The Constitution is clear about one thing: Congress, not the president, decides whether the country goes to war. Last week the Senate had a chance to stand up for that rule. Most Republicans chose Trump instead.
On the night of June 24, 2026, the Senate voted 47 to 50 to block a war powers resolution that would have ordered U.S. forces out of unauthorized hostilities with Iran. The motion failed, and the war kept going — with no vote of Congress ever authorizing it.
What makes this worse is what happened the day before.
A 24-hour flip
On Tuesday, June 23, the Senate actually did the right thing. It passed a war powers resolution, 50 to 48, directing the president to remove U.S. troops from the fight with Iran unless Congress voted to approve it. Four Republicans crossed party lines to support it.
Then President Trump got angry. He went after the Republicans who voted to rein him in. And almost overnight, the Senate caved and reversed itself. On Wednesday, with a couple of senators flipping under pressure, the chamber blocked a nearly identical measure and handed Trump a win.
So in the span of one day, the Senate went from telling the president to stand down to telling him to carry on. The deciding factor wasn't new facts about Iran. It was pressure from Trump.
Who voted to keep us in the war
These 13 senators we track all voted against reining in the war — voting the way that keeps American troops in a conflict Congress never approved:
- Shelley Moore Capito — West Virginia
- Tom Cotton — Arkansas
- Lindsey Graham — South Carolina
- Bill Hagerty — Tennessee
- Jon Husted — Ohio
- Cindy Hyde-Smith — Mississippi
- Roger Marshall — Kansas
- Ashley Moody — Florida
- Pete Ricketts — Nebraska
- Jim Risch — Idaho
- Mike Rounds — South Dakota
- Dan Sullivan — Alaska
- Tommy Tuberville — Alabama
Every one of them had a simple choice: defend the Senate's own power to decide on war, or hand that power to Trump and the war hawks. They picked Trump.
It's worth noting the contrast. Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine voted for ending the war both times. It can be done. These 13 just chose not to.
This isn't a small thing
Going to war is the most serious decision a government can make. American lives are on the line. So is a huge amount of money — money that comes out of the same budget these same senators say they want to cut when it's time to fund health care or food assistance back home.
The founders worried about exactly this. They didn't want one person to be able to drag the whole country into a war on his own. That's why they gave the power to declare war to Congress. When senators refuse to even vote on whether a war should continue, they're not being humble — they're dodging the single most important job they have.
And dodging is the theme here. Instead of holding a real debate about whether fighting Iran is in America's interest, these senators voted to make the question go away. No debate, no authorization, no accountability — just a green light handed to the White House.
Following the money
It's fair to ask why so many senators are this eager to keep a war going.
One answer is the money. The pro-war lobby spends heavily in Senate races, and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) — which pushes hard for U.S. military backing of Israel's wars, including against Iran — is one of the biggest spenders in American politics. Several of the senators on this list count AIPAC and its allied donors among their largest backers. When your biggest donors want a war, voting to end that war gets a lot harder.
That's the quiet part. These votes aren't just about Iran policy. They're about who these senators actually answer to — and too often, it isn't the people back home who'll pay the bills and bury the dead.
The bottom line
For one day, the Senate remembered that Congress is supposed to decide on war. Then Trump pushed back, and most Republicans folded.
The 13 senators above had the power to demand a real vote and a real debate before more Americans are sent to fight. They used that power to do the opposite — to keep the war going and keep themselves out of the way. When the next bill for this war comes due, in dollars or in lives, remember that they had the chance to stop it and chose not to.
We deserve senators who answer to us, not to a president's temper or a lobby's checkbook.
How they voted
This post is based on the official U.S. Senate roll call for Vote 192 (S.J.Res. 185), June 24, 2026, with reporting from NPR, CNN, and UPI.
