Trump resumed Iran strikes defying first-ever bicameral war-powers resolution directing end to hostilities

On June 27–28, 2026, U.S. Central Command struck Iranian military sites near the Strait of Hormuz, resuming attacks that the White House said had paused under a June 17 memorandum of understanding with Tehran. The strikes came four days after the Senate voted 50–48 on June 23 to pass a war-powers resolution that the House had already approved 215–208 on June 3 — the first time in American history that both chambers had passed such a resolution directing the president to halt hostilities. The resolution required Trump to "remove United States Armed Forces from hostilities against the Islamic Republic of Iran" unless explicitly authorized by a declaration of war or a congressional AUMF.

Trump responded to the Senate vote by calling the four Republicans who crossed party lines "losers" and deriding the measure as "poorly timed and meaningless," saying it provided "aid and comfort" to Iran. The following week, he directed new strikes on Iranian military targets. In an interview, Trump said he had learned no "lesson" about the limits of his executive power during the Iran conflict: "There are no limits," he told the Axios Show. The White House dismissed the bicameral resolution as having "no significance," and asserted that "there are no hostilities from which to remove US forces, as hostilities terminated with the ceasefire on April 7th" — a position contradicted by the new strikes ordered the same week.

Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps retaliated by striking U.S. military sites in Kuwait and Bahrain on June 28. Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) condemned the resumed strikes as "a blatant violation" of the congressional resolution and threatened to take Trump to court. Constitutional scholar Bruce Fein told Al Jazeera that Trump would "ignore the vote on the bogus fantasy of unconstitutionality" and that congressional defunding of the war remained the most viable check. No war-powers resolution had previously cleared both chambers of Congress in the fifty-three years since the 1973 War Powers Resolution was enacted.