authorization question into appropriations-vehicle territory by force.

-- SAMUEL CRANE, Washington