Last month, the Trump administration insisted that its war with Iran was over, a transparently preposterous claim aimed at sidestepping a legal requirement that Congress authorize hostilities that extend beyond 60 days.
Now, Senate Democrats are preparing to push back on the administration’s assertion.
Sens. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Tim Kaine (D-VA) are circulating a draft letter within the Senate Democratic caucus objecting to the claim that a ceasefire with Iran stopped the 60-day clock on the War Powers Resolution.
Kaine told TPM that he knows “the opinion is widely shared — including among many of our Republican colleagues — that the argument that the 60 days somehow stopped makes no sense.”
Several Senate Republicans have broken with the administration on the issue in the days after the it blew past the 60-day deadline with virtually no effort to involve Congress in the decision making.
“We still have all our troops there, we’re still blockading their ports. There’s still all kinds of military action. So as a matter of fact, it’s wrong,” Kaine told TPM, when asked about the letter. “And second, as a matter of statute, the statute does not contemplate the … stoppage time or something like that.”
TPM obtained and reviewed an early draft of Senate Democrats’ letter. A spokesperson for Schiff’s office separately confirmed to TPM that a draft of the letter is currently circulating within the Senate Democratic caucus.
Democrats’ pushback comes amid efforts by the administration to wriggle out of a legal requirement to end its war with Iran or seek congressional authorization. The War Powers Resolution of 1973 mandates that a president must withdraw from a conflict 60 days after notifying Congress that American forces are fighting. The Trump administration hit that deadline in May.
But in order to avoid requesting that Congress authorize its continued military action — which is highly unpopular on Capitol Hill and would seemingly fail to get the votes needed — the White House sent a letter to Congress on May 1 saying that as far as it was concerned, the war had been “terminated” by a ceasefire.
“There has been no exchange of fire between United States Forces and Iran since April 7, 2026,” Trump wrote in the letter. “The hostilities that began on February 28, 2026, have terminated.”
And Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth made the same argument to Congress during a set of congressional hearings during which he testified last month, stating that the administration’s ceasefire with Iran stops the War Powers Resolution’s 60-day clock. Secretary of State Marco Rubio stuck with that rhetoric on Tuesday as he testified in front of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, claiming that the “war is over.”
Booker: You keep telling us how we’re winning this war.
— Acyn (@Acyn) June 2, 2026
Rubio: The war is over.
Booker: The war is not over. The American people see how we're losing at the pump and with their costs, and yet this thing still hasn't been resolved. Every day he tweets out, oh, we've obliterated… pic.twitter.com/6fFibxsq4H
Trump added in his letter, however, that “the threat posed by Iran to the United States and our Armed Forces remains significant. Accordingly, the Department of War continues to update its force posture in the AoR in select countries, as necessary and appropriate, to address Iranian and Iranian proxy forces’ threats and to protect the United States and its allies and partners.”
Experts who spoke to TPM called the Trump administration’s claims “absurd.”
“I think it was their effort to, frankly, avoid an action like Congress took two weeks ago,” Kaine told TPM, referring to Senate Democrats and four Senate Republicans voting to discharge the Iran War Powers Resolution from committee.
“They were trying to advance some rationale to forestall that day from happening, but the Senate did vote in support of our war powers resolution, and we think the House is going to do the same thing this week,” Kaine told TPM.
The House is expected to take up their own war powers resolution this week. That comes on the heels of House GOP leadership cancelling a vote on the resolution that was on track to pass two weeks ago.
A mass of House Republicans are reportedly planning to break from their caucus and vote with Democrats on a war powers resolution this week.
“A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.” ― George Orwell, Politics and the English Language
Two immediate questions arise:
If the war has been terminated, why are Iran and the US still shooting at each other, as they have been? In other words, the claim is empirically false.
If the war has been terminated, then the US has lost the war. We have lost the negative on Iranian nukes created by Obama’s deal, and we, and the rest of the world, have lost freedom of navigation through the Strait of Hormuz. In other words, the claim is an admission of catastrophic defeat.
This is all immediately obvious. Why won’t it be the frame for reporting on this? It’s very frustrating.
My guess is that the administration will claim that the hostilities are being directed towards third parties in the area: Oman, Kuwait, Hezbollah,” terrorists “….. But that Iran & the US are not shooting at each other. It’s just that we both have lots of troops in the area and they sometimes get hit as well……
Any way you look at it a cease fire is done while at war. Therefore, we are still at war. An illegal war. There has been no congressional authorization.
But the US blew up Iranian gun/rocket positions like, two days ago.