The Constitution is clear: only Congress can declare war. The people we send to Washington are supposed to be the check that stops a president from dragging the country into a foreign conflict on his own say-so.

In February 2026, that check failed. President Trump launched airstrikes against Iran without a vote in Congress. When members tried to reclaim their constitutional role — using the War Powers Act to force a vote on ending the fighting — a wall of Republicans stood in the way. They rubber-stamped a war of choice, and the rest of us got the bill: gas prices rose sharply after the Iran war started, squeezing drivers and working families already stretched thin.

Here are the Republicans with the worst records on Iran — the ones who abandoned their own principles, cashed the checks, and voted to keep us at war.

Tom Cotton talks tough — until the deal is Trump's

For a decade, Tom Cotton built his entire career as the Senate's loudest Iran hawk. Back in 2015, he organized a public letter signed by 46 fellow Republican senators addressed to Iran's supreme leader, in a deliberate effort to sabotage President Obama's nuclear deal. It enraged the Obama administration.

But now that Donald Trump is selling a strikingly similar agreement, Cotton has lowered his voice. The man who once torched Obama for negotiating with Tehran could only muster that "certain aspects of this deal are a step in the wrong direction." His principles, it turns out, only apply when there's a Democrat in the White House.

Andy Biggs and David Schweikert forgot their own words

Andy Biggs co-founded a bipartisan War Powers Caucus and spent years insisting that "the framers of the Constitution were committed to ensuring that Congress be at the heart of all decision-making related to our country going to war." Fine words. Then, when it counted, he voted against the House resolution to end the war in Iran — the exact congressional check he claimed to champion. The principles only applied when they were politically convenient.

His fellow Arizonan David Schweikert did the same thing, backing Trump on Iran despite his own past war-powers stance. Both men now want to be Arizona's next governor. Both had a chance to defend Congress's role in deciding whether Americans go to war — and both handed it away.

Susan Collins switched only when it couldn't win

Susan Collins wants Mainers to think of her as a moderate. Her record on the Iran war tells a different story.

When Trump launched the airstrikes, Collins sided with him. She voted against multiple attempts to stop the war, saying one would "send the wrong message to Iran and to our troops." The War Powers Act gives Congress 60 days to end a war the president started without approval. Collins voted against five straight attempts to restore Congress's authority, from March 4 through April 22.

Then, on April 30 — hours before the war hit its 60-day mark, a line she had said since mid-April would change her vote — she finally voted to end the war. But by then it didn't matter — the resolution failed 47-50, and the war ground on. This is her whole playbook: switch sides when the outcome is already decided, so she can look independent while changing nothing.

Max Miller wanted a "parking lot"

Ohio's Max Miller didn't bother with careful diplomatic language. Speaking about Palestinian territory on Fox News days after the October 2023 Hamas attack, Miller said flatly that "we're going to turn that into a parking lot." That is the mindset of a man who sees a wider Middle East war not as a catastrophe to be avoided, but as an outcome to be welcomed — and he brought it with him to every Iran vote, voting no on all four House war-powers resolutions through June.

Jon Husted rubber-stamped the war for Ohio

Ohio's junior senator, Jon Husted, joined his colleague in voting down the Iran War Powers Resolution. Faced with a straightforward question — should Congress get a say before the country stays at war? — Husted's answer was no. He'd rather hand that power to the president than exercise it on behalf of the Ohioans who elected him.

Bryan Steil made Wisconsin pay twice

Wisconsin's Bryan Steil voted to rubber-stamp what critics called a "reckless war of choice in Iran" — and did it while his constituents were watching their costs climb. Wisconsinites got a war they never voted for and higher prices to go with it. Steil signed off on both.

The pattern is the point

None of this is an accident, and none of it is one bad senator or one rogue representative. It's a party that talks endlessly about the Constitution and then abandons it the moment defending it would mean crossing Donald Trump. They lecture us about limited government while handing the president unlimited power to wage war. They warn about the national debt while sending the price of a gallon of gas through the roof.

War is the most serious decision a government can make. It costs lives, and it costs money, and the Constitution deliberately made it hard to do alone. These Republicans made it easy. In 2026, we get to decide whether they keep the power to do it again.