{"id":69,"date":"2026-05-25T12:13:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-25T12:13:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nationalconsumerreportss.com\/?p=69"},"modified":"2026-05-25T12:13:00","modified_gmt":"2026-05-25T12:13:00","slug":"lawfare-daily-what-the-war-powers-resolution-means-for-iran","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nationalconsumerreportss.com\/?p=69","title":{"rendered":"Lawfare Daily: What the War Powers Resolution Means for Iran"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>In February, the Trump administration launched Operation Epic Fury in Iran\u2014without congressional approval. The War Powers Resolution is supposed to constrain the president&#8217;s ability to wage war. But is it?\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/nationalconsumerreportss.com\/?p=68\">Lawfare Daily: Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-CA) on Congress\u2019s Role in Foreign Affairs<\/a><\/p>\n<p>On today&#8217;s podcast, <em>Lawfare <\/em>Executive Editor Natalie Orpett talks with Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson about what that law says, whether it&#8217;s affecting the administration&#8217;s conduct, and how\u2014or if\u2014it can be enforced. You can read more of Scott&#8217;s analysis in <em>Lawfare <\/em>here:\u00a0https:\/\/www.lawfaremedia.org\/article\/law-and-the-iran-war&#8211;after-the-first-60-days\u00a0<\/p>\n<div>\n<div><iframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"110px\" src=\"https:\/\/embed.acast.com\/60518a52f69aa815d2dba41c\/69fe0f9344cb786b37ac2f56\" width=\"100%\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>To receive ad-free podcasts, become a\u00a0<em>Lawfare\u00a0<\/em>Material Supporter at\u00a0www.patreon.com\/lawfare. You can also support\u00a0<em>Lawfare\u00a0<\/em>by making a one-time donation at\u00a0.<\/p>\n<p>Click the button below to view a transcript of this podcast. Please note that the transcript was auto-generated and may contain errors.<\/p>\n<details>\n<summary><strong>Transcript<\/strong><\/summary>\n<p><strong> <em> [Intro]<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Katherine Pompilio:<\/strong><br \/>\nHey, it&#8217;s Katherine Pompilio from <em>Lawfare<\/em>. You might know me from<br \/>\ntracking government noncompliance and habeas corpus cases or running <em>Lawfare<\/em>&#8216;s<br \/>\nJanuary 6th project. I also work behind the scenes to ensure <em>Lawfare<\/em>&#8216;s articles<br \/>\nare in tip-top shape. <em>Lawfare<\/em> is built around one core idea: reliable,<br \/>\nindependent, nonpartisan expert analysis delivered at the pace of news.<\/p>\n<p>At a time when trusted institutions is strained, independent,<br \/>\nnonpartisan analysis plays a critical role. None of our work happens without<br \/>\nsupport from people like you. <em>Lawfare<\/em> is a nonprofit. We always keep our<br \/>\ncontent free and don&#8217;t have paywalls, and we rely on our readers and listeners<br \/>\nto keep this work going.<\/p>\n<p>Become part of our growing <em>Lawfare<\/em> community, a network<br \/>\nof smart, informed people who are invested in understanding the moment, just<br \/>\nlike you. Head to lawfaremedia.org\/support and become a material supporter.<br \/>\nJust $10 a month or more, if you&#8217;re able, really makes a real difference. Plus,<br \/>\nyou&#8217;ll help us continue to offer all of our content for free to everyone.<\/p>\n<p>Thanks for listening and for caring about the things that<br \/>\nmatter.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Scott R. Anderson:<\/strong><br \/>\nThe truth is, all these statutes, and particularly the War Powers Resolution<br \/>\nmay be a little more vulnerable to this than others, have all statutes have<br \/>\nkind of require interpretation to be understood. The question is, you know, who<br \/>\ngets to interpret and how stable do those interpretations need to be? <\/p>\n<p><strong>Natalie Orpett:<\/strong> I&#8217;m<br \/>\nNatalie Orpett, executive editor of <em>Lawfare<\/em>, with my colleague, <em>Lawfare<\/em><br \/>\nSenior Editor Scott R. Anderson. <\/p>\n<p><strong>Scott R. Anderson:<\/strong><br \/>\nBut all of these kind of nuances, while there&#8217;s a lot of inconsistencies with<br \/>\nthe Trump administration is doing, they don&#8217;t always matter that much because<br \/>\nthe only entity whose view of the War Powers Resolution matters right now is<br \/>\nthe executive branch&#8217;s. <\/p>\n<p><strong>Natalie Orpett:<\/strong> Today<br \/>\nwe&#8217;re talking about the War Powers Resolution, the law that&#8217;s supposed to limit<br \/>\nthe president&#8217;s power to wage war, and what it means for the U.S. conflict in<br \/>\nIran.<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>[Main Episode]<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>So we are here to talk about the U.S. war in Iran from a very<br \/>\nspecific angle which is how U.S. domestic law comes into play, and specifically<br \/>\nwe&#8217;re talking about the War Powers Resolution, which you recently wrote about<br \/>\nin an article we published in <em>Lawfare<\/em>. We are at a moment of particular<br \/>\ninterest to the War Powers Resolution because according to the Trump<br \/>\nadministration, we have recently completed Operation Epic Fury, and we have<br \/>\npurportedly, separately, and potentially unrelatedly started Project Freedom.<\/p>\n<p>So we will get back to what those things mean factually and how<br \/>\nit relates to the War Powers Resolution in a bit, but can you just start by<br \/>\ntelling us what is the War Powers Resolution and what does it say? <\/p>\n<p><strong>Scott R. Anderson:<\/strong><br \/>\nAbsolutely. So the War Powers Resolution is a statute enacted by Congress in<br \/>\n1973 enacted by a super majority of Congress that overrode a veto by President<br \/>\nNixon in an effort to, as described by the sponsor of the legislation, to kind<br \/>\nof recalibrate the roles of the political branches in matters of war and peace,<br \/>\nand specifically to kind of give Congress more of a voice, more of a role in<br \/>\ndecisions regarding the use of military force.<\/p>\n<p>And this is all being done, of course, in the aftermath of the<br \/>\nVietnam War and related hostilities in Cambodia and elsewhere throughout<br \/>\nSoutheast Asia that were a frequent point of contention between the Nixon<br \/>\nadministration and Congress over the course of several years. In the many<br \/>\ndecades since the War Powers Resolution&#8217;s been enacted, it&#8217;s just over 50 years<br \/>\nold now, it&#8217;s come under a lot of criticism, mostly in that it&#8217;s ineffective,<br \/>\nthat people argue, \u201cWell, look, the statute has really become a bit of a dead<br \/>\nletter.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Presidents routinely disregard it or interpret around it in a<br \/>\nway that don&#8217;t make it very effective. There&#8217;s a lot to those critiques but I<br \/>\nalso think they sometimes understate the extent to which the War Powers<br \/>\nResolution actually has had an impact in tempering some of the executive<br \/>\nbranch&#8217;s potential moves it could make some of the discretion it could exercise<br \/>\nin the absence of the War Powers Resolution and particularly that it has at<br \/>\nother points in the 20th century prior to its enactment, and so gets a little<br \/>\nbit of short shrift.<\/p>\n<p>And in a lot of ways, frankly, the debate over the Iran<br \/>\nconflict, I actually think is a very useful\u2014if we step back a little bit and<br \/>\nview it from more an academic lens, it&#8217;s a useful sort of case study in how the<br \/>\ndynamics around the War Powers Resolution operate in this particular historical<br \/>\nmoment.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Natalie Orpett:<\/strong> Okay.<br \/>\nGreat. So I think you know, you&#8217;ve made a good pitch for why we should care<br \/>\nabout this, right, which is that it really does speak to a fundamental piece of<br \/>\nthe balance of powers in the United States and comes out of this historical<br \/>\nmoment where the very strong sense in Congress, as you said, a super majority<br \/>\nin Congress thought that things were out of whack and the president had too<br \/>\nmuch power.<\/p>\n<p>I think that will resonate with people right now because of the<br \/>\nmany realms in which the current administration is asserting very strong<br \/>\ninterpretations of executive power. But let&#8217;s focus now on what the resolution<br \/>\nactually says. It&#8217;s trying to, as you say, restrict the powers of the<br \/>\npresident, retain some powers to Congress to make determinations about when it<br \/>\nis appropriate to commit U.S. military troops to the use of force.<\/p>\n<p>How does it try to get there to accomplish that goal? <\/p>\n<p><strong>Scott R. Anderson:<\/strong><br \/>\nThe War Powers Resolution really does a lot of different things, but the<br \/>\nprovision that is most relevant to the Iran debate, in a lot of ways it&#8217;s the<br \/>\ncore or one of a handful of core operational operative provisions of the War<br \/>\nPowers Resolution, is what&#8217;s generally known as the 60-day clock.<\/p>\n<p>This is a time limit the War Powers Resolution puts on the<br \/>\npresident&#8217;s authority to use military force. The War Powers Resolution doesn&#8217;t<br \/>\noutright bar the president from using military force on his own authority. It<br \/>\ndoesn&#8217;t endorse it either, but it kind of, acknowledges that&#8217;s something that<br \/>\nmight happen rightly or wrongly.<\/p>\n<p>What it does say, however, is that A, and this is in Section<br \/>\n4(1) of the War Powers Resolution, it says that where the president introduces U.S.