The War Powers Resolution of 1973 gives a president sixty days to conduct military operations without congressional authorization before requiring either a declaration of war or a vote to extend authority. Trump submitted his war powers notification to Congress on March 2, four days after the strikes on Iran began February 28. [1] The sixty-day clock, by the most conservative reading, runs to April 29. Today is Day 37. Twenty-three days remain.

The House and Senate have both voted on war powers resolutions and lost. The Senate rejected a resolution to restrict Trump's Iran authority 53-47 in early March, with enough Republicans supporting the president to block the measure. [2] The House passed its own version but it died without Senate action. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, asked directly whether congressional authorization would be required after sixty days, said no: "I think the president has the authority." [3] That is not a legal analysis. It is a political statement. The legal analysis is more contested.

Paul D. Miller, writing Monday in The Dispatch, offered the most detailed accounting of what April 29 actually means: in his reading, the president faces a legal obligation to either cease military operations or obtain congressional authorization by that date, or May 29 if the March 2 notification date is used as the clock's start. [4] Failure to do so does not automatically end the war -- no court has ever ordered a president to stop a military operation under the War Powers Act. What it does is establish a clear constitutional violation that Congress can either enforce or ignore.

History suggests Congress will ignore it. Every president since Nixon has disputed the War Powers Resolution's constitutionality. Ford, Carter, Reagan, both Bushes, Clinton, Obama, Trump -- none has conceded that the Act constrains executive war-making authority. The resolution has never successfully ended a military operation. It has been a useful tool for congressional dissent and a useless tool for congressional control. April 29 is therefore less a deadline than a date on which the resolution's impotence will be demonstrated once again, or, less likely, will be put to its first real test.

The Republican majority shows no appetite for the latter. The House Armed Services Committee has not scheduled hearings on the Iran war's statutory authorization. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee has not produced a draft authorization for use of military force. What House Republicans have done is call Secretary Hegseth to testify at a budget hearing -- not a war powers hearing. [5] Hegseth's testimony, expected this week, will cover defense appropriations. Whether members use it to press the authorization question is the only live congressional action before April 29.

Trump's own statements have introduced a different kind of complication. His "two to three more weeks" comment from early April, widely interpreted as a signal that the war's intensive phase is nearing completion, was parsed by military analysts as an attempt to keep operations within the War Powers window. If the war ends -- or enters a sustained low-intensity phase -- before April 29, the authorization question becomes moot. If it doesn't, Congress has a choice to make that it has spent thirty-seven days avoiding.

-- SAMUEL CRANE, Washington