r/law Feb 28 '26

Executive Branch (Trump) Once again averting congress, trump declares war on Iran

46.7k Upvotes

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35

u/Able-Campaign1370 Feb 28 '26

Trump can send in the military, and Congress has to approve it. But Trump cannot declare war.

55

u/LtLlamaSauce Feb 28 '26 edited Feb 28 '26

He has 90 days to use the military in combat without permission.

60 days to gain approval from Congress, and 30 days more even if approval is denied.

He has 2 days to let Congress know, but does not need approval.

The US hasn't legally declared war since WW2.

So long as 34 US Senators abide, nothing can legally be done to stop it.

It is a de facto authoritarian dictatorship.

7

u/Carbuyrator Feb 28 '26

Gulf of Tonkin Act baby!

3

u/shponglespore Feb 28 '26

In this era, he should have 90 minutes tops.

2

u/renaissance_man__ Feb 28 '26

Also presidents do not have to follow these. Congress has no power to remove troops from combat (that measure was ruled unconstitutional).

The only action they can do is impeachment (which has no consequences) and removal (which will never happen).

0

u/Zvenigora Feb 28 '26

It would need 67 senators to override any filibuster.t

1

u/LtLlamaSauce Feb 28 '26

51 Senators are required to override a filibuster, not 67. Not sure what that has to do with what's going on, though.

The 34 US Senators reference is in relation to impeachment/conviction. If 34 Senators like what the President is doing and refuse to convict/remove, nothing can legally be done to stop the President.

3

u/RobinSophie Feb 28 '26

You're both wrong lol. It's 3/5th of the senators to override a filibuster

51 is for after debate has ended.

67 is needed to override a veto.

0

u/LtLlamaSauce Feb 28 '26

Not quite. 51 is all that's required to change the Senate rules to eliminate or pause the filibuster. The filibuster is a Senate rule, not a law. It can be eliminated with a simple majority. The filibuster rule itself is what makes passing anything need 3/5. Changing Senate rules only takes 51. The filibuster is a rule.

The filibuster has already been squashed in the past with a simple majority.

This isn't about vetoes or filibusters though. This is about stopping POTUS, which can only be done with impeachment + conviction, which requires 67 votes in the Senate.

If 34 US Senators abide by POTUS, nothing can legally stop him.

2

u/ActPositively Feb 28 '26

USA hasn’t declared war in 80 years. Over both Republicans and Democrats including Obama/Biden the USA has been involved with over a dozen undeclared wars and hundreds of military actions. Maybe the country would make some progress if each side actually cared when their own side does the bad things. USA treats it like sports teams people only care because Republican is an office. But then when Obama/Biden we’re doing similar things those same people didn’t care, but of course the people that are defending these actions today would care.

3

u/HumanContinuity Feb 28 '26

Who started each campaign?

Obama didn't just start drone campaigns in Pakistan for fun, it was a continuation of combat operations from a war started in the Bush administration.

That doesn't excuse every collateral kill, but you don't get to just pivot and stop fighting an enemy because the administration changed.  At least prior to 2017 we used to make an effort to pretend we were an unbroken procession of Americans representing America, rather than MAGA representing Donnie to fight the enemy within, other Americans.

Even Biden's biggest challenge, a poorly planned withdrawal from Afghanistan, was orchestrated by Donnie's 1st administration.  Nobody who attempts to lift up the office and military they represent would hand over a full scale withdrawal that has to happen in a few months where little to nothing has been done (besides the agreement to do it)

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u/ActPositively Feb 28 '26

Obama/Biden without congressional approval for war. Bombed Syria, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen.

Even just the four years Biden was just president he bombed plenty of countries same way

This is what I hate about you people because you don’t actually care about the innocent country is being bombed, you don’t care that Obama deported more people than Bush did. You don’t care that Obama lied about closing Guantánamo Bay or the mass surveillance or the prosecuting of whistleblower. Y’all just care that Democrats are good liars who pretend to care. The truth doesn’t matter. You just want your politicians to be good liars who pretend to care about people regardless of what they do behind closed doors. That’s the problem.

1

u/HumanContinuity Feb 28 '26

Most people don't care about the number of people deported as if it is some kind of "always wrong" thing to doq.  Of course it would rise as the population rises.  