<br \/>\narmed forces into hostilities or, and this is important, into situations where<br \/>\nimminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances,<br \/>\nbasically meaning you&#8217;re, there&#8217;s a good chance you&#8217;ll end up in hostilities,<br \/>\nthe president&#8217;s supposed to file a report with Congress within 48 hours.<\/p>\n<p>And then 60 days after that report is filed or after it&#8217;s due,<br \/>\nwhichever is earlier, the president is supposed to terminate the use of those<br \/>\narmed forces in the situation that gave rise to that obligation to file that<br \/>\nreport, unless Congress has authorized the use of military force or there&#8217;s a<br \/>\ncertain other contingency that has a contingency for if, for example, Congress<br \/>\nis unable to meet.<\/p>\n<p>And then notably, it actually and this is all, I should say,<br \/>\nthat latter cutoff provision is Section 5 of the War Powers Resolution. It also<br \/>\nsays that the president actually has the option to extend the 60-day window,<br \/>\nkind of a 62-day window &#8217;cause you kinda get the first 48 hours before the<br \/>\nreport&#8217;s officially due, to extend that by an additional 30 days if the<br \/>\npresident&#8217;s willing to certify to Congress in writing that it&#8217;s necessary<br \/>\nbasically to ensure troop safety over the course of their removal from hostilities.<\/p>\n<p>But in this case, the president has not invoked that extension,<br \/>\nso we&#8217;re really, we&#8217;re talking about a 60-day, not a 60 to 90-day cutoff at<br \/>\nthis particular point. <\/p>\n<p><strong>Natalie Orpett:<\/strong> Okay,<br \/>\ngreat. So let&#8217;s unpack those two separate provisions by looking at what&#8217;s been<br \/>\ngoing on with the, this conflict or purported conflicts, in Iran.<\/p>\n<p>So with respect to the notification requirement, the s- you<br \/>\nmust file a report within 48 hours of introducing into hostilities or<br \/>\nintroducing into situations where there might be imminent hostilities, that<br \/>\nprovision, Section 4(1), did the Trump administration notify Congress within 48<br \/>\nhours as it was required to do when we first went to war with Iran?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Scott R. Anderson:<\/strong> It<br \/>\ndid, or it got very close at least. On March 2nd it filed a report with<br \/>\nCongress that&#8217;s since been released to the public, as these reports often but<br \/>\nnot always are, that essentially says, \u201cWe have started targeted military<br \/>\noperations against Iran,\u201d and then explains the logic behind them and kind of<br \/>\nsays, \u201cWe don&#8217;t know how long they&#8217;re gonna last or what they&#8217;re gonna consist<br \/>\nof.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>We know now that it was pretty significant from the outset.<br \/>\nNotably, that letter says it&#8217;s being s- consent to Congress consistent with the<br \/>\nWar Powers Resolution, but doesn&#8217;t specifically say it&#8217;s being provided under<br \/>\nSection 4(a)(1), which is a little bit notable because in the past, prior<br \/>\npresidential administrations have sometimes tried to be ambiguous as to whether<br \/>\nit&#8217;s submitting a 48 hours report to Congress under 4(a)(1) or under one of the<br \/>\nother provisions of 4(a), which also require 48-hour reports but don&#8217;t start<br \/>\nthe 60-day withdrawal clock or termination clock.<\/p>\n<p>And so, you know, in theory, keeping that ambiguity, that could<br \/>\nhave allowed them pres- to preserve an argument saying, \u201cYeah, we filed that<br \/>\nreport consistent with the War Powers Resolution, but it wasn&#8217;t a 4(a)(1) report<br \/>\nso we&#8217;re not subject to a 60-day cutoff provision.\u201d Notably, though, the Trump<br \/>\nadministration doesn&#8217;t appear to have decided to make that argument or lean on<br \/>\nthat argument, and it&#8217;d be a hard argument to, for it to make really given the<br \/>\nc- scale of armed conflict that the United States and Iran were in for much of<br \/>\nthe ensuing weeks after that February 28th date when the military activities<br \/>\ncommenced.<\/p>\n<p>Instead, in a letter President Trump provided to Congress last<br \/>\nFriday, May 1st, which is the end of the 62-day period, so the end of the<br \/>\n60-day clock plus the 48-hour notification window, it acknowledged that there<br \/>\nwere hostilities that continued, that started on February 28th, but essentially<br \/>\nsaid that those hostilities have ended as a result of the ongoing ceasefire,<br \/>\nand therefore, and specifically it says they have terminated, and that use of<br \/>\ntermination I don&#8217;t think is a coincidence. It&#8217;s very clearly saying the<br \/>\nrequirements of the 60-day clock have been met. <\/p>\n<p><strong>Natalie Orpett:<\/strong> Okay,<br \/>\nso just to drill down on one piece that you said, there are other parts of the<br \/>\nstatute that require notification, and so it, it appeared like it might be the<br \/>\ncase that because the notification letter that the administration sent in April<br \/>\ndidn&#8217;t specify that it was under Section 4, they could have theoretically, as<br \/>\nprevious administrations have done, been arguing that, yes, th- but this was a<br \/>\nnotification, but it was a different sort of notification.<\/p>\n<p>What are the other parts of the statute? What sorts of things<br \/>\nare they notifying for, and how does it, as you said, not seem to be the case<br \/>\nthat the current hostilities would fit within those rubrics? <\/p>\n<p><strong>Scott R. Anderson:<\/strong><br \/>\nWell, the use of the language hostilities, the fact that the May 1st letter<br \/>\nbasically concedes hostilities started on February 28th, is an indication that<br \/>\nit was a f- it is acknowledging a 4(a)(1) situation.<\/p>\n<p>4(a)(1) applies whenever troops are inserted into hostilities<br \/>\nor situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by<br \/>\nthe circumstances. So if you&#8217;re saying there were hostilities and U.S. forces<br \/>\nwere there, that&#8217;s a 4(a)(1) situation. The other possibilities are 4(a)(2) and<br \/>\n4(a)(3). They essentially require 48-hour reports where the president deploys<br \/>\nU.S.<\/p>\n<p>troops when equipped for combat into f- the territory,<br \/>\nairspace, or waters of a foreign nation, where there are some exceptions for<br \/>\ntraining and supplies and missions and stuff like that. Or if the president<br \/>\nsubstantially enlarges the number of troops already deployed in a particular<br \/>\narea. That&#8217;s sub-prong three.<\/p>\n<p>You know, in theory, maybe you could&#8217;ve seen a report under 4(a)(2)<br \/>\nfor example, when they, you know, send military forces, if they were to send<br \/>\nthem into Iranian territory or waters. But at the point where you concede there<br \/>\nare ongoing hostilities, i- it&#8217;s hard to argue this isn&#8217;t a 4(a)(1) situation. <\/p>\n<p>Notably, Congress actually amended these reporting requirements<br \/>\nin 2023 through an amendment to the NDAA to add an additional 48-hour reporting<br \/>\nrequirement that basically says any use of force by U.S. military forces,<br \/>\nwhether offensive or defensive, needs to be reported to Congress if it&#8217;s not<br \/>\nalready being reported under one of the existing three prongs of 4(a) of the<br \/>\nWar Powers Resolution. And this is a bit of a housekeeping exercise, I think,<br \/>\nby Congress to say we wanna know if there&#8217;s an exchange of fire, if there&#8217;s<br \/>\nother sort of hostile incident involving U.S.<\/p>\n<p>forces,\u201d even if you might be able to technically read 4(a)(1),<br \/>\n(2), and (3) to not require it. Compliance with that new reporting obligation<br \/>\nis something that&#8217;s a little unclear to me, in part because while the 4(a)(1) and<br \/>\ngenerally 4(a) reports are traditionally made public, usually on the<br \/>\nwhitehouse.gov website, and they&#8217;re kind of assembled with other presidential<br \/>\ndocuments and interspersed into presidential archives.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s not clear to me 100% whether that&#8217;s happening yet or not<br \/>\nwith these new type of 48-hour reports, so, compliance with them is a little<br \/>\nbit of an open question and not something I&#8217;ve been able to chase down. <\/p>\n<p><strong>Natalie Orpett:<\/strong><br \/>\nThat&#8217;s interesting. And at the very least, it&#8217;s a good reminder that it wasn&#8217;t<br \/>\njust a 1973 Congress that cared about restricting the president&#8217;s ability to<br \/>\nkeep troops engaged in hostilities.<\/p>\n<p>It was actually much more recent than that, that Congress<br \/>\ncontinued to demonstrate that it cares. So let&#8217;s switch, as you said, to taking<br \/>\nas an assumption, including because of how the administration has acted since<br \/>\nfiling its notification after 48 hours, that it was intended to be for the<br \/>\npurpose of 4(a), such that it triggered the 60-day limit.<\/p>\n<p>Let&#8217;s switch over to that provision Section 5(b), I believe. <\/p>\n<p><strong>Katherine Pompilio:<\/strong><br \/>\nMm-hmm. <\/p>\n<p><strong>Natalie Orpett:<\/strong> And<br \/>\nthat, so that&#8217;s the 60 days. You know, 60 days, even specifies 60 calendar<br \/>\ndays, is pretty clear. But the rest of that provision is, I would say,<br \/>\ndecidedly not clear and a lawyer&#8217;s dream in terms of ability to argue what<br \/>\nterms should mean.