Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who has clashed with President Trump over tariffs and raising the debt limit, is now taking aim at Trump’s preemptive strikes against Iran, declaring that Congress, not the president, “holds the war-power.”
“We must not forget Congress holds the war-power. If we don’t our nation drifts further from both liberty and peace,” Paul posted on X.
Paul attached his comment to an op-ed in The Hill by law professor Jonathan Turley.
In the op-ed, Turley, the Shapiro professor of public law at George Washington University, described the efforts by the nation’s founders to limit presidents’ ability to wage military offensives. And he described how various past president’s seized the power to wage war unilaterally and how members of Congress acquiesced to that expansion of presidential power.
Turley notes that Article I, Section 8, Clause 11 states that the “sole” authority to declare war rests with Congress and that George Washington in 1793 supported limiting the president’s power to wage war so that “no offensive expedition of importance can be undertaken until after” lawmakers have “deliberated upon the subject and authorized such a measure.”
Turley writes that Congress and the courts “have effectively amended the Constitution to remove the requirements of war declarations.”
And he writes about his own experience 14 years ago representing a bipartisan group of lawmakers who challenged President Obama’s decision to attack Libya without a declaration of war.
Rand Paul’s father, former Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), was one of the lawmakers Turley represented in challenging Obama’s military authority.
In a separate post on X, Sen. Paul wrote: “If he wages war unilaterally, Trump will only be the latest of many presidents to do so.”
