RAND PAUL TO TRUMP: We Must Not Forget Congress Holds The War‑Power.
Senator Rand Paul (D-KY) was quick to remind President Trump that “congress holds the war-power” Monday afternoon after news broke that Iran had launched an attack on a U.S. base in Qatar.
“We must not forget Congress holds the war-power. If we don’t our nation drifts further from both liberty and peace,” Paul posted on the social platform X.
Paul attached his comment to an op-ed in The Hill by law professor Jonathan Turley.
In the op-ed, Turley, the Shapiro professor of public law at George Washington University, described the efforts by the nation’s founders to limit presidents’ ability to wage military offensives. And he described how various past presidents seized the power to wage war unilaterally and how members of Congress acquiesced to that expansion of presidential power.
Turley notes that Article I, Section 8, Clause 11 states that the “sole” authority to declare war rests with Congress and that George Washington in 1793 supported limiting the president’s power to wage war so that “no offensive expedition of importance can be undertaken until after” lawmakers have “deliberated upon the subject and authorized such a measure.”