<\/p>\n<p>So you previewed this a little bit\u2014The terminology is introduce<br \/>\ndot, into hostilities or into situations where imminent involvement in<br \/>\nhostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances. So talk to us about what<br \/>\nhas been going on with respect to this 60-day deadline that, as you say, has<br \/>\nterminated or has passed, and yet the Trump administration is continuing to say<br \/>\nthat it is in compliance, has not blown the 60-day deadline, is not trying to<br \/>\ninvoke the additional 30 days that it has as sort of a safe harbor under that<br \/>\nsame provision, but is rather saying no, we are in compliance with the 60 days.<\/p>\n<p>Tell us a little bit more about what they are arguing in that<br \/>\nvein. <\/p>\n<p><strong>Scott R. Anderson:<\/strong><br \/>\nSure. So Section 5(b) says the president, and directs the president to<br \/>\nterminate any use of U.S. armed forces in regards to a situation that gave rise<br \/>\nto the obligation to file a 4(a)(1) report. And then in 4(a)(1), that&#8217;s where<br \/>\nthat has the language you&#8217;re citing, which is hostilities or a situation where<br \/>\nhostilities, imminent hostilities are suggested by the circumstances.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m paraphrasing, so I don&#8217;t have it directly in front of me.<br \/>\nThose two situations, it really comes down to that core question of hostilities<br \/>\nand what does this mean? The legislative history of the War Powers Resolution<br \/>\nvery clearly suggests that the authors of it changed from, I believe it was<br \/>\noriginally armed conflict in some earlier drafts, to hostilities &#8217;cause they<br \/>\nwanted to capture a broader concept of what would be entailed by these sorts of<br \/>\nobligations.<\/p>\n<p>And they also had exchanges with the executive branch, most<br \/>\nnotably in 1975, asking them, like, \u201cHow are you interpreting this? How should<br \/>\nwe understand executive branch practice around this term?\u201d And they said<br \/>\nbasically, \u201cOkay, well, we interpret hostilities to mean actively shooting a<br \/>\nrisk or a substantial risk of coming under enemy fire, and circumstances where\u2014suggesting<br \/>\nimminent hostilities, essentially. The circumstances suggesting there are, is a<br \/>\nserious risk there.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>The executive branch has been kind of on the books about that.<br \/>\nBut over the subsequent, you know, five decades or so of practice, we&#8217;ve seen<br \/>\nthe executive branch tweak that conception of hostilities and flex it in ways<br \/>\nthat are designed to permit certain types of military operations to continue<br \/>\npast the 60-day mark on the logic that they don&#8217;t constitute hostilities and<br \/>\ntherefore neither trigger 4(a)(1) obligations and then do not give rise to the<br \/>\n60-day clock.<\/p>\n<p>The Trump administration notably actually isn&#8217;t leaning on this<br \/>\nfor Operation Epic Fury. Again, its May 1st letter says Operation Epic Fury<br \/>\nwere host- was hostilities. It doesn&#8217;t say that quite expressly, but it&#8217;s<br \/>\nclear. It says February 28th, we started hostilities with Iran, and then it<br \/>\njust says those are over as of the ceasefire that started on April 7th &#8217;cause<br \/>\nthere have been no exchange of fire with Iranian forces since then.<\/p>\n<p>That actually has ceased to be true since May 1st but it was<br \/>\ntrue evidently up until May 1st. So they said essentially this period has<br \/>\nended. Instead, what this appears to be to me is something like an interm-<br \/>\nwhat&#8217;s often known as the intermittent hostilities argument. This is the idea<br \/>\nthat, well, you can have different periods of hostilities with the same enemy<br \/>\nforce that should be distinct and subject to their own distinct 60-day clock.<\/p>\n<p>The clearest, most recent example of this we have is the Biden<br \/>\nadministration targeting Iran-backed militias in Iraq and Syria. Each time that<br \/>\nhappened, which the Biden administration did under the president&#8217;s Article 2<br \/>\nauthority without statutory authorization at least a half dozen times over the<br \/>\nfirst few years of the administration, the president would file a new 4801<br \/>\nreport and say, \u201cHey, we just took this military action.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But each time treated it as a different incident of hostilities<br \/>\nwith its own 60-day clock to start clocking down, which would then restart if<br \/>\nthere was another incident of hostilities there. There, the Biden<br \/>\nadministration was able to do that because they were sort of freestanding<br \/>\nincidents, and each time they could at least colorably, although people<br \/>\ndefinitely criticize them for this, suggest that, \u201cWell, we&#8217;re hoping this is\u2014will<br \/>\nnever happen again. This is non-repeatable. This is a one-time military response<br \/>\nto usually a, an attack by these forces on U.S. diplomatic or military<br \/>\npresences.\u201d But that&#8217;s a harder case to make here because obviously the Trump<br \/>\nadministration&#8217;s posture has still been, \u201cWe can, and very well may, begin<br \/>\nhitting Iran at any given moment.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>President Trump has said that expressly. So it&#8217;s a little bit<br \/>\ndifferent here. But nonetheless, that seems to be the sort of argument that the<br \/>\nTrump administration assertion that hostilities ended at the time of the<br \/>\nceasefire is meant to set up. <\/p>\n<p><strong>Natalie Orpett:<\/strong><br \/>\nRight. And so then you talk in your piece about this sort of oddity of the<br \/>\nlegal argument that is sort of implicitly being made because the point is it<br \/>\nhasn&#8217;t shown up.<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s this argument, as you say, that Operation Epic Fury,<br \/>\nwhich the government conceded was hostilities for the purposes of the War<br \/>\nPowers Resolution, that&#8217;s over, 60-day deadline, all good, we&#8217;ve complied. And<br \/>\nthen there&#8217;s this separate use of force that is the Project Freedom operation,<br \/>\nwhich I suppose is not being called an operation.<\/p>\n<p>So I wanna talk about that, but I&#8217;ll just start by pointing out<br \/>\nthat, as you say in your piece, the oddity here is that the government is sort<br \/>\nof saying on one side that this is separate hostilities, and yet did not, with<br \/>\nthis operation or whatever you want to call it, use of troops, file a<br \/>\nnotification in the 48-hour window that is required under 4(a).<\/p>\n<p>So talk to us about that dynamic, where things stand, how we<br \/>\nshould understand Project Freedom, and I guess start with what is Project<br \/>\nFreedom? <\/p>\n<p><strong>Scott R. Anderson:<\/strong><br \/>\nSure. So, so there&#8217;s two sets of military op- activities that are both still<br \/>\nhappening after the May 1st letter was submitted, and have&#8230; one of which has<br \/>\nbeen happening throughout the ceasefire.<\/p>\n<p>That one is the maritime blockade of Iranian oil exports, which<br \/>\nis worth talking about as well because that in some ways I think presents the<br \/>\nclearest- Question mark about how exactly you square this with the legal<br \/>\nframework. But then on May 4th, a few days after that letter, after the 60-day<br \/>\nperiod elapsed, the Trump administration briefly &#8217;cause it&#8217;s now been suspended<br \/>\nagain, kicked off this Project Freedom endeavor, which is a pretty serious<br \/>\nmaritime operation consisting of at least by, I believe, CENTCOM&#8217;s count, over<br \/>\n15,000 U.S. military personnel and 100 different vessels aimed at providing<br \/>\nsecurity to commercial vessels seeking to transit the Strait of Hormuz<br \/>\nconsistent with international law.<\/p>\n<p>The Strait of Hormuz is, of course, that strategic waterway<br \/>\nthat Iran has clamped down on, doing massive damage to the global economy by<br \/>\ncutting off oil exports and other key critical exports a- and imports to and<br \/>\nfrom the other folks on the other end of the strait, the Middle East,<br \/>\nessentially. This operation is interesting in two regards.<\/p>\n<p>One, you&#8217;re, you are right. The timing of it, the fact that<br \/>\nthey waited to start this until after the 60-day period had elapsed and even<br \/>\ngave it a bonus day or two suggests that they&#8217;re setting up some sort of<br \/>\nintermittent hostilities, and they say this over and over again in the<br \/>\nrhetoric. We&#8217;ve seen Secretary Rubio and Secretary Hegseth say recently, \u201cOh,<br \/>\nthis is,\u201d very deliberately, \u201cThis is totally different from Epic Fury.<\/p>\n<p>Epic Fury is done. This is Project Freedom. It&#8217;s a whole<br \/>\ndifferent new thing.\u201d But they&#8217;ve also framed it as a quote-unquote, \u201cdefensive<br \/>\nmission,\u201d and they&#8217;ve specifically said, Rubio, Secretary Rubio, in his stint<br \/>\nas kind of press spokesperson at the White House the other day was most point<br \/>\non this. He said, essentially, \u201cWe don&#8217;t shoot until, unless somebody shoots at<br \/>\nus.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That actually fits into another branch of practice executive<br \/>\nbranch has occasionally leaned on, including for kind of similar maritime<br \/>\noperations, notably in the Persian Gulf during the Iran-Iraq War and in the<br \/>\nproximity of Yemen and the Red Sea during the post-Gaza conflict the kickoff of<br \/>\nthe Gaza conflict when the Houthis were attacking maritime traffic to, to kind<br \/>\nof put pressure on the international community around that conflict, and the<br \/>\nBiden administration intervened there.