Eight thousand troops. Two carrier groups. Sustained strikes on Iranian military infrastructure. No congressional vote.

The legal question at the center of the No Kings protests has been before Congress for 27 days. The War Powers Resolution of 1973 requires the president to terminate hostilities within 60 days if Congress does not pass an authorization — but the clock does not start until Congress is formally notified, and the administration has not formally notified Congress in the manner the resolution contemplates.

The result is that 8,000 American service members are deployed to a combat zone in the Middle East under a legal theory that has not been tested in federal court. Three separate lawsuits have been filed arguing that the deployment violates Article I, Section 8. The Justice Department has filed motions to dismiss. No judge has ruled.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters on Friday that no floor vote on war authorization is scheduled for next week. The Senate will be in session. The House will be in session. Neither chamber has a war authorization bill on the calendar.

The silence from Republican leadership has been notable. The January protests were about immigration — an issue where Republican voters and Republican elected officials are broadly aligned with the administration. The Iran war is different. Republican voters have shown in multiple polls that they are uneasy with an open-ended commitment to a Middle East conflict without clear exit criteria. Republican members of Congress who want to push back face a whip operation that has made clear: any vote against the administration's war posture will be treated as a vote against the troops.

The six Republicans who broke with the administration procedurally — blocking a procedural vote on a resolution that would have required congressional authorization — did so on narrow procedural grounds. None of them voted against the war. None of them has called for a floor vote. The paper's March 26 edition noted that congressional action had not followed the credibility strain. March 28 has not changed that assessment.

The House is preparing a discharge petition that would force a vote on a war authorization resolution sponsored by Rep. Barbara Lee and 87 co-sponsors. The petition requires 218 signatures. As of Friday, it had 41. The math is not favorable. The House Republican leadership has made clear that it will not schedule the bill.

The No Kings protesters are not wrong about the constitutional question. They are correct that the war was launched without congressional authorization and that the War Powers Resolution has not been followed. The question is whether correct constitutional arguments produce political change — or whether they simply produce more correct constitutional arguments that nobody acts on. [1] [2] [3] [4].