The United States and Israel launched airstrikes on Iran on February 28, 2026. Congress never voted to authorize it. Since then, Congress has tried ten times to force a vote reining in this war, while the administration has argued the war powers deadline doesn't apply because of an April ceasefire, even as Trump said he was an hour away from ordering another strike weeks later.

On June 23, the House and Senate did something that had never happened before: both chambers passed a resolution directing a president to remove forces from an active conflict. But it was a concurrent resolution, which by law never carries the force of it and never goes to the president's desk. The next day, the Senate took up a different measure, Senator Kaine's joint resolution, the one that would have actually gone to Trump's desk and carried real legal force if signed. Hours after Trump personally confronted two Republican senators at a closed-door lunch, both flipped their votes, and that measure was blocked.

That is exactly the problem with relying on a toothless mechanism. Congress passed the version that couldn't bind the president, and killed the version that could, in the same week, after one lunch. The Constitution gives the power to declare war to Congress, not the President, and a resolution designed from the start to carry no legal force isn't a check on that power. It's a press release.

Lydia has tracked and pushed for accountability on this war since it began: contacting Michigan's congressional delegation to support war powers resolutions, producing rapid-response coverage of every vote, and calling out the administration's shifting legal justifications in real time.

As Senator, Lydia will:

• Vote for joint resolutions that carry the force of law to end U.S. involvement in Iran, not just concurrent resolutions
• Oppose any funding request for this war, including the Pentagon's request for roughly $80 billion tied largely to the Iran conflict, without explicit congressional authorization
• Push to close the loophole that lets a president redefine a ceasefire as the end of hostilities to avoid the War Powers Resolution's authorization deadline