<\/p>\n<p>In those cases, both administrations hinted at, and a couple of<br \/>\nlegal opinions issued by the executive branch at various points have stated a<br \/>\nlittle more expressly the view that, well, look, when we&#8217;re sending vessels in<br \/>\ninternational waters or otherwise, you know, sending U.S. forces to act in ways<br \/>\nthat are consistent with international law, and those forces come under attack<br \/>\nThey have a right to respond in self-defense, but that doesn&#8217;t trigger Section<br \/>\n4(a)(1) because we&#8217;re not introducing them in hostilities.<\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;re just having them go about their kind of regular<br \/>\nactivities or totally acceptable activities, and somebody&#8217;s attacking them. And<br \/>\nso if the language in the War Powers Resolution that triggers report obligation<br \/>\nwhen the president chooses to introduce someone into hostilities doesn&#8217;t apply<br \/>\nto the same situation when hostilities arise at, you know, innocent U.S. forces.<\/p>\n<p>What I would say about this is that maybe there&#8217;s an argument<br \/>\nthere if there&#8217;s no expectation that there would be an attack. It&#8217;s a more of a<br \/>\nstretch to a situation like this, although I think there&#8217;s also questions about<br \/>\nthe stretch to situations in Yemen and the Persian Gulf, where you know that<br \/>\nthere&#8217;s likely to be a hostile response, even if you&#8217;re acting consistent with<br \/>\ninternational law in your view and the view of much of the international<br \/>\ncommunity as, you know, straight ships, including U.S. military vessels trying<br \/>\nto transit the Strait of Hormuz would be.<\/p>\n<p>You know, you know that Iran has been ve- very clear they<br \/>\nintend to act, respond in a hostile manner with the use of force. And so I<br \/>\nthink this argument is a bit of a stretch. But there is, are those hooks in<br \/>\nexecutive branch practice that it looks like the Trump administration is teeing<br \/>\nitself up to lean on.<\/p>\n<p>And those importantly might explain why it hi- hasn&#8217;t filed a<br \/>\n4(a)(1) letter. If you are leaning into those precedents where you&#8217;re saying, \u201cWe&#8217;re<br \/>\njust sending our ships on, you know, kind of neutral passage through<br \/>\ninternational waters,\u201d and they happen to be coming under attack, then you<br \/>\nwouldn&#8217;t file a 4(a)(1) letter because it&#8217;d be undermining your own argument as<br \/>\nto why 4(a)(1) and the 60-day clock don&#8217;t apply.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Natalie Orpett:<\/strong> Yeah,<br \/>\nso even though I agree with you entirely that this is probably an extension of<br \/>\nprevious administrations&#8217; legal arguments and forays into interpretation of<br \/>\nthese potentially vague terms, I wanna pause for a second on what those<br \/>\ninterpretations have been, right? Because we&#8217;ll get to it later, but there&#8217;s a<br \/>\nseparate question of to what extent it is possible to enforce the Wa- War<br \/>\nPowers Resolution and what the War Powers Resolution means.<\/p>\n<p>So focusing on the latter for a second, is there any evidence<br \/>\nor indication that Congress meant, whether when first drafting or when<br \/>\nrevisiting this statute, that introduction to hostilities meant that it was<br \/>\nins- it was limited to instances in which the president, you know, sat back and<br \/>\nvery thoughtfully decided whether to deploy troops from an American base into<br \/>\nan operational theater, and that&#8217;s the only meaning of introduction into<br \/>\nhostilities?<\/p>\n<p>It doesn&#8217;t include things like being in a situation where it is<br \/>\nlikely to the, be the case that hostilities may arise. I mean, the inclusion of<br \/>\nImminent hostilities would seem to answer that, but I just am wondering what<br \/>\nyou make of the legal argument itself, notwithstanding the fact that previous<br \/>\nadministrations have made it.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Scott R. Anderson:<\/strong><br \/>\nIt&#8217;s a fair question. I don&#8217;t recall in the legislative history, which I&#8217;ve<br \/>\nread a great deal of, although in some cases it&#8217;s been quite a while, a<br \/>\nspecific discussion of a situation like this, where you have a president, you<br \/>\nknow, knowingly putting U.S. forces under a potential threat of armed attack,<br \/>\nbut in doing something that&#8217;s, like, relatively innocent and conventional and<br \/>\nconsistent with international law and other sort of requirements.<\/p>\n<p>I do think there may have been discussion, I think this was<br \/>\nearly in the War Powers Resolution&#8217;s application when there was this dialogue<br \/>\nbetween Congress and the executive branch about, like, how are you gonna<br \/>\ninterpret this, where I do think, if I recall correctly, some of the U.S.<br \/>\ngovernment officials representing how the executive branch interpreted this did<br \/>\nkind of put forward the suggestion, \u201cHey, you know, if U.S.<\/p>\n<p>forces just come under attack unexpectedly, that&#8217;s not<br \/>\nintroducing anyone in anything. That doesn&#8217;t comply.\u201d And I don&#8217;t actually<br \/>\nrecall, &#8217;cause it&#8217;s not always evident from the Congressional Record exactly<br \/>\nhow Congress responded to that proposition. I&#8217;ll note it did definitely show up<br \/>\nin a 1980 Office of Legal Counsel opinion, where that argument is kind of put<br \/>\nforward.<\/p>\n<p>The Reagan administration relied on it and put it forward<br \/>\nalongside an intermittent hostilities type of argument in the Tinker conflict<br \/>\nthat was around the Iran-Iraq War in, in 19&#8230; I think 1987, 1988, if I recall<br \/>\ncorrectly. And then there&#8217;s media reports suggesting this is part of the theory<br \/>\nthat the Biden administration relied on, although we don&#8217;t actually have, like,<br \/>\na concrete statement from the Biden administration a- about, like, how exactly<br \/>\nit approached the War Powers Resolution in this context.<\/p>\n<p>At least not that I&#8217;m aware of. So we have these different<br \/>\nthreads of this evolution, but you know, the&#8230; whether it&#8217;s aligned with<br \/>\noriginal intent, not really clear. The truth is, all these statutes, and<br \/>\nparticularly the War Powers Resolution may be a little more vulnerable to this<br \/>\nthan others, have&#8230; All statutes have kind of require interpretation to be<br \/>\nunderstood.<\/p>\n<p>The question is, you know, who gets to interpret and how stable<br \/>\ndo those interpretations need to be? And that kind of folds into the<br \/>\nenforcement question around the War Powers Resolution. Who gets to enforce it<br \/>\nand to what extent does it still have that kind of constraining capacity? <\/p>\n<p><strong>Natalie Orpett:<\/strong> Well,<br \/>\nit&#8217;s almost like you host podcasts as well because you anticipated my segue<br \/>\nwhich was into the question of enforcement.<\/p>\n<p>So we have these different interpretive fights, I should say or<br \/>\nI could say, or deliberations over the course of history since 1973. Then<br \/>\nthere&#8217;s the separate question of to what extent the legislation can actually be<br \/>\nenforced and what that might look like. So you talk about this quite a bit in<br \/>\nyour piece, and I want to just go through the different ways that you talk<br \/>\nabout what that might look like because it&#8217;s not always as obvious as one might<br \/>\nthink when considering how other statutes are enforced where there&#8217;s sort of,<br \/>\nyou know, the FBI investigates and there&#8217;s an indictment, et cetera, et cetera.<\/p>\n<p>So talk to us about what enforcement looks like, and let&#8217;s<br \/>\nstart first in the courts. If someone wanted to bring a case challenging the<br \/>\nadministration, arguing that it has not effectively complied with the War<br \/>\nPowers Resolution, would that work? Would anyone have standing? How do you<br \/>\nassess the possibility of this getting into the courts?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Scott R. Anderson:<\/strong><br \/>\nYeah. It&#8217;s a really good question. Before I do that, let me circle back and<br \/>\naddress, because I don&#8217;t wanna forget it before we move on &#8217;cause I think it,<br \/>\nit&#8217;s pretty critical to understanding the current situation, the blockade<br \/>\nelement of this the kind of third military operation. But I think it actually<br \/>\nfeeds well into this as like a case study of some of the challenges about how<br \/>\nto enforce and understand the War Powers Resolution.<\/p>\n<p>So, so the blockade is the part of the military operation<br \/>\nthat&#8217;s still ongoing today, that was still ongoing over the course of the<br \/>\nceasefire, so during the 60-day period. The Trump administration, I think if<br \/>\nyou asked them, would basically say, \u201cLook, the blockade, A, maybe the blockade<br \/>\nis separate. B, I think they would argue, well, the blockade isn&#8217;t hostilities.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>They strongly suggest that in their May 1st letter &#8217;cause they<br \/>\nsay, \u201cWell, we haven&#8217;t had an exchange of fire since April 7th,\u201d and the<br \/>\nblockade didn&#8217;t start till, I believe it was April 13th. Notably, however, you<br \/>\nknow, you actually have had cases where U.S. forces have had to use force to<br \/>\nenforce the blockade.