Trump's Iran War and the Article One crisis
Congress's refusal to do its job is now the world's problem.
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The Trump administration has offered very little in the way of justification for attacking Iran. Instead, it was bomb first, offer a feeble explanation later. This is breathtakingly illegal, and the administration just doesn’t care. President Donald Trump attacked Iran because he wanted to, full stop.
Now, there’s a scramble by the administration and GOP sycophants to cobble together some Rube Goldberg contraption combining international law, domestic law, and executive authority that would somehow make this totally cool and legal, but there’s no way to make it work.
Let’s start with international law and the explanation that this was a “preventive” strike, so everything is hunky dory. Article 2(4) of the UN Charter prohibits “the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.” Attacking Iran definitely counts as the use of force against their territorial integrity, and taking out their leader definitely counts as attacking Iran’s political independence.
There is, however, an exception to this in Article 51, which allows for self-defense if an armed attack occurs. Welp, we don’t have that here either. Iran hasn’t attacked the United States. Preemptive strikes are allowed in very narrow circumstances, when a threat is imminent, overwhelming, and there is no other alternative.
Only after we started bombing Iran did the administration try to make the case that an attack by Iran was right around the corner. How? Per Trump, Iran was only a few weeks away from acquiring nuclear weapons. That’s quite a change from November 2025, when Trump boasted that we had “obliterated Iran’s nuclear enrichment capacity” in the June 2025 strikes. We’re supposed to believe that somehow Iran restarted its nuclear program from zero and managed to get within spitting distance of having a nuclear weapon in about eight months.
Even setting aside the idea that Iran could make this happen in such a compressed timeline, there’s another factor that makes it impossible to buy the idea that Iran was close to developing nuclear weapons: the June strikes buried Iran’s supply of enriched uranium. There’s no evidence that Iran has managed to dig that out, and even if they did, they’d have to enrich the uranium further before beginning to make a bomb. Experts have explained that even after digging it out, Iran would still be looking at several months to a year before being able to manufacture a weapon.
The administration also floated the idea that Iran was developing long-range missiles that could reach the United States. Sure, except our own intelligence agencies say that Iran likely couldn’t manage that until 2035, which is extremely the opposite of imminent.
Israel called the attack a “preventive” strike, designed to stop Iran from being a threat in the future. That is in no way permissible under international law. Stronger countries aren’t allowed to attack weaker ones based on an assertion that at some undefined point in the future, they might pose an undefined threat.
That said, the United States has been trying to find ways to get around international law for decades by having the Office of Legal Counsel issue opinions blessing whatever it is a president feels like doing.
The first problem with this approach is that an OLC opinion is nothing but an internal memo providing advice to the executive branch. It has no force of law even within our borders, and certainly doesn’t override international law. But back in 1989, as a lowly assistant attorney general, Bill Barr drafted an OLC opinion asserting the president had the constitutional authority to send the FBI to other countries for arrests, even if that violated international law.
That OLC opinion, in turn, formed much of the basis for the December 2025 OLC opinion justifying invading Venezuela to abduct President Nicolás Maduro, along with some wildly disingenuous parsing of words. You see, the Venezuela operation was totally fine, and Trump didn’t need to ask Congress because he could unilaterally order it if “the amount of force involved serves important national interests and involves a use of force that he could reasonably conclude does not rise to the level of war in a constitutional sense.”
If this feels a bit like One Weird Trick, it sorta is. Just don’t call it a war, and magically, we can drop in anywhere and arrest anyone, and Trump also can do it without ever checking with Congress.
This framing isn’t quite right for the attacks on Iran, as both Barr’s 1989 opinion and the 2025 opinion about Venezuela were about the United States engaging in law enforcement actions in other countries, even if that violated the other country’s sovereignty. Here, there’s no attempt to say that we’re engaged in a law enforcement action rather than a military attack, and, to be fair, the administration hasn’t tried to trot out this explanation for Iran. But you can likely expect this will play out the same as Venezuela did — with a handy-dandy internal legal opinion that just so happens to say Trump can do whatever he wants.
The 2025 OLC opinion about Venezuela was designed to free Trump from the strictures of both international and domestic law, with the latter being as important as the former. Trump could be fully compliant with international law yet still violate domestic law if he were required to seek congressional authorization but didn’t. That’s because only Congress has the power to declare war. But it’s a lot easier to make the case that the limited incursion into Venezuela wasn’t a war than to say that the sustained aerial bombardment of Iran, especially with Trump’s projection that this could last four or five weeks, isn’t one.
There’s also the part where Trump already called it a war in his Truth Social video on Saturday when he announced the strikes.
“The lives of courageous American heroes may be lost, and we may have casualties. That often happens in war, but we’re doing this not for now. We’re doing this for the future, and it is a noble mission,” he said.
Trump also said the military had begun “major combat operations” and was “undertaking a massive and ongoing operation.” He added that we would “raze their missile industry to the ground” and “annihilate their navy.”
Yeah, that sounds like a war.
But nonetheless, Trump didn’t bother to obtain congressional authorization before attacking Iran, though the White House did inform the Gang of Eight not long before the strikes began. It isn’t actually clear at this point whether the administration is planning on asking for congressional approval or whether it is just teeing up yet another constitutional crisis.
The administration also can’t claim there is any existing congressional authorization that would allow an attack on Iran.
