(April 15, 2026) – According to The Hill, in an article typical of U.S. media, Trump’s war on Iran is totally legal for 60 days if Congress does nothing, after which it becomes illegal, unless Congress has explicitly OK’d it. This is supposedly because of the War Powers Resolution of 1973. And The Hill is not alone in pushing this idea. Fox News agrees with The Hill. So does Time. So does USA Today. So does The Washington Post. So does Roll Call. So does Politico. So does every AI bot infecting the internet.

However, the War Powers Resolution consists of words that you can read for yourself, and here are some of them:

“The constitutional powers of the President as Commander-in-Chief to introduce United States Armed Forces into hostilities, or into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances, are exercised only pursuant to (1) a declaration of war, (2) specific statutory authorization, or (3) a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces.”

1. There has been no declaration of war by the U.S. Congress since 1941.
2. There has been no authorization to attack Iran, nor to continue attacking Iran.
3. There has been no attack upon the United States or its territories or possessions, and there were no attacks on its armed forces until after said armed forces had begun the war.

The same law says that a president who launches a war in any of those three situations, then has 48 hours to submit his first report explaining himself, and 60 days after that report (62 days total — plus a possible extra 30) to entirely knock it off. But none of those three situations exists. So, the president must immediately knock it off — must, in fact, have never started the war. It is simply not true that the war will become illegal after 60 days; it has been illegal since the instant it was begun. It is factually false that it must be ended after 60 days in order to comply with the law; it must be ended immediately.

If the War Powers Resolution did not exist, one could revert to the actual Constitution that the War Powers Resolution claimed to uphold and which says that the decision to declare and wage a war is up to the Congress.

If that weren’t enough, one could also find in the Constitution that spending money on anything is up to the Congress. At least one Congress Member has been pointing out lately that the Constitution says “No money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by law.” No law has appropriated a dime for attacking Iran.

If Congress were to appropriate money for the war and/or to declare or authorize the war, there would still remain the problem that the same Constitution makes treaties to which the United States is party “the supreme law of the land” and one of those treaties is the UN Charter, which bans war except in narrow circumstances not met. Various other treaties ban war entirely.

The wars are all illegal from day 1. But don’t we still want the War Powers Resolution used to try to end them, by forcing votes on whether to end them? Sure, we do. The wars are legally allowed to continue for 0 days, but don’t we still want them stopped at 60 or 62 or 90 or 92 or whatever number of days our so-called government is willing to treat as a deadline? Sure, we do. Endless bloody massacres and fits of massive destruction are horrible, but wouldn’t they be less horrible if they could each be held to 60 days or shorter? Maybe.

Better would be to end each war immediately, right now, and to hold all the future wars to 0 days. How does one do that without a handy mechanism that corporate media outlets all pretend is real? Well, one way would be to use handy mechanisms that are real in written law. They include (redundantly) banning the use of any money for a war. They include impeaching and removing from office those waging a war. They include closing distant foreign bases, thereby making it impossible to get them attacked.

Those sound harder, perhaps, than telling a president his time is up. But you’ll have to do them anyway after you’ve told him his time is up and he’s told you to go to hell. Meanwhile all the blood of those 60 days will be on your hands — not to mention the blood of all the other wars to come.

If you let corporate media outlets and random Congress members pretend that laws say totally crazy things — such as that presidents can legally attack anyone they want if they cut it out after 2 months, what else will they decide that laws can say: no warrant is needed to spy on you? being born in the U.S. doesn’t make you a citizen? a corporation has human rights? one human right is the right to use assault rifles? bribery is free speech? a paramilitary force can kidnap people off the street? profiting from public office is acceptable?

And if all your puppet, weapons-buying, sidekick governments around the world obediently immitate the standard that their presidents can legally attack anyone they want if they cut it out after 2 months, how is that likely to work out?