<\/p>\n<p>Clearest one occurred on April 19th. They shot an<br \/>\nIranian-flagged vessel to disable its engine, and then you had Marines, U.S. Marines<br \/>\nboard it. A little different &#8217;cause a U.S. Marine&#8230; pardon me, an<br \/>\nIranian-flagged commercial vessel but still, there&#8217;s&#8230; Obviously was force<br \/>\ninvolved. But more fundamentally, enforcing a blockade, something that&#8217;s<br \/>\ngenerally considered to be an act of war, centrally relies on the immi- threat<br \/>\nof imminent use of military force.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s how you get ships to comply with it. So it&#8217;s very hard<br \/>\nin my mind to argue that- Starting the blockade was not a situation suggesting,<br \/>\nyou know, the imminent possibility of hostilities and that, that therefore it<br \/>\ndoesn&#8217;t fit into at least the prior 60-day clock of the first initiation<br \/>\nbecause there was no separate 4(a)(1) letter filed about it or any other<br \/>\nsuggestion that somehow this should be considered separately.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/nationalconsumerreportss.com\/?p=67\">Lawfare Live: The Trials of the Trump Administration, April 17<\/a><\/p>\n<p>But even if it did, that, that it wouldn&#8217;t be subject to some<br \/>\n60-day clock as well, even if there&#8217;s not ongoing hostilities. That&#8217;s just not<br \/>\nwhat 4(a)(1) says. It&#8217;s a situation where imminent hostilities is a<br \/>\npossibility. It doesn&#8217;t have to be actual hostilities. And even there&#8217;s&#8230; The<br \/>\nlegislative history suggests Congress intended hostilities to encompass not<br \/>\njust exchanges of fire, but something a little broader than that.<\/p>\n<p>But all of these kind of nuances, while there&#8217;s a lot of<br \/>\ninconsistencies with what the Trump administration is doing, they don&#8217;t always<br \/>\nmatter that much because the only entity whose view of the War Powers<br \/>\nResolution matters right now is the executive branch&#8217;s. <\/p>\n<p><strong>Natalie Orpett:<\/strong> So<br \/>\none piece of this that&#8217;s interesting to me, though, is, as you&#8217;ve said, there<br \/>\nare sort of two separate, whether you call them operations or something else,<br \/>\nthat are happening right now, both of which the administration is suggesting do<br \/>\nnot amount to hostilities for the purposes of the War Powers Resolution.<\/p>\n<p>But what do we make of the fact that there are two separate<br \/>\nthings that are happening right now? There&#8217;s Project Freedom and there&#8217;s the<br \/>\nblockade. Should we understand that to be really indicative of, \u201cNo, this<br \/>\nreally is hostilities,\u201d or do those&#8230; Do you think we can credit the notion<br \/>\nthat those are effectively unrelated for analytical purposes?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Scott R. Anderson:<\/strong><br \/>\nThis really fundamentally gets to the extent to which y- you can interpret the<br \/>\nWar Powers Resolution in a variety of ways. Even if you have a finite<br \/>\nconception of hostilities, like what hostilities is, which is hard enough to<br \/>\ncome up with firmly, how do you know when they end and exist? And what<br \/>\nconstitutes one hostilities versus multiple independent hostilities, right?<\/p>\n<p>Or s- let alone if you expand it to include, as 4(a)(1) does,<br \/>\nsituations, you know, where hostilities may be imminent. It&#8217;s complicated. Now,<br \/>\nthis isn&#8217;t unique to this statute. Lots of statutes have kind of like<br \/>\nopen-ended terms, and usually what happens is the executive branch interprets<br \/>\nit in the course of enforcement activities or however else they&#8217;re applying<br \/>\ninterpreting law.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s part of the president&#8217;s authority under the Take Care<br \/>\nClause, and it&#8217;s well established that the president has the authority to<br \/>\ninterpret the law. And then if people disagree with it, they s- they sue, and<br \/>\ncourts step in and they correct the executive branch. And that&#8217;s particularly<br \/>\ntrue today after the Loper Bright decision, although more in the domestic<br \/>\ncontext, obviously, where the Supreme Court has said, \u201cHey, look-\u201d Previously,<br \/>\nthe Supreme Court gave the executive branch a lot of leeway in how it<br \/>\ninterprets statutes that are assigned to different agencies, and in fact, even<br \/>\nallowed them to change it substantially.<\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;re rolling that back. While we may, you know, take executive<br \/>\npreviews on board, in the end, statutory interpretation is a job for judges and<br \/>\nthe courts, and we&#8217;re gonna do it, and we&#8217;re gonna adopt one interpretation of<br \/>\nstatute, and that&#8217;s it. And if that needs to change, it&#8217;s up to Congress to<br \/>\nchange it.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s not up to the executive branch to adjust its<br \/>\ninterpretation. That is a philosophy that is hard to square with how the War<br \/>\nPowers Resolution is approached. And the main reason really gets back to this<br \/>\nenforcement concept, is just to say, maybe there&#8217;s five or 10 different<br \/>\nreasonable ways you could interpret hostilities to mean different things.<\/p>\n<p>But unlike most laws, there&#8217;s not one actor, one institution,<br \/>\nthat has solidified this to a particular interpretation, because the courts<br \/>\nhave been very reluctant to engage on War Powers matters generally, and the War<br \/>\nPowers Resolution specifically, over the years. And the executive branch isn&#8217;t<br \/>\nbound to retaining a particular interpretation.<\/p>\n<p>Instead, it is free to adopt and adapt interpretations until<br \/>\nthe courts come in and fix an interpretation for it, and that&#8217;s a privilege it<br \/>\nhas used quite liberally in fleshing out the contours of how the War Powers<br \/>\nResolution applies in a way that has allowed it to maintain different military<br \/>\noperations that otherwise may have faced a legal hurdle from the resolution.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Natalie Orpett:<\/strong> Yeah,<br \/>\nand I will just note, the War Powers Resolution is not the only statute under<br \/>\nwhich this is happening, because this is how- By any means &#8230; yes, as you<br \/>\nsaid, and this is how we still have people detained in Guantanamo Bay since<br \/>\n2003, because it is too difficult to, for the courts to adjudicate whether or<br \/>\nnot hostilities are finished for the purpose of detention authorities.<\/p>\n<p>But anyway, moving on let us talk enforcement now. So as we&#8217;ve<br \/>\nreferenced, there is a possibility that these interpretive questions might get<br \/>\ninto court, but it&#8217;s not simple. So talk to us about how that might look, the<br \/>\ndifficulties of standing, and how arguments like this might fare in a judicial<br \/>\nenvironment.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Scott R. Anderson:<\/strong> So<br \/>\nthe conventional wisdom is that, and particularly among national security<br \/>\npractitioners, is that the courts will never touch the War Powers Resolution<br \/>\nbecause they, every opportunity they&#8217;ve had, they have generally refused to<br \/>\neven reach the merits of a dispute over the War Powers Resolution. Instead,<br \/>\nthey&#8217;ve usually done away with the dispute on the grounds of standing, the<br \/>\npolitical question doctrine, or in some cases, mootness ripeness, usually<br \/>\nbecause time has passed and the circumstances underlying the lawsuit have<br \/>\nchanged or haven&#8217;t manifested to the point where there&#8217;s a real imminent sort<br \/>\nof conflict requiring resolution.<\/p>\n<p>I think this is often right in the near term. I think that&#8217;s<br \/>\nalm- often right in most cases. But where I differ with some of these views is<br \/>\nthat I do think there is an outside risk of litigation around the War Powers<br \/>\nResolution. I think this is actually quite deliberate on the part of even those<br \/>\njudges that have refused to reach War Powers Resolution issues on their merits<br \/>\nin the past.<\/p>\n<p>And I think that&#8217;s a bit of a strategic logic on the part of<br \/>\nthe courts and judges. In the past, we&#8217;ve seen on numerous occasions, judges<br \/>\nsay, hey, look, we&#8217;re not going to step in this fight between the political<br \/>\nbranches over whether or not, for example, you know, advising insurgents in El<br \/>\nSalvador, to quote, you know, one case from the 1980s, constitutes hostilities<br \/>\ntriggering Section 4(a)(1) and therefore triggering the 60-day clock.<\/p>\n<p>That is something that there may be disagreement between the<br \/>\npolitical branches, but Congress can correct it if they disagree. It would<br \/>\nrequire a lot of awkward fact-finding around this sensitive national security<br \/>\nspace. We&#8217;re not going to engage in that. Now, I should note, these are all<br \/>\nlower courts.<\/p>\n<p>Supreme Court never has really gotten up to these matters.<br \/>\nUsually these are district courts, occasionally appellate courts weighing in.<br \/>\nAnd when federal courts said similar things about pre-War Powers Resolution<br \/>\ndebates over the Vietnam War, about whether the Nixon administration had<br \/>\nauthority to pursue hostilities and things like that, the usual argument they<br \/>\ngive is that, well, there are, while this case doesn&#8217;t present a case that&#8217;s<br \/>\nappropriate for judicial resolution, other cases might where there is this<br \/>\nclear tension between the executive branch and Congress.