Flipping the House and Senate would not grant Democrats unilateral power to end the war in Iran, but it would hand them more tools to leverage the Trump administration to bring the conflict to a close.
It is one of Democrats’ top campaign promises heading into Tuesday’s midterm elections as they try to convince voters to give them control of Congress to put a check on President Trump.
“The first thing we should do after the election is end the Iranian war,” former Sen. Sherrod Brown, Ohio Democrat, said at a campaign event. “There’s simply no reason we’re in that war. It’s driving up costs for everything.”
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After his 2024 loss to Republican Sen. Bernie Moreno, Mr. Brown is mounting a comeback bid in an election environment considered more favorable to Democrats. This time he is running against GOP Sen. Jon Husted, who was appointed to replace Vice President J.D. Vance.
The Ohio Senate race is just one of countless contests where Democratic candidates and incumbents are campaigning against the war in Iran.
Sen. Chris Murphy, Connecticut Democrat, said ending the conflict becomes a “mandate” if his party wins control of Congress in the midterms.
“If we win the House and the Senate, it is because people believe that by electing Democrats, they are going to end the war,” he said during an event Wednesday at the Middle East Institute.
Senate Democratic leader Charles E. Schumer of New York said in a statement Wednesday marking the eighth month of U.S. intervention in Iran that his caucus “will continue to do everything in our power to end this disaster of a war and stop the costs, chaos, and corruption seeping from the White House.”
Scott R. Anderson, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said Democrats have limited legal options to force an end to the Iran war.
But with the powers that come with House and Senate majorities, “there’s a lot they can do to again pressure the Trump administration to wind it down,” he told The Washington Times.
“Practically, the president can do a lot in this space opposing the will of Congress,” Mr. Anderson said. “And the real question comes down [to] when will the president feel that that pressure is too much?”
Funding fight
Mr. Murphy said the best way for Democrats to pressure the administration is through the congressional power of the purse.
“If Democrats are in charge, we will essentially say we want to fund the Department of Defense, but we are not going to fund the Department of Defense if it’s funding this war,” he said.
Defunding the war “will be a fight,” and not every Democrat may join the effort, Mr. Murphy said. But he sees it as “the natural consequence” of the Trump administration declining to obtain congressional authorization for its actions against Iran.
“We become an illegitimate body, especially with respect to our foreign policy powers, if we do not use our spending power to end the war,” he said.
Mr. Anderson said a spending fight over the war would be “a heavy political lift.”
“Cutting off funds is always a sensitive topic for folks because they’re worried about being perceived as not supporting the troops,” he said. “And then more foundationally, it is sometimes the sort of thing that can be hard to get through the committee process that informs the big omnibus legislation that you’d almost certainly have to attach something like that to.”
Mr. Trump would almost certainly veto any standalone bill to cut off funding for the Iran war, so Democrats’ best tactic would be to tuck restrictions into a broader government funding package or the annual defense bill.
“Then it would be a game of chicken between Congress and the executive branch. ’Well, which of us could wait out the painful consequences of this, politically and otherwise, more?’” Mr. Anderson said.
“I suspect, frankly, Democrats in Congress would say, ’No, it’s the Iran war that the president’s holding out for. Like politically, that’s a loser, and we think we can outwait him,’” he said.
To wage a successful fight, Democrats will need to avoid splintering over the issue while also convincing enough Republicans to back the effort to get to the 60 votes needed in the Senate to overcome a filibuster.
A handful of Republicans have publicly opposed continuing the war and those numbers could grow if an anti-war contingent sweeps Democrats into power.
Court challenge
If Democrats retake the House, they can vote to authorize a lawsuit on behalf of the body contesting the president’s authority to remain engaged in the war without congressional approval.
Mr. Anderson said Democrats could argue that the Constitution gives Congress the authority to declare war and that the War Powers Resolution of 1973 only gives the president 60 to 90 days to pursue hostilities without congressional approval.
While in the minority, Democrats have already forced votes in the House and Senate on war powers resolutions to make Mr. Trump end offensive hostilities against Iran absent congressional authorization.
However, they have struggled to find legal standing to try to enforce the war powers vote in court.
“If you don’t control at least one chamber, and preferably both, individual legislators, it’s pretty clear do not have the authority under the Supreme Court precedent to have the standing to pursue that sort of lawsuit,” Mr. Anderson said. “But a whole chamber or the two chambers together could.”
He said that Congress as a body has never directly tested its ability to sue over war powers, so the outcome of such litigation is not guaranteed.
Democrats can also bolster any third-party lawsuits challenging the president’s actions against Iran by continuing to pass measures stating congressional opposition to the war.
“Where there’s a clear break, clear distinction of preferences between the political branches, between Congress and the executive branch, that’s also the scenario where federal courts have suggested they’re most willing to take up a dispute,” Mr. Anderson said.
Oversight
Rep. Adam Smith, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services, said stopping the Iran war will be his panel’s number one task if his party is in control.
Democrats would also have a lot more oversight power in the majority to use to help achieve that goal. They can hold hearings and subpoena testimony and documents from the Trump administration if officials decline to cooperate.
Investigations could lead to potential impeachment probes, whether against Mr. Trump or other administration officials leading the war effort.
Rep. Thomas Massie, Kentucky Republican, has enough support for a discharge petition to force a vote on impeaching Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth after the midterm election.
While Republican leaders have said they will move to kill the measure, a procedural vote could test support for a real impeachment effort if Democrats are in charge next Congress.
Rep. Jason Crow, Colorado Democrat and Armed Services Committee member, said Sunday that ousting Mr. Hegseth is his “priority number one” if Democrats retake the majority.
“Our service members actually deserve competent, serious, real leadership that will protect them and do the right thing,” he said on CBS News. “And they currently don’t have that.”
If Democrats retake the Senate, they can also hold up confirmations of Trump administration nominees as leverage for ending the Iran war.
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