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Residents sit amid debris in a residential building that was hit in an airstrike earlier this morning on March 30, 2026 in the west of Tehran, Iran. The United States and Israel have continued their joint attack on Iran that began on February 28. Iran retaliated by firing waves of missiles and drones at Israel and U.S. allies in the region, while also effectively blockading the Strait of Hormuz, a critical shipping route.
(Photo by Majid Saeedi/Getty Images)
Trump’s Iran Debacle Is a Reminder of Why Democracy Matters on Issues of War and Peace
Apr 07, 2026
More than a month into Donald Trump’s war with Iran, he still seems not to know why we are there or how we will get out. When, on February 28, President Trump launched a war of choice in Iran, he did so without consulting Congress or the American people.
The decision to start the war was his alone. Polls suggest that the public does not support Trump’s war.
A Pew Research Center survey found that “majorities of Americans say striking that country was the wrong decision and disapprove of President Donald Trump’s handling of the conflict.” Another poll reported that “six in 10 American adults say that the U.S.’s military action on Iran has ‘gone too far.’”
On the campaign trail, Trump said he would be a peace president and promised to end foreign wars. Those promises don’t seem to matter to the administration, which is waging a war whose costs are being borne by millions of people here and abroad.
Prosecuting the war costs more than $1 billion dollars per day. Americans are also paying for it at the gas pump and in the grocery store.
Trump’s war is an example of the dangers of being governed by one man, acting on his own impulses, beliefs, values, and interests. It should be a wake-up call for people who doubt democracy’s value or have grown weary of the responsibilities of democratic citizenship.
In a democracy, Professor Elaine Scarry explains, “If a president wants to go to war, or if anyone wants to go to war, it’s debated in open session, in both houses of Congress. It’s voted on…. Same with the citizenry; the citizenry debates…. It’s audible. It’s testable. It has to be testable. It doesn’t mean we’ll never go to war. Maybe we will find a reason to go to war. But it doesn’t mean that it’s untested.”
It is time for Americans to insist that, in the future, no president be allowed to launch a war of choice without going through that test.
Recall that Americans learned about the Iran war only after it started, when the president, wearing a hat emblazoned with the letters USA, posted a video to Truth Social. “A short time ago,” he said, “the United States military began major combat operations in Iran.”
The president characterized Iran’s leadership as “A vicious group of very hard, terrible people. Its menacing activities directly endanger the United States, our troops, our bases overseas, and our allies throughout the world.” Making clear that the attack on Iran was all about him, he added, “This regime will soon learn that no one should challenge the strength and might of the United States Armed Forces. I built and rebuilt our military in my first administration, and there is no military on earth even close to its power, strength, or sophistication.” Then, he boasted, “No president was willing to do what I am willing to do tonight.”
Contrast President Trump’s self-centered approach with the way Franklin Delano Roosevelt talked when he asked Congress for a Declaration of War against Japan. “(A)lways will our whole nation remember the character of the onslaught against us. No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory….. With confidence in our armed forces, with the unbounding determination of our people, we will gain the inevitable triumph.”
FDR went to Congress because that is what the Constitution required. He went to Congress to enlist its support, as a body representing the people, to get their consent.
He did what the people who founded this nation wanted and expected.
During the Constitutional Convention, Charles Pinckney, a delegate from South Carolina, opposed giving the president the power to decide when to take the nation to war. In his view, such an assignment “would render the Executive a Monarch, of the worst kind . . . an elect[ed] one.” George Washington agreed.
As he put it, because “The Constitution vests the power of declaring War with Congress… no offensive expedition of importance can be undertaken until after they shall have deliberated upon the subject, and authorized such a measure.”
The delegates to the Constitutional Convention were initially inclined to give Congress the power to “make war.” Pierce Butler, another South Carolina delegate, led the opposition to that proposal. He argued for “vesting the power in the President, who will have all the requisite qualities, and will not make war but when the Nation will support it.”
Butler’s comment that the President “will not make war but when the Nation will support it,” suggests that the decision to go to war would be made in as democratic a way as possible.