<\/p>\n<p>And there is this clear point of disagreement that if you have<br \/>\na real point where there&#8217;s an impasse between the political branches, that is a<br \/>\nsituation where judicial review may be appropriate. This just isn&#8217;t that sort<br \/>\nof hard case. Notably, this is a logic that in the context of the political<br \/>\nquestion doctrine, which is where this logic is deployed most often, we&#8217;ve seen<br \/>\nthis Supreme Court, the Roberts Court, although a prior iteration of it, really<br \/>\nseize on and kind of superpower in a way.<\/p>\n<p>In the 2012 Supreme Court decisions of Atassi v. Clinton, they<br \/>\nsaid essentially, \u201cLook, even in the foreign affairs context, if there&#8217;s a<br \/>\nclear contradiction between presidential action on a statute, it&#8217;s a judicial<br \/>\nduty to just both interpret the statute and determine whether it&#8217;s<br \/>\nconstitutional or not.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s what they view as an impasse warranting judicial<br \/>\nintervention, even if it involves political matters. And this was understood at<br \/>\nthe time, I think correctly, as a pretty significant narrowing of the political<br \/>\nquestion doctrine, or at least the way it had been applied by lower courts in<br \/>\nvarious cases with a lot of relevance to the foreign relations and war powers<br \/>\ncontext.<\/p>\n<p>If you take that here, that would suggest that if you have a<br \/>\nclear, undisputed conflict between the executive branch and Congress, that&#8217;s<br \/>\nthe sort of case where courts maybe should take this up or maybe were willing<br \/>\nto take this up. And in this case, it&#8217;s actually a little bit closer to the<br \/>\ncase here, because again, the Trump administration has conceded hostilities<br \/>\nexist.<\/p>\n<p>And frankly, it wouldn&#8217;t be very e- easy for it to argue that<br \/>\nhostilities didn&#8217;t exist in the scale of military operations, right? It&#8217;s<br \/>\nconceded hostilities that Four-A-One was triggered. The question now is simply,<br \/>\nwill have those hostilities or the situation implying hostility, like the<br \/>\nimminent hostilities, has that situation wound up?<\/p>\n<p>And given the ongoing embargo I think there&#8217;s actually like a<br \/>\nlittle bit of an uphill argument here. Generally, the way I would put this is<br \/>\nthat the harder that the executive branch really pushes against the text of the<br \/>\nWar Powers Resolution and the greater the conflict it appears to create with<br \/>\nCongress, and there are things Congress can do th- to hypercharge and<br \/>\naccentuate that conflict, right, if it chooses to, although it hasn&#8217;t done that<br \/>\nyet the more likely courts actually, I think, may get involved despite all the<br \/>\nthings prevailing against them.<\/p>\n<p>And I think the executive branch agrees with that because<br \/>\nthat&#8217;s why you see the executive branch still complying with the War Powers<br \/>\nResolution in its own vision of it. It adapts these interpretations and it<br \/>\nadjusts its military operations. But in the end, it is changing things at the<br \/>\nsixty-day mark in a way that lets it at least put forward an argument as to why<br \/>\nit&#8217;s in compliance with the War Powers Resolution.<\/p>\n<p>And I think that&#8217;s an effort to mitigate, at least in part,<br \/>\nthat litigation risk. To say, \u201cWell, okay, we&#8217;re gonna get a lot of slack from<br \/>\nthe courts, and we&#8217;re gonna lean into that slack, but we&#8217;re not gonna actually<br \/>\npush it to the brink.\u201d And you know what the clearest indicator of this<br \/>\nhistorically, it&#8217;s the fact that since the War Powers Resolution, the one thing<br \/>\nwe haven&#8217;t seen is the core thing that the Austin War Powers Resolution really<br \/>\ncared about, which is a long-term ground deployment involving ongoing<br \/>\nhostilities.<\/p>\n<p>Where the executive branch has pursued large-scale military<br \/>\ninterventions, and it has in Grenada and Panama and other cases, it&#8217;s wrapped<br \/>\nthem up within 60 days. There&#8217;s an awkward case around Lebanon, the Reagan<br \/>\nadministration, but it was a little more ambiguous about when it started, when<br \/>\nit ended, and in the end, Congress ended up authorizing it.<\/p>\n<p>And the last few days of that kind of conflict, it was clear<br \/>\nthat&#8217;s what Congress was doing. They were just figuring out the process, as I<br \/>\nrecall, for the historic record. That&#8217;s a pretty, actually, I think, kind of<br \/>\nfundamentally robust record of compliance, actually, compared to the prior<br \/>\nhalf-century of the Korean War and the Vietnam War.<\/p>\n<p>But, you know, it does at the same time acknowledge the<br \/>\nexecutive branch has a lot of leeway about things short of that, where it can<br \/>\ncome up with a colorable argument about how something&#8217;s consistent with the War<br \/>\nPowers Resolution. It can lean on that, and it can be reasonably confident that<br \/>\nif it doesn&#8217;t push it too far, it&#8217;s unlikely to face judicial review.<\/p>\n<p>But because it can never say absolutely it won&#8217;t I think<br \/>\nthere&#8217;s still limits on how far it generally is willing to push it. <\/p>\n<p><strong>Natalie Orpett:<\/strong> Yeah,<br \/>\nI think that&#8217;s a really interesting point. I wanna drill down on one sort of<br \/>\ntechnicality, which is the question of standing. So who do you think would<br \/>\nreasonably have a chance of establishing standing to actually bring this sort<br \/>\nof challenge in court?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Scott R. Anderson:<\/strong> So<br \/>\nit&#8211; that&#8217;s a really hard question. The people who usually sue over the War<br \/>\nPowers Resolution are legislators and we&#8217;re, we can be pretty confident<br \/>\nlegislators don&#8217;t have standing, at least free standing. In fact, that, that&#8217;s<br \/>\nbeen well confirmed by lower courts, and there&#8217;s a Supreme Court case, Raines<br \/>\nv.<\/p>\n<p>Byrd, that makes that pretty clear. There&#8217;s an argument under<br \/>\nRaines v. Byrd about this idea of vote nullification standing, where if a<br \/>\ncritical mass of legislators who could show that if the executive branch had<br \/>\nabided by the law and pursued the right measures, they would&#8217;ve been able to<br \/>\ndictate a legal outcome that would&#8217;ve been different than the status quo.<\/p>\n<p>So in this case, I think, like, voting down a war<br \/>\nauthorization, then maybe they could have standing to sue. And that would be,<br \/>\nyou know, either the House or the Senate, I think a majority of the members of<br \/>\neither the House or the Senate who could vote it down. You might need to be<br \/>\nboth because of some weird ways how we conceive of the affected actor in terms<br \/>\nof legislative standing.<\/p>\n<p>But the minimum threshold you would need would be a majority of<br \/>\none chamber or the other. Then at least you have, like, one more persuasive<br \/>\ntier of argument on the legislative standing. But that&#8217;s a high bar and that<br \/>\ndoesn&#8217;t appear to be in the political cards right now, although that could<br \/>\nchange in January.<\/p>\n<p>But there are other people with standing potentially. The one<br \/>\ncategory that&#8217;s been consistently actually surprisingly able to establish<br \/>\nstanding, even though I don&#8217;t think it&#8217;s really acknowledged well enough, are<br \/>\nservice members. Service members who are affected, I should say, specifically<br \/>\nby the given deployment.<\/p>\n<p>Service members have repeatedly sued over the legality of U.S.<br \/>\nmilitary actions in the Vietnam War. Nobody raised standing concerns, although<br \/>\nstanding wasn&#8217;t quite as scrutinized then as it is today. We see at least one<br \/>\ndistrict court judgment agree that a soldier had standing to sue over the<br \/>\naccumulation of military force in the Middle East in advance of the first Gulf<br \/>\nWar.<\/p>\n<p>And then in 2016, we had the Smith v. Obama, later Smith v.<br \/>\nTrump case, where a service member was challenging the legality of U.S.<br \/>\nmilitary intervention in Syria. And there, the judge actually ruled that the<br \/>\nsoldier didn&#8217;t have standing, but that was specifically because the soldier<br \/>\nrefused to base his standing theory on the idea that he was afraid of being<br \/>\ninjured or killed in combat.<\/p>\n<p>Instead, he was saying, well, I have a duty and a desire to be<br \/>\nconfident that I&#8217;m acting consistent with the rule. It was a very esoteric,<br \/>\nunfortunate standing argument that lost. But the judge said actually in pretty<br \/>\nunequivocal terms, look, I think all this line of cases from Vietnam suggesting<br \/>\nservice members have standing to sue and to challenge legality of deployments<br \/>\nis probably well-founded and reasonable, even though the judge in that case<br \/>\ndidn&#8217;t rely on it.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s not open and shut. There are counterarguments that you can<br \/>\nsee deployed. And importantly, it&#8217;s like probably not that hard for the<br \/>\ngovernment to moot out a lawsuit by service members, at least if it&#8217;s a small<br \/>\nnumber of service members, because they can always reassign them or change the<br \/>\nconsequences for them in a way that may strip the injury that&#8217;s the premise of<br \/>\ntheir standing claim.<\/p>\n<p>And notably, a lot of service members probably aren&#8217;t excited<br \/>\nabout suing because it could have career ramifications for them. Imagine under<br \/>\nthis administration in particular, which has been so unabashed about targeting<br \/>\ncritics in the Defense Department and elsewhere in government. But nonetheless,<br \/>\nthere are people there who might have standing.