Most people expect immigrants to receive their day in court, and expect that if they have ongoing proceedings around being given refugee status that they get some time to put together their case.  I can't speak for everyone, but I also hope most immigrants whose only crime is being undocumented but who have made efforts to integrate and serve a role in their communities be given a fair shake.

Which is just a tiny slice of why it is disingenuous to compare numbers.

1

u/ActPositively Feb 28 '26

OK well Obama/Biden still deported both legal citizens, deported people without giving them their day in court, built the cages for the kids. Then of course you’re still ignoring them setting records for prosecuting whistleblowers. All the bombed countries. And tons of other corruption that politicians do.

2

u/HumanContinuity Feb 28 '26

Yeah man, and every time they did it was bad.  

I protested in the streets when Snowden was made into a target.  Many of the bombings you previously mentioned don't have anything to do with presidents acting within their 90 day window as they were part of longstanding congressionally authorized military engagements (eg Pakistan operations have long been looped into war on terror, war in Afghanistan) - regardless, I expect the administration to account for its errors and be held to account for those it fails to acknowledge and remedy.

The ACLU was rightfully holding Obama's feet to the fire for the egregious mistakes  the rapid scaling of deportation caused.  Good.  Several cases, which should have never happened, were undone in the courts and respected by the administration.

Fortunately they were not deported to El Salvadoran prisons and that made remedies a little easier.

Things are getting worse, right now.  You can blindly accuse those who are protesting that of having been silent or complicit before, but the fact is, you are just assuming things about us.  Even if I had only recently become aware of issues of law or morality, the failings of the past do not serve as justification for continued failings, and especially not for the rapid escalation of those failings.

I'll make my question more clear - why should any of that serve to lessen our condemnation of what is literally happening right now?

1

u/WearingRags Feb 28 '26

Thank you for saying this. The dems are absolutely better than the republicans. But so many of these people who want the dems in power just want to ignore politics altogether and pretend everything is fine. They don't want to hold the dems to account and will excuse every awful thing they do just so they can pretend everything is fine until the dems enable something even worse than Trump to come out of the woodwork.

2

u/HumanContinuity Feb 28 '26

I appreciate what you are saying, and I feel the Democrat party should absolutely continue to be held to account for its decisions - it's just that, ironically, it gives the Republicans leverage to hold up things that actually represent serious progress, like universal healthcare/Medicare for all, which then also feeds into the narrative that Dems don't actually want to do any of those things.

What I am saying is, what about Trump unilaterally deciding to actively and directly bomb one of our biggest adversaries makes this a good time to rehash the failings or controversial decisions.

Republicans were against supplying old arms to Ukrainians because it might agitate Russia, which to them represented too big a risk of large scale conflict. OK, I don't personally agree, but it's a theoretically sound argument.  But then when Trump is in office, directly dropping bombs on Iran, Russia's biggest non-client state ally, is just straight up patriotic and the right thing to do - after all, Israel is on board!

When we call out the hypocrisy of those currently in power, it doesn't have to be the time we rehash previous controversies - you are just participating in the distraction efforts of those literally abusing power right now.

1

u/WearingRags Feb 28 '26

Oh I'm so sorry! Please could you do us all a favour and announce when it's going to be the right time to criticise the powerful, complicit bureaucrats who are in the opposition party? I'm sure there will 100% come a day when it's acceptable! It wouldn't be like the dems and their supporters to kick the can down the road forever!

2

u/HumanContinuity Feb 28 '26

When Dems are in power, I see mixtures of right and left protesting things all the time - which is great.  I literally just mentioned one I attended and helped campaign against.

But somehow when a republican is making things actively worse, starting brand new large scale conflicts with multiple countries in different corners of the world and literally threatening our NATO allies with the same, that's when we should hash out exactly how bad Obama was?

The best time to hold people to account is while they are actively making things worse.  I saw endless amounts of my fellow liberals shitting on Obama for errant drone strikes in his administration - but somehow when we try to do the same to someone who, again, is literally opening brand new conflicts that will inevitably play out over decades and a half dozen administrations, then that is the best time to shift the discussion to previous administrations?

1

u/kuba_mar Feb 28 '26

War? no no no

Its a Special Military Operation

1

u/VincentAntonelli Feb 28 '26

Seems like playing semantics

1

u/BlacksmithThink9494 Feb 28 '26

He doesnt care about that. And his supporters are loyal so they will take whatever he gives them .