House Speaker Mike Johnson really needed to figure out a way to retroactively bless President Donald Trump’s recent bombing of Iran. It took Johnson a couple days, but here’s what he came up with: The War Powers Act is unconstitutional. See how easy that is?
The War Powers Act requires the president to notify Congress within 48 hours of involving the armed forces in hostilities or in situations where involvement of our armed forces is imminent. Use of the armed forces is limited to 60 days, unless Congress declares war or grants the president an exception. It is not a lengthy statute. It’s not difficult to understand. Plus, there’s the actual Constitution, which gives only Congress the power to declare war.
You’d think the House speaker might be interested in preserving Congress’ power, but Johnson is far more interested in sucking up to Trump. So Johnson decided to do a little violation of the separation of powers of his own, saying that the War Powers Act is unconstitutional. Why? For reasons. By scholars. No, you can’t know which scholars or their reasoning. Just trust that Johnson is persuaded by their argument, and go with it.
This is, of course, not how any of this works. Congress passes laws, the executive branch enforces the law, and the judicial branch determines the constitutionality of laws. There’s a whole soaring rhetoric bit about this over on the Supreme Court’s website, even. And if Congress had the power to determine the constitutionality of laws, that would require Congress to vote on it. There is no world where the Constitution vests the speaker of the House with the ability to throw out laws if they in any way hinder Trump.
Johnson isn’t alone in his desire to shrink Congress down to a vestigial organ—say, the nation’s appendix. Ceding power to Trump is the core function of congressional Republicans at the moment. They’ve already buckled on tariffs. They’re totally down with giving the power of the purse to the president. They’ve stood aside to let Trump close agencies on a whim.
And they think it’s great. Here’s Republican Rep. Michael Cloud of Texas gushing about it: “This is us, in a sense, giving the keys to the president to be able to continue to do the great work that they’re doing.” Buddy, if you think that is the role of Congress, quit your job and go home. There’s no need for taxpayers to pay your salary if you have no intention of doing your job.
Not to be outshone by the House, GOP senators had a great idea: Why not tuck a provision in the Big Beautiful Bill—the Trump-backed legislation that would, among other harms, slash the social safety net to taters—to allow the Office of Management and Budget to reorganize the government in any way it wants, including closing agencies created by Congress? They’ve even included $100 million in funding to get this started, with no congressional oversight needed.
Unfortunately, there’s no reason to expect that the Supreme Court will step in at some point and restore balance. The conservative majority can’t even be roused to make a peep when their power is directly attacked.
Of course, there’s no world where Johnson or Chief Justice John Roberts would let these sweeping power grabs happen if it were a Democratic president trying to become a king. This is not the behavior of a party that ever expects to be out of power again.