House Democratic Whip Katherine Clark (D-Mass.) said Tuesday that Congress had finally passed a war powers resolution demanding a real end to President Donald Trump’s war in Iran, following the Senate’s 50-48 vote to direct the president to halt hostilities — a measure that had already cleared the House earlier this month.
In a post on X published at 5:38 p.m. on June 23, 2026, Clark wrote, “Congress finally passed a War Powers Resolution. Trump’s reckless and costly war must come to a real end NOW. No more threats. No more lies. No more troops dead or injured. No more soaring gas prices.” Her statement came shortly after the Senate vote and roughly three weeks after the House passed its own version of the resolution by a 215-208 margin on June 3.
A Yearlong Campaign on the House Floor
Clark’s Tuesday statement was the culmination of months of public pressure she has applied as the chamber’s second-ranking Democrat. On the day the House passed its resolution, Clark joined NPR’s Morning Edition to discuss the vote, telling host Steve Inskeep that “almost 100 days into this war, the fact that we could only get 4 out of the 218 House Republicans to join us in the War Powers Resolution is pretty shocking, because they’re having the same conversations that I’m having at home.” She said the resolution amounted to “a statement to the president, to the State Department, to the Department of Defense that we need to end this war,” adding, “we should never have been put in this position. The American people are paying the price for this war of choice by Donald Trump, without a strategy for actually accomplishing anything.”
Asked whether ending the war might leave the United States in a weaker position after months of fighting, Clark told NPR that the conflict had already done lasting damage regardless of how it ends, saying “we have seen Iran, for the first time, use the Strait of Hormuz as a weapon — to shut it down and effectively increase costs around the globe. Not only of gas, but of fertilizer and other products that are going to end up costing American families more.” She added, “all of the service members we’ve lost and who’ve been injured, the pain [of] working families and again, for what? We are nowhere closer to making sure that Iran never gets a nuclear weapon, which is a shared goal.”
Weeks earlier, in an April floor speech, Clark had urged Republicans directly to break with Trump on the issue, recounting that “six weeks ago, Democrats brought a War Powers Resolution to this House Floor. We called on Republicans to join us and bring this conflict to an end. They refused.” She noted that Speaker Mike Johnson had “declared with pride that Donald Trump’s mission ‘is nearly accomplished,'” before adding that “six weeks later,” Americans were instead seeing “gas prices out of control,” “grocery prices going up,” and “a fertilizer shortage that is threatening to drive prices even higher.” Clark told colleagues that “Republicans have a choice. Are you going to continue to enable him and his madness? Or are you going to prioritize Americans, the working families of this country — and vote yes for this resolution?”
Clark’s criticism of the war dates to its earliest hours. On the day the conflict began, she said in a statement that “the power to declare war resides solely with Congress,” and that “Donald Trump’s unilateral decision to attack Iran is unauthorized and unconstitutional,” warning that “the President has exposed our military and diplomatic personnel in the region to the risk of further escalation.”
The Senate’s Path to Tuesday’s Vote
According to Reuters, the Senate’s vote Tuesday was largely along party lines, with Republicans Susan Collins of Maine, Rand Paul of Kentucky, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska joining nearly every Democrat in favor, while Democratic Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania voted against the measure. Republicans Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and David McCormick of Pennsylvania did not vote. The vote came alongside a Reuters/Ipsos poll showing that only one in four Americans believe the war against Iran has been worth its costs.
House Democratic leadership — Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Clark, and Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar of California — had issued a joint statement after the House’s June 3 vote calling on the Senate “to do the right thing.” Rep. Gregory Meeks of New York, who sponsored the House measure, said afterward that the war “hasn’t achieved a single core U.S. objective with respect to Iran” and had instead “empowered and emboldened the Iranian regime while Americans suffer from rising costs at home.”
Trump and the White House Reject the Resolution’s Authority
A White House official said Tuesday that the Senate’s vote carries no binding legal force, since war powers resolutions are not submitted to the president for signature and have no force of law, and noted that the measure passed only because two Republican senators were absent. The official also said the resolution’s call to end hostilities is moot, since the administration maintains that hostilities concluded with a ceasefire Trump ordered on April 7, 2026.
Trump responded in a Truth Social post late Tuesday night, calling the Senate vote “poorly timed and meaningless” and writing that it signaled to “the Number One Sponsor of Terror in the World that the United States doesn’t like what I am doing to them, and I must stop.” He said the vote provided “aid and comfort” to Iran, and criticized the four Republicans who supported it as “Four Republican Losers” who “voted with the Dumocrats.” Trump wrote that the vote had “made my job more difficult, but I will get it done, one way or the other, because I always get it done.”
Unresolved Legal Questions
Because the resolution is a concurrent measure passed by both chambers, it does not go to the president under the structure of the 1973 War Powers Act, which Congress designed to allow such resolutions to compel an end to hostilities without requiring presidential approval. Legal experts note, however, that a 1983 Supreme Court ruling held that similar resolutions generally must be presented to the president for a signature or veto to carry legal force — an issue that has never been directly tested, since no prior war powers resolution had passed both chambers of Congress before Tuesday. Scott Anderson, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and senior editor of the legal publication Lawfare, said the matter is likely to be resolved in court, noting that “the executive branch will likely ignore it on constitutional grounds” and that “it’s not clear who might have standing to sue to enforce it.”
What Comes Next
Senate Republican Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota said Tuesday that he expects Congress will review and vote on any final Iran peace agreement under a 2015 law tied to congressional oversight of Iran’s nuclear program. Democratic lawmakers have signaled they intend to keep forcing war powers votes in the coming weeks, as the administration is also expected to separately request tens of billions of dollars from Congress to fund continued operations connected to the conflict.