<\/p>\n<p>But you can also imagine other candidates that might have<br \/>\nstanding too, that just haven&#8217;t made much of an effort in the past. One<br \/>\ncategory might be service members&#8217; family members. This was a lawsuit that as<br \/>\nDovie Bush during the second Bush administration or the George W. Bush<br \/>\nadministration in the lead-up to the second Iraq War, their family members<br \/>\njoined members of Congress and some other litigants to bring a lawsuit, and<br \/>\nboth the district court and the, I believe it was the First Circuit, who ruled<br \/>\non this, didn&#8217;t rule that they did have standing, but refused to rule that they<br \/>\ndidn&#8217;t have standing.<\/p>\n<p>They resolved it on other grounds. And I suspect that&#8217;s because<br \/>\nit&#8217;s actually kind of a tricky wicket as to whether a family member might have<br \/>\nstanding, depending on the circus- circumstances of the service member, the<br \/>\nnature of their enrollment, how you conceive of, you know, what is voluntary,<br \/>\nwhat is not, what soldiers are signing up for.<\/p>\n<p>I, I think there&#8217;s barriers there, but I wouldn&#8217;t rule it out<br \/>\nas entirely as a possibility. Another possibility is states. States have had a<br \/>\nhuge amount of luck establishing standing in a variety of other public interest<br \/>\ncircumstances because states have such a wide and diverse array of interests.<\/p>\n<p>And some of those interests you could see get affected by a war<br \/>\neffort. So, like, an example that I have been pointing to, I, I don&#8217;t think<br \/>\nit&#8217;s airtight, but I think it&#8217;s a possibility, is the idea that in California<br \/>\nand Virginia, state universities are obligated to reimburse tuition that&#8217;s been<br \/>\npaid to them by students if those students are called up to active duty.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s a direct pecuniary harm to a state institution. We know<br \/>\nunder by Navy-Nebraska Supreme Court case just a few years ago, that sort of<br \/>\nharm is the thing that can give rise to standing. The causal links here are,<br \/>\nlike, one step more attenuated, I would say, maybe two. So maybe that&#8217;s enough<br \/>\nto defeat it.<\/p>\n<p>But I don&#8217;t think it&#8217;s ludicrous on its face that there&#8217;s at<br \/>\nleast a colorable standing argument here. And importantly, perhaps more<br \/>\nimportantly, democratically run states like California and Virginia are at the<br \/>\nmoment might have the political incentive to actually bring a challenge to<br \/>\nthis, especially &#8217;cause around this conflict, Democrats have been pretty<br \/>\nadamant that they&#8217;re opposed to this, whereas in prior conflicts, neither<br \/>\nparty&#8217;s been super eager to take a position one way or the other.<\/p>\n<p>Here, there&#8217;s a very clear Democratic position of opposition to<br \/>\nthis among the vast majority of Democratic legislators and other prominent<br \/>\nfigures. So maybe they see that as being in their political advantage. None of<br \/>\nus say any of these are, like, airtight cases, they&#8217;re not. But I think it goes<br \/>\ntoo far to say that because of standing and because of the political question<br \/>\ndoctrine, a lawsuit is completely outside the realm of possibility.<\/p>\n<p>If that were true, I think the executive branch would be able<br \/>\nto act with an even more free hand than we&#8217;re seeing them do around this<br \/>\nlimitation. Instead, the fact that we see this kind of conspicuous compliance<br \/>\nwith this broader, much more generous understanding of the War Powers<br \/>\nResolution, but still compliance with it, I think is an indicator that there&#8217;s<br \/>\nat least an understanding there&#8217;s an outsider risk of litigation, and that&#8217;s<br \/>\nsomething the executive branch would be better off avoiding <\/p>\n<p><strong>Natalie Orpett:<\/strong> Now<br \/>\nthat&#8217;s really interesting.<\/p>\n<p>I mean, certainly a lot of room for creative litigating<br \/>\npositions and legal arguments. I want to switch now to another piece of this<br \/>\nsort of enforcement puzzle that you talked about in your piece, which is<br \/>\nadmittedly less often thought of as enforcement, but is what Congress can do<br \/>\noutside of the possibility of certain members of Congress bringing a lawsuit.<\/p>\n<p>What can Congress do to sort of enforce or pressure the<br \/>\nadministration to comply with the War Powers Resolution, or more specifically,<br \/>\nwith those members of Congress&#8217;s chosen interpretation that is at odds with the<br \/>\nadministration&#8217;s? <\/p>\n<p><strong>Scott R. Anderson:<\/strong><br \/>\nYeah, I mean, this is really the, you know, enforcement tool that I think comes<br \/>\nin play more often.<\/p>\n<p>And it is i- in terms of an activity, and it&#8217;s one that blends<br \/>\nin with the political realm. And so I think a lot of times people see something<br \/>\nthat is, quote unquote, enforced or has consequences for reasons not related to<br \/>\na judicial ruling as somehow not legal and political. And look, I mean, the,<br \/>\nthe- they&#8217;re intermingled obviously.<\/p>\n<p>But in this case I do think the legal considerations do feed<br \/>\ninto these political considerations. They provide additional points of<br \/>\nreference. Generally speaking, the War Powers Resolution does give Congress<br \/>\nkind of a tool or kind of two tools they can use to take action where the<br \/>\npresident won&#8217;t.<\/p>\n<p>The original War Powers Resolution had provisions basically<br \/>\nsaying if Congress enacted a concurrent resolution, that&#8217;s a measure that is<br \/>\npassed by the House and Senate but does not go to the president for a veto or<br \/>\npotential veto, then the president is obligated to withdraw U.S. forces from<br \/>\nany hostilities it may be involved in.<\/p>\n<p>That structure, which is known as a legis- legislative veto,<br \/>\nwas drawn into constitutional question by a Supreme Court case in 1983 after<br \/>\nthe War Powers Resolution was enacted, although there had been some questions<br \/>\nabout it even at the time the, of the enactment. And Congress came back and<br \/>\nenacted an alternative set of provisions, but due to some political compromise,<br \/>\nonly in the Senate, allowing for the enactment of similar measures by a joint<br \/>\nresolution.<\/p>\n<p>A joint resolution is essentially a law. So if it&#8217;s enacted, it<br \/>\nhas the full force of law as same as the War Powers Resolution itself, unlike<br \/>\nconcurrent resolutions, which don&#8217;t. But joint resolutions have to be presented<br \/>\nto the president for signature and potential veto, which w- this kind of<br \/>\nweakens the framework substantially from the concurrent resolution structure of<br \/>\nthe War Powers Resolution.<\/p>\n<p>That would&#8217;ve required a simple majority of the House and<br \/>\nSenate, and the president would then have to withdraw. Under the joint<br \/>\nresolution framework, you can move the joint resolution in the Senate forward<br \/>\non a simple majority vote. That&#8217;s significant because you don&#8217;t have to get&#8230;<br \/>\nYou get to over the filibuster barrier.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s usually a barrier to the Senate taking action. So you<br \/>\ncan move the measure to out of committee to the floor and then to a final vote<br \/>\non a simple majority basis. But if you enact it and the pr- and then the House<br \/>\nhas to enact it, they pass it together. If that happens and the president<br \/>\nvetoes it Which is very likely and is what happened with, during the first<br \/>\nTrump administration in regard to resolutions on Yemen and on Iran.<\/p>\n<p>Then to override that veto, you need support from two thirds of<br \/>\nthe House and the Senate, and that is a super majority that is extremely hard<br \/>\nto reach in this kind of partisan time. So it basically means that these formal<br \/>\nmeasures by which Congress can force the president to withdraw from hostilities<br \/>\nnever really have the force of law.<\/p>\n<p>Concurrent resolutions are probably legally ineffective because<br \/>\nof this INS v. Chad, a decision from nineteen eighty-three, and joint<br \/>\nresolutions will most certainly be vetoed and are very unlikely to override a<br \/>\npresidential veto. Not impossible but very unlikely. Nonetheless, we see them<br \/>\ndebated all the time because they&#8217;re useful political tools, &#8217;cause they allow<br \/>\na&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Sometimes a single legislator can introduce these, enforce at<br \/>\nleast one procedural vote on them, and in doing so, they can dedicate floor<br \/>\ntime, draw attention to the issue, and then force their colleagues to take a<br \/>\npublic stand on it through a vote, which can really have political<br \/>\nramifications. So they become these sorts of political tools.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s why we see them used, and we&#8217;ve seen eight different<br \/>\nresolutions introduced and all fail on that first procedural vote regarding<br \/>\nIran. Six j- joint in the Senate, two concurrent in the House as of the time of<br \/>\nrecording. What I will say, though, is that all of this becomes important<br \/>\nduring those moments where the power flips.<\/p>\n<p>Because while most of the time the executive branch has the<br \/>\nadvantage in saying, \u201cI don&#8217;t have to comply with these measures enacted by<br \/>\nCongress &#8217;cause I can veto them,\u201d that flips when the executive branch needs<br \/>\nsomething from Congress. And that is a moment that&#8217;s rapidly approaching, m-<br \/>\nprecisely because of the dynamics and the immense cost of the Iran war.