| There are many questions about President Donald Trump’s attack on Iranian nuclear facilities, like: Why now? How long will some version of this conflict last? And how involved will the United States get? But a big question for members of Congress, including some Republicans, is: Was this legal? The fact that some Republicans are asking could signal that lawmakers in Congress might at least consider taking back some of their power after they have let Trump override much of their constitutional authority on a host of matters, such as government spending, trade and a TikTok ban. The ability to declare war falls solely on Congress, though Trump and many other presidents have argued that they can wage smaller campaigns on their own. But the Constitution says Congress is supposed to authorize a president getting involved militarily at any level, a fact that several Republican lawmakers brought up over the weekend. “Frankly, we should’ve debated this,” said Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky), who has introduced bipartisan legislation to reassert Congress’s authority to declare war. “It’s hard to conceive a rationale that’s Constitutional,” Rep. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio) wrote on social media. The founders gave Congress the power to declare war to prevent one person from acting in ways not in the nation’s interests. And after Trump dropped bombs on Iran’s nuclear facilities, a new CNN/SSRS poll has found that a majority of Americans disapprove of the strikes, don’t trust Trump to make the right decisions about Iran on his own and think that he should be required to get congressional approval for any further military action. But even a bipartisan push to require Trump to get congressional approval is unlikely to succeed, for a few reasons. Republican leaders in Congress fully support Trump, notes The Washington Post’s Paul Kane, and lawmakers have spent decades ceding power to presidents when it comes to conducting military engagements. Congress has often been okay with staying on the sidelines on one of its major constitutional powers, because if lawmakers do vote for war, they can be on the hook for giving the president a blank check to fight never-ending conflicts. “Congress just cedes, cedes, cedes authority,” said Jessica Levinson, a professor at Loyola Law School and the host of the “Passing Judgment” podcast. The last time Congress approved the use of military force was after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Votes in favor of it haunted Democrats like former senator Hillary Clinton decades later. And future presidents used Congress’s authorization to justify much different conflicts: President Barack Obama used the 20-year-old authorization to attack the Islamic State. Trump used that same authorization in his first term to justify killing a top Iranian general. “The presidential instinct seems to be that it’s better to apologize than ask permission,” said Jon Alterman, a Middle East expert with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, “and the majority in Congress has been willing to accept that approach.” It’s also fuzzy what actually constitutes war, or a military conflict sustained enough for a president to get Congress’s approval. Congress hasn’t declared war since World War II, after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. That gives presidents lots of leeway to argue that what they’re doing is within their constitutional powers as commander in chief of the nation’s military. “It is unclear whether any military action short of a ‘total war’ akin to the First and Second World Wars would, in the executive branch’s view, amount to a war in the constitutional sense that requires congressional authorization,” the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service says. Obama eventually did launch strikes without Congress’s approval, and his White House made a similar argument to the one Trump’s is making now: that a conflict in the short term is worth it to protect Americans from a broader threat that could materialize in the long run. What might be different this time — and what may explain several Republicans speaking up — is that Trump didn’t launch strikes against a terrorist group. He hit nuclear enrichment facilities that have been central to the Iranian government’s power, then talked about regime change (before announcing a ceasefire between Israel and Iran, then literally cursing both countries for breaking it). Alterman said that in his opinion, what has given Trump such wide latitude to do all of this without asking Congress for approval is his political control of the Republican Party. Republicans writ large just aren’t willing to seriously question him and his authority, even on matters of national security. But that could change. Trump can’t run for office again, and there are a number of issues that could bring down his standing in his party — if tariffs cause bare store shelves, or if his strikes in Iran escalate into a broader conflict that involves the United States and is particularly unpopular with his supporters. “A lot of his war powers is political,” Alterman said, “and the nature of politics is that it’s dynamic. And I’m not sure how much longer the president will be able to have as free of a hand as he has now.” | 