Stretched past the breaking point
For over 20 years, presidents have leaned on the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), passed in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, which authorized military force against “those nations, organizations, or persons [the President] determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons.” If a military operation is covered by that definition, the president doesn’t need to seek authorization because that authorization already exists.
Past administrations have stretched the AUMF pretty far, using it to bypass Congress for military operations against Al Qaeda and the Taliban, and to go after ISIS in both Iraq and Syria. However, those justifications related back to the countries and organizations that were linked to the September 11 attacks, however tenuously. But Iran has never been considered to have played a role in 9/11, nor has it harbored any associated groups like the Taliban.
Since there is no existing congressional authorization covering Iran, Trump was required to go to Congress to get authorization. Of course, that is not what happened. Instead, Congress will convene this week to fight about it after the fact, with Democrats and a smattering of Republicans trying to force a vote on a War Powers Resolution.
In theory, the 1973 law allows Congress to wrest back control from the president even after he has started a war. Congress could pass a War Powers resolution requiring Trump to seek approval for any further action or to demand he bring US forces home from Iran.
But there’s a catch: even if both chambers pass it, Trump can veto it, which would then require passage by two-thirds of both the House and Senate to override it. And there’s just no appetite on the part of Republicans in Congress to rein Trump in.
And that’s the problem. We have an ongoing Article I crisis, where Congress has continually refused to check or balance Trump and the executive branch.
This abdication of its constitutional authority was bad enough when it was about giving up the power of the purse and letting Trump spend — or not spend — whatever he wanted. It’s far worse now that the Republican majority in Congress will likely block any War Powers resolution, giving up the constitutional power to declare war and instead giving Trump even more authority.
Unless and until the GOP acknowledges that the country is in the grip of a madman bent on consolidating all constitutional power in him and him alone, Trump is free to singlehandedly decide to go to war.
This isn’t how checks and balances are supposed to work, and it isn’t how the Constitution works. But what we’ve found in the Trump era is that those checks and balances seem to be mere norms, ones that can be discarded whenever it suits the Trump regime to do so.
The founders could not have anticipated that Congress would simply stop doing its job, but that’s where we are now. Whenever and however we are on the other side of this slide into fascism, we’re going to have to figure out a way to make members of the legislative branch come back to work and honor their constitutional duties. They literally owe it to us.
Texas turnout bodes well for Dems
By Joe Dye
Today, voters in Texas, North Carolina, and Arkansas kick off the 2026 midterm elections with primary elections in their states.
The main focus of media attention has been the Democratic and Republican primaries for the US Senate in Texas. But perhaps even more important than the results is the level of turnout in both races, which bodes quite well for Democrats as we head toward November.
On the Democratic side, the primary is a battle between the US Rep. Jasmine Crockett and Texas state Rep. James Talarico. The race has caused a turnout explosion. Over 1.5 million Texans voted early in the Texas Democratic primary, which is exceptional by comparison. In 2018, just over one million total Texans voted in the Democratic primary, and in the 2020 Democratic primary for president, about 2.1 millions Texans voted. So the Crockett/Talarico race will blow turnout in both of those races out of the water, with at minimum 2.5 million Texans (and probably closer to three million) voting in the Democratic primary.
Even sweeter for Democrats, about 230,000 more Democrats cast their ballot in early voting than Republicans. Because early voting in Texas actually tends to be more Republican than Election Day, Democrats will almost certainly outvote Republicans in the Texas primary, something that has never happened in modern history.
Trying to guess who will win this primary is a futile exercise. Prediction markets have Talarico as a massive favorite, and the polls narrowly favor Crockett. But regardless of who emerges, the Democratic candidate will be in a strong position to win in November.
On the Republican side, incumbent Sen. Cornyn is being challenged by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and US Rep. Wesley Hunt. Cornyn, who has been a senator since 2003, is in massive trouble. He will almost certainly come in second behind Paxton, with his only chance of staying in office stemming from Hunt’s perplexing entry into the race and Texas requiring candidates to reach a majority of the vote to be nominated.
This primary embodies how much MAGA has taken over the Republican primary, particularly in the South. Cornyn is a holdover from the Bush era, having the backing of former Gov. Rick Perry, the Texas Farm Bureau, and every newspaper of repute in the state. Paxton, a MAGA favorite, is best known for having several affairs, leading the effort to overturn the 2020 election, and having the backing of right-wing celebrities like Ted Nugent. Trump, no doubt aware of Paxton’s weaknesses, has avoided endorsing a candidate in the Republican primary, but it’s clear that the MAGA movement has soured on the incumbent.
All of this is good news for Democrats, who need all the help they can get to win a Trump +14 state. Paxton is by far the weakest candidate Republicans can nominate.
That’s it for today
We’ll be back with more tomorrow. If you appreciate today’s PN, please do your part to keep us free by signing up for a paid subscription.
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My word processing software is suggesting the correct spelling of Iran is Vietnam.
As we all know, the only way that Congress has any chance of reasserting its Article 1 constitutional duty to be a check on the executive branch is if the MAGATs are shellacked by the Democrats in the midterms. The time for aiding and abetting the sociopathic fascist monster was over a long, long time ago.
The only roadblock for a Democrat tsunami is if the demented toddler in the WH sends in troops to the polls to intimidate voters and/or declare martial law, individual MAGAt states refuse to certify the election for the Dems or they do it the old fashioned way: out and out cheat. If the latter happens, a government of the people, for the people and by the people will perish from the earth.
Everything that Trump touches dies.