<\/p>\n<p>The Trump administration has said it, it plans to come to<br \/>\nCongress seeking supplemental appropriations for the Iran war as soon as the<br \/>\nsummer, because I think they want to get them before the August resource&#8211;<br \/>\nrecess when Congress usually checks out. This is to the tune of a hundred<br \/>\nbillion dollars, like a lot of money.<\/p>\n<p>And this is a measure that, at least by my understanding of it<br \/>\nalthough I defer to our colleagues who, who specialize in congressional<br \/>\nprocedure, I believe these are all considered discretionary funds, meaning that<br \/>\nit&#8217;s not easy to do through reconciliation me- which is a clean party line<br \/>\nvote. Y- you&#8217;ll have to get past the filibuster in the Senate, and that means<br \/>\nyou&#8217;ll have to get at least some Democrats on board with even all Republicans.<\/p>\n<p>That gives a little bit more leeway a little bit more leverage<br \/>\nto those who are, have reservations about this conflict, to s- put particular<br \/>\nterms and set conditions on their support for any sort of package in the end.<br \/>\nThis in the past, this sort of omnibus legislation is how we&#8217;ve seen most s-<br \/>\nnational security related restrictions get imposed, of which there have been a<br \/>\nlot in the last few years, particularly in relation to President Trump, if I&#8217;m<br \/>\nbeing honest.<\/p>\n<p>And they usually get snuck in through this omnibus sort of<br \/>\nlegislation. And here, because this is so specifically about Iran, and in<br \/>\nparticular A lot of legislators may feel that it&#8217;s better just not to<br \/>\nappropriate any additional funds for Iran. It might be a point where you see a<br \/>\nlot of leverage to be&#8211; for certain people to be extract certain conditions.<\/p>\n<p>The flip side of it, the risk of it, is that at the same time,<br \/>\nsometimes enacting appropriations in support of an ongoing military operation<br \/>\nwill be understood to be implicitly authorizing it. The War Powers Resolution<br \/>\nsays you shouldn&#8217;t be able to do this, but the executive branch has, and I<br \/>\nactually think it&#8217;s fairly persuasive, put forward an argument as to why<br \/>\nactually that part of the War Powers Resolution is probably unconstitutional.<\/p>\n<p>It can establish presumption against authorizing something<br \/>\nimplicitly through appropriations, but can&#8217;t bar it. And importantly, like even<br \/>\nafter the War Powers Resolution, even after the courts have occasionally looked<br \/>\nat the fact that Congress has kept appropriating funds for ongoing military<br \/>\noperation, knowingly those funds wouldn&#8217;t go support it, and has said, \u201cYeah,<br \/>\nmaybe, you know, there&#8217;s a legal debate here about whether this is consistent<br \/>\nwith the Constitution or with War Powers Resolution, but Congress hasn&#8217;t picked<br \/>\na fight over this, and they&#8217;ve looked at the continued appropriations of that.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>So it&#8217;s a really hard case for Congress to say, \u201cMaybe we<br \/>\nprovide some degree of supplemental funds.\u201d Remember, all these funds are gonna<br \/>\ngo replenish arms and otherwise support other defense interests that have been<br \/>\ncompromised by the Iran war to some extent. But I think Congress very well<br \/>\nmight want to put really sharp and hard conditions that the executive branch<br \/>\nwill have to abide by presumably if they write them sharp enough and establish<br \/>\nsanctions for them.<\/p>\n<p>And then at a minimum, Congress has to think about, well, do we<br \/>\nwant to be understood to be authorizing this? Maybe they wanna have express<br \/>\nprovision and they&#8217;re saying, \u201cNothing in this author&#8211; appropriations package<br \/>\nshould be understood as authorizing anything and don&#8217;t interpret it that way.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s not what we&#8217;re doing,\u201d and see if that, that might work,<br \/>\nwhich I think that actually would be taken on board by most observers. And the<br \/>\nlast thing I&#8217;ll point about, I&#8217;ll say about this is that this supplemental<br \/>\nappropriation is the most immediate target for this sort of opportunity, but<br \/>\nthere are others, and particularly in the defense space, the two others are the<br \/>\nNational Defense Authorization Act, that still gets enacted every year, one of<br \/>\nthe very few authorization acts that gets enacted every year, and then the<br \/>\nappropriations bills that happen at the end of the year, including the defense<br \/>\none.<\/p>\n<p>Both of those are similar omnibus leg-legislation that provide<br \/>\nsimilar opportunities, and so you could find restrictions and other things<br \/>\nsnapped into those. All this feeds back to the enforcement question about the<br \/>\nWar Powers Resolution because if the executive branch is understood to be<br \/>\nbucking the War Powers Resolution too aggressively in a way that irritates<br \/>\nmembers of Congress, and some even Republican members of Congress have objected<br \/>\nto what the Trump administration has been doing recently, that adds fuel to the<br \/>\nfire for Congress somehow reining them in the future through conditions at<br \/>\nthese moments of opportunity where Congress has the leverage.<\/p>\n<p>Because it would be very hard for President Trump to veto any<br \/>\nlim&#8211; any of this legislation and will probably have to accept conditions and<br \/>\nlimits on his authority. So long story short, a lot of this da-dance around the<br \/>\nWar Powers Resolution, the motivation for compliance. It fits into this big<br \/>\npolitical process.<\/p>\n<p>Law and politics are very much integrated in this particular<br \/>\nsort of discourse, and i- I think that&#8217;s part of the reason, again, why the<br \/>\nexecutive branch doesn&#8217;t push this quite as far as it may and why the Trump<br \/>\nadministration may face some consequences, political or legal, for having<br \/>\npushed it as far as it has.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Natalie Orpett:<\/strong> Okay,<br \/>\nso I think we can safely say that as to the question of whether the War Powers<br \/>\nResolution is a toothless anachronism or a still relevant and useful statute<br \/>\nfor constraining presidential power, that you fall firmly on the latter camp. <\/p>\n<p><strong>Scott R. Anderson:<\/strong><br \/>\nYes, with some caveats. Yes, I don&#8217;t wanna overstate the strength of it.<\/p>\n<p>And this is a key point. Congress&#8230; The, I think the key point<br \/>\naway from this is that the War Powers Resolution, the experience with it, does<br \/>\ndemonstrate Congress can wield a lot of power in this space. Part of the reason<br \/>\nWar Powers Resolution isn&#8217;t more constraining is &#8217;cause Congress has written it<br \/>\nin a more loose fashion, the executive branch has capitalized on it, and<br \/>\nCongress hasn&#8217;t responded to correct it, but it could.<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s a lot of things Congress could do to tighten this if it<br \/>\nreally wants to, and if it begins experiencing serial defection by the<br \/>\nexecutive branch on the general accommodations and relationship, then maybe<br \/>\nit&#8217;ll get to a point where it actually will. <\/p>\n<p><strong>Natalie Orpett:<\/strong> All<br \/>\nright. Well, I think that is a great place to leave it.<\/p>\n<p>Scott, thank you very much for the excellent piece in <em>Lawfare<\/em>,<br \/>\nand thank you for joining me. <\/p>\n<p><strong>Scott R. Anderson:<\/strong><br \/>\nThank you for having me. <\/p>\n<p><strong><em>[Outro]<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Natalie Orpett:<\/strong> The <em>Lawfare<br \/>\nPodcast<\/em> is produced by the <em>Lawfare<\/em> Institute. If you want to support<br \/>\nthe show and listen ad-free, you can become a <em>Lawfare<\/em> material supporter<br \/>\nat lawfaremedia.org\/support.<\/p>\n<p>Supporters also get access to special events and other bonus<br \/>\ncontent we don&#8217;t share anywhere else. If you enjoy the podcast, please rate and<br \/>\nreview us wherever you listen. It really does help. And be sure to check out<br \/>\nour other shows, including <em>Rational Security<\/em>, <em>Allies<\/em>, <em>The<br \/>\nAftermath<\/em>, and <em>Escalation<\/em>, our latest <em>Lawfare Presents<\/em><br \/>\npodcast series about the war in Ukraine.<\/p>\n<p>You can also find all of our written work at lawfaremedia.org.<br \/>\nThe podcast is edited by Jen Patja. Our theme song is from ALIBI Music. <\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/nationalconsumerreportss.com\/?p=65\">Lawfare Live: The Trials of the Trump Administration, April 24<\/a><\/p>\n<p>As always, thank you for listening.<\/p>\n<p><strong> <\/strong>\n<\/p>\n<\/details>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Is the WPR constraining President Trump&#8217;s ability to wage war with Iran?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,11,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-69","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-armed-conflict","category-congress","category-executive-branch"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Lawfare Daily: What the War Powers Resolution Means for Iran - National Consumer Reports<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/nationalconsumerreportss.com\/?p=69\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Lawfare Daily: What the War Powers Resolution Means for Iran - 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