Politics

Trump Called It a War. His Speaker Says It Isn’t.

By Mike Harper · May 1, 2026

The War Powers Resolution of 1973 gives a president 60 days to conduct military operations before Congress must authorize them or the president must withdraw. That 60-day clock expires today — and the Trump administration’s response is to argue that the war isn’t a war.

House Speaker Mike Johnson said it plainly Thursday when asked by NBC News about the deadline falling on Friday. “We are not at war,” Johnson said. “I don’t think we have an active, kinetic military bombing, firing or anything like that. Right now, we are trying to broker a peace.”

The transcript of Trump’s own public statements about the conflict tells a different story.

February 28 — the day U.S. bombs first fell on Iranian targets: “The lives of courageous American heroes may be lost, and we may have casualties. That often happens in war.”

March 9: “I think the war is very complete, pretty much.”

March 13: He called the operation both a war and a “little excursion.”

Late March, after being told that presidents need congressional approval to conduct wars: “Maybe I shouldn’t call it a war.”

Mid-April on Fox Business: “I had to go to a war.”

Thursday — the day before the War Powers deadline — on Newsmax: “The stock market just now hit a new high during the war, or the military operation, whatever you’d like to call it.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth offered the administration’s more formal legal argument before the Senate Armed Services Committee Thursday: the ceasefire that began April 8 paused or stopped the 60-day clock, he argued, meaning the clock that started February 28 is no longer running.

Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia — who has forced a war powers vote in the Senate six times in the last month — responded immediately. “I do not believe the statute would support that.”

Legal scholars agree with Kaine. Katherine Yon Ebright of the Brennan Center’s Liberty and National Security Program told CBS News that there is a long history of executive branch lawyers willfully misinterpreting the War Powers Resolution — but that a ceasefire pause is not something “the War Powers Resolution accommodates” by its text or its design. The Obama administration made a similar argument in 2011 about Libya — arguing air strikes didn’t constitute “hostilities” within the law’s meaning. It was criticized by constitutional scholars then. The same argument is being deployed now.

The Senate voted for the sixth time Thursday to invoke the War Powers Resolution and curtail Trump’s military authority over Iran. The measure failed 47-50. Senators Susan Collins of Maine and Rand Paul of Kentucky were the only Republicans to join nearly all Democrats. Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania was the only Democrat to vote with Republicans. Three senators did not vote.

The significance of 47-50 — compared to 46-51 last week — is one Republican senator moving toward the Democratic position. Collins has previously said she would want a formal authorization vote if the conflict reached the two-month mark. It has.

White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said the administration has conducted over 30 bipartisan congressional briefings on the conflict and remains “transparent with the Hill.” She did not directly address the War Powers deadline.

Whether the administration’s legal argument holds — that a ceasefire stops the clock — will likely be tested in court if Congress forces the issue. No member has yet filed suit to compel compliance. Senator Kaine has said he is considering it.

The bombs stopped falling on April 8. The blockade continues. American forces remain in position in the Persian Gulf. The 60-day clock the administration says isn’t running runs out today.