The Convention eventually substituted the power to “declare” for the power to make war. But one of the delegates, Roger Sherman, worried that “substituting the term ‘declare’ would narrow congressional authority too significantly.” Sherman argued that the original term, “make,” better made clear that the president could not “commence war” on his own.”
History has proven that Sherman was right to be worried.
Trump’s war in Iran is just the latest example of the fact that the power to declare war has been rendered meaningless. During the twentieth century, Congress declared war eight times.
The last time was on June 5, 1942, when it declared war against Bulgaria, Hungary, and Romania.
As a 2003 report by David M. Ackerman and Richard F. Grimmett noted, “There is a striking similarity of language in the eight declarations of war passed by the Congress in the twentieth century.” With the one exception, the “declarations characterize the state of war as having been ‘thrust upon the United States’ by the other nation.”
The war in Iran, in contrast, was thrust on us by Donald Trump, with no declaration. A declaration of war, political scientist George Friedman explains, “holds both Congress and the president equally responsible for the decision and does so unambiguously. Second, it affirms to the people that their lives have now changed and that they will be bearing burdens.”
“(B)y submitting it to a political process,” Friedman argues, “many wars might be avoided . . . . “
President Trump’s insistence that Congress could have no role in making the decision to attack Iran and his recent tendency to refer to the war euphemistically are an insult to the Constitution. The Center for American Progress’s Damian Murphy and his colleagues are right to say that “Trump has undermined the very foundation of American democracy… denying the American people a meaningful role in decisions of war and peace.”
We are learning the hard way that democracy matters most when those decisions are made.
Austin Sarat is the William Nelson Cromwell professor of jurisprudence and political science at Amherst College.
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ASA's 322-foot-tall Artemis II Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft lifts off from Launch Complex 39B at Kennedy Space Center on April 1, 2026 in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
(Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images/TCA)
Moonshot hope amid despair of Trump’s Iran war
Apr 05, 2026
On Wednesday evening, two historic things happened, almost simultaneously.
First, four courageous astronauts successfully lifted off from Launch Complex 39B at Kennedy Space Center aboard Artemis II, which will attempt the first lunar flyby in more than 50 years.
It was a stunning sight, and one that turned out more than three million people just who watched the official NASA launch broadcast alone.
It recalled a nostalgia for the days of Apollo, which excited and inspired so many Americans, and for just a moment, stirred up the kind of patriotism and hope that’s felt hard to come by in recent months.
In a parallel universe this would have been the perfect moment for the president to address the nation with a soaring speech marking the moment. We could have seen the kind of speech John F. Kennedy gave in 1962, inspiring an anxious nation to believe in possibility and progress amidst a backdrop of Cold War fears.
But that’s not the universe or timeline we’re living in. America is at war, and we don’t really know why.
President Trump finally delivered his first national address more than a month into his self-proclaimed — and unauthorized — “excursion” into Iran, an incursion that’s resulted in numerous U.S. casualties, strangled the free-flow of oil, created turmoil in the markets and world economies, and created fear among the U.S. and our allies that our actions will have dangerous ripple effects in the region and here at home for months, possibly years.
But a speech that was meant to satisfy the concerns of a skeptical public — two-thirds of which disapprove of Trump’s war and don’t believe he has a clear plan — failed to meet the mark.
Despite Trump’s rah-rah declarations of victory and decimation, no one with even a cursory knowledge of Iran’s history and capabilities could believe this reckless and aimless war of attrition is anywhere close to being over.
Offering no real plans to recover the roughly 1,000 pounds of highly enriched uranium buried in the rubble at Natanz and Isfahan, offering no real plans to liberate the people of Iran from a regime that’s thus far no different from the last one, offering no real plans to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and the world’s free flow of oil, Trump blustered, boasted, and balked, all while wagging an indignant finger at our allies for not jumping into this ill-advised quagmire with us.
And in fact, in his attempt to brag about how short this war has lasted, his comparisons to other lengthy conflicts like Vietnam and the Iraq war only reminded Americans how costly and consuming this one is likely to be.
The speech also comes against the backdrop of Trump’s threats to withdraw from NATO, the post-World War II treaty that’s kept Soviet and other tyrant states from attacking the Western alliance for more than 70 years.
