Can Congress reclaim its war powers as the Founding Fathers intended?

By Edward Fitzpatrick, The Boston Globe

When the Founding Fathers wrote the US Constitution, they were careful to separate war powers, giving Congress the authority to initiate war and the president the ability to direct the armed forces.

"They didn't want the president growing so powerful that they could just unilaterally make the decision to go to war on their own the way that kings over in Europe did," Salve Regina University history professor Dr. William Leeman said on the Rhode Island Report podcast.

The Framers viewed such unchecked power "as a dangerous system" that allowed kings to "go to war for reasons that didn't necessarily have anything to do with the well-being of the country," he said.

But over the years, US presidents of both parties began to take more and more war powers away from Congress, citing imminent threats to national security as a rationale for attacking other nations, Leeman said.

"Presidents have gradually just expanded that idea of what constitutes self-defense," he said. And now congressional war power is "almost non-existent," he said.

That reality was driven home by President Trump's decision to join Israel in launching surprise airstrikes on sites and cities across Iran on Feb. 28 without congressional approval.

Both the Senate and the House of Representatives voted down legislation, known as a war powers resolution, to halt Trump's war against Iran.

"Once a president engages US military forces in combat, it's very difficult for Congress to come back and say, 'Well, you didn't get our authorization first — this needs to stop,'" Leeman said. "They don't want to give the appearance that they're not supporting the troops that are involved in combat."

Leeman said Trump never sought congressional approval to attack Iran, but he should have because the Constitution gives Congress the power to make such decisions.

Part of being an effective president is the ability to generate a consensus among the American people for a presidential action, he said. But Trump has not made much of an attempt to build a consensus for waging war on Iran, he said.

"We're in a situation now where the American public doesn't necessarily understand what is going on with the situation in Iran because there haven't been, for example, regular press conferences," Leeman said. "We don't really have at this point, that level of communication to explain to the American people clearly what the war aims are. How is success ultimately going to be defined?"

After the Vietnam War, members of Congress from both parties approved the War Powers Resolution of 1973, known as the War Powers Act, which requires the president to notify Congress within 48 hours of deploying troops and limits their engagement to 60 or 90 days without a formal declaration of war or specific authorization.

President Trump has said that the War Powers Act is unconstitutional, and Vice President JD Vance has described it as "fundamentally fake."

"To say it's unconstitutional — I would not say that that's accurate because what Congress was ultimately trying to do with that legislation was try to get more balance and get back to what the Framers initially intended," Leeman said.

Looking ahead, he said it remains to be seen if Congress will step up and reassert their authority.

"It's not even just about war powers," Leeman said. "Congress has very much been in retreat for a long period of time at this point in terms of its constitutional authority, but particularly in the war powers realm."

The Rhode Island Report podcast is produced by The Boston Globe Rhode Island with support from Salve Regina University. To get the latest episode each week, follow the Rhode Island Report podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and other podcasting platforms, or listen here.

Feature image by Getty Images/ChiccoDodiFC