While Trump may not understand its importance, the world certainly does, and is collectively rebuking his reckless efforts to weaken the body that is crucial for ensuring our own national security and stability and that of Europe.
But times feel fraught, without question. A corrupt, ignorant, and self-motivated wannabe dictator is prosecuting an ill-advised war using American blood and treasure, all while threatening to isolate our nation and endanger others even further. He’s wreaking economic havoc at home and across the globe, and without much care or consideration.
If we look at this mess Trump’s created too closely or for too long, it feels impossible to have hope for a better tomorrow. Perhaps that’s why now, more than ever, we need to look up and away, toward the stars, where actual heroes are leading the way. We’re all cheering you on, Artemis II.
S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.
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A Transportation Security Administration (TSA) worker screens passengers and airport employees at O'Hare International Airport on January 07, 2019 in Chicago, Illinois. TSA employees are currently working under the threat of not receiving their next paychecks, scheduled for January 11, because of the partial government shutdown now in its third week.
Getty Images, Scott Olson
Nope. Nevermind. Some DHS agencies still shut down.
Apr 01, 2026
House Republicans reject clean bill to open shut-down DHS agencies (March 28 update)
House Republicans (and three Democrats) rejected the Senate's clean bill to end the shutdown late Friday night. Instead, the House passed a different bill that fully funds every agency in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) but for only 60 days with the knowledge that this short-term continuing resolution will not pass in the Senate.
Both chambers are out until April 13 so the shutdown is expected to last until then at least. Hope that no major weather disasters occur before then because FEMA is one of the DHS agencies out of commission (though some of its employees may be working without pay). It's possible that air travel security lines won't get worse since the President signed an Executive Order authorizing DHS to pay TSA workers. New DHS Secretary Mullin says paychecks will start to go out as early as Monday. How long can this approach continue? Unknown. Leaving aside the questionable legality of repurposing funds in this way, DHS may not be willing to keep paying TSA from these other funds long-term.
The Senate proposal to end the shutdown didn't contain specific rest-of-year funds for the immigration agencies ICE and CBP, or for that matter any of Democrats' prior demands for immigration enforcement reform. Congress gave ICE and CBP $75 billion dollars last year in the reconciliation bill, more than enough to carry the agencies for a few years without the specific yearly appropriation that House Republicans now demand, which is why those agencies aren't shut down but the rest of DHS, like TSA and CISA are. So it's unclear what House Republicans are really after other than appearances.
Instead, the impasse will drag on for no one knows how long.
Other legislative activity last week
This has been, measured by bills that passed, a highly productive week for Congress.
All of the bills listed on the House's Weekly Schedule for the week of March 23-27 passed. Many were by voice vote. You can see everything that got some kind of action this week at this variation of our Legislation Advanced Search. You want to look at the second column which tells you what happened (example: Passed House, Senate Next or vice versa) and the date.
None of the bills voted on by the House will become law until addressed by the Senate, but still, it's been a while since everything they intended to hold a vote on got a vote and even longer since they all passed.
The Senate's bill to fund DHS
Because we get our data from Congress and there's always a slight delay, the biggest item of the week, the Senate's bill for nearly complete funding of the Department of Homeland Security, isn't showing up yet on that Advanced Search (at least as of the morning of March 27).
But it did happen! At a little after 2am Eastern time on March 27, the Senate passed a funding bill that excludes ICE and parts of CBP by unanimous consent.
Unanimous consent is basically what it sounds like. No Democrat or Republican stood in the way of passing it.
The bill does not contain any of Democrats' prior demands for immigration enforcement reform.
This would not instantly resolve the massive lines at airports. Over 500 TSA agents are reported to have quit. So, even if all agents who've been calling in sick rather than work without pay come back, there's still going to be a shortage of TSA workers for some time.
The President announced yesterday that he would, by Executive Order, have TSA agents paid the paycheck they've missed. It's not clear if this is even legal.
It went to the House next where it was rejected, as noted at the top.
More coming on a major ethics violation
Programming note: we will be writing separately about yesterday's (March 26) Adjudicatory Hearing covering Rep. Cherfilus-McCormick's (D-FL20) ethics investigation.
The immediate effect is that the Ethics Committee says they believe she violated nearly all of the items listed in the Statement of Alleged Violations. They say they will decide on a recommendation for action to the full House when they return from the April recess.
Nope. Nevermind. Some DHS agencies still shut down. was originally published by GovTrack and is republished with permission.
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Attendees hold signs advocating for voting rights and against the SAVE America Act at a rally to outside the U.S. Capitol on March 18, 2026 in Washington, DC.
Getty Images, Heather Diehl
The Senate Was Meant to Slow Us Down—Not Stop Us Cold
Mar 31, 2026
The Senate is once again locked in a familiar pattern: a bill with clear support on one side, firm opposition on the other—and no obvious path forward.
This time it’s the SAVE Act, framed by its supporters as a safeguard for election integrity and by its opponents as a barrier to voting access. The arguments are well-rehearsed. The positions are firm. And yet, beneath the policy debate sits a more revealing truth: in today’s Senate, the outcome of legislation is often shaped long before a final vote is ever cast.
That is not a quirk of the moment. It is a reflection of how the institution now works.
The United States Senate was never designed to move quickly. In fact, it was designed not to. The framers of the Constitution feared sudden swings in public opinion. They had seen what happens when passion outruns judgment. So they built a second chamber meant to slow things down—a place where legislation would be debated more carefully, where smaller states would have equal footing, and where elected officials would serve long enough terms to think beyond the next election cycle.
In simple terms, the House of Representatives was meant to reflect the will of the people. The Senate was meant to refine it.
Two senators per state ensured that California and Wyoming would stand as equals in one chamber of government. Six-year terms insulated senators from the daily winds of public opinion. Staggered elections prevented abrupt political reversals. All of it was intentional—designed to introduce friction into the system.
And for a long time, that friction worked.
The Senate slowed legislation. It forced negotiation. It demanded broader agreement. But it did not bring the machinery of governance to a halt.
That’s where the modern filibuster enters the story.
The filibuster, contrary to popular belief, is not part of the Constitution. It evolved over time as a quirk of Senate rules, eventually becoming a tool that allows a minority of senators to extend debate indefinitely unless 60 members vote to end it. In theory, it reinforces the Senate’s original purpose: it gives the minority a voice and encourages broader consensus.
In practice, however, it has become something else.
Today, the filibuster is no longer a rarely used tool of last resort. It is routine. It is expected. It is built into the process itself. Legislation does not need 51 votes to pass the Senate—it effectively needs 60 votes to move forward at all.
That shift changes the balance.
When combined with equal representation for states regardless of population, it allows a relatively small portion of the country to block legislation supported by a broader national majority. What was once a safeguard against overreach now functions, at times, as a standing veto.
And yet, it would be too simple to say the system is broken.
Because the original concern still holds. Majorities can be volatile. Public opinion can swing quickly. Policies rushed through in one moment can be regretted in the next. The Senate’s role as a stabilizing force remains essential.
The real question is not whether the Senate should slow things down. It should.
The question is whether it should be able to prevent action altogether.
Right now, the Senate too often operates on the wrong side of that line.
This is not a partisan problem. Both parties have used—and defended—the filibuster when it suits them, and both have criticized it when it stands in their way. That alone suggests the issue is structural, not ideological.
The uncomfortable truth is that the Senate has become so effective at stopping bad ideas that it is increasingly unable to advance good ones.
That may feel safe in the short term. But over time, it carries its own risks.
The framers feared both majority tyranny and institutional failure. They designed a system that balanced energy with restraint, action with deliberation.
What they did not design was a system where action becomes the exception rather than the rule.
There is no easy fix. Eliminating the filibuster entirely would invite the volatility the Senate was meant to guard against. But preserving it in its current form risks something else: a slow drift into irrelevance, where debate replaces decision and process replaces progress.
Somewhere between those extremes lies the balance the Senate was meant to strike.
Slowing the country down is not the same as holding it in place.
And if the Senate cannot rediscover that distinction, it may find that the institution designed to steady the republic has instead left it stuck.
Joe Palaggi is a writer and historian whose work sits at the crossroads of theology, politics, and American civic culture. He writes about the moral and historical forces that shape our national identity and the challenges of a polarized age.
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