Rep. Angie Craig (D-Minn.) called on President Donald Trump to immediately withdraw American forces from the Iran conflict on Tuesday night, after the Senate joined the House in passing a war powers resolution directing the president to end hostilities — the first time in the 53-year history of the War Powers Act that both chambers have passed such a measure.
In a post on X published at 8:00 p.m. on June 23, 2026, Craig wrote, “Now both the House and Senate have voted to end Trump’s illegal war in Iran. The President must withdraw U.S. forces involved in this conflict immediately, get our troops out of harm’s way and put an end to this chaos.” Her statement came roughly two hours after the Senate’s 50-48 vote, which followed the House’s earlier 215-208 passage of the same resolution on June 3.
A Vote Three Weeks in the Making
Craig’s reaction followed weeks of momentum behind the resolution in the House, which was sponsored by Rep. Gregory Meeks of New York, the ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. The House measure had initially been teed up for a vote in late May but was delayed when Republican leadership sent members home early for the Memorial Day recess. According to Reuters, the resolution ultimately passed with four Republicans joining every Democrat in support, after Republicans had rejected three prior attempts to pass similar measures earlier in the year, including one effort that ended in a 212-212 tie.
Meeks framed the House vote as a turning point in congressional resistance to the war, saying in a statement after that vote that “after months of war, billions of taxpayer dollars spent, and 14 dead U.S. service members, Trump’s illegal war hasn’t achieved a single core U.S. objective with respect to Iran.” He added that the war “has empowered and emboldened the Iranian regime while Americans suffer from rising costs at home,” and said that “this war should have never happened.”
Craig’s Focus on Economic Fallout for Farmers
While Tuesday’s post was Craig’s most direct statement on the war powers vote itself, her record on the Iran conflict has centered heavily on its economic toll on American agriculture. As Ranking Member of the House Agriculture Committee, Craig led a letter earlier this year urging the U.S. Department of Agriculture to take immediate action to stabilize fertilizer prices amid what her office described as severe global supply disruptions stemming from the war and the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz. The letter detailed how blocked shipments of urea and ammonia, port backlogs, and shutdowns at regional production facilities have driven up input costs for American farmers as planting season got underway.
That economic argument has been a recurring theme among House Democrats pushing the war powers resolution. Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut said after the House vote that the war “has driven up costs for Americans who are living paycheck to paycheck and struggling with the cost of living crisis,” while Rep. Joe Courtney of Connecticut, who has now voted four times to end the war, said the conflict “triggered an international energy crisis” that has hit Americans “with skyrocketing energy costs, driving up inflation.”
Trump and the White House Reject the Resolution’s Force
The White House moved to dismiss the significance of the bicameral vote almost immediately. According to Reuters, a White House official said Tuesday that the Senate vote carries no binding legal effect because war powers resolutions are not submitted to the president and have no force of law, and noted that the measure passed only because two Republican senators were absent for the vote. The official further argued that the resolution’s call to remove forces from hostilities is moot, since the administration maintains that hostilities ended with a ceasefire Trump ordered on April 7, 2026.
Trump addressed the vote in a Truth Social post late Tuesday, writing that the Senate had staged a “poorly timed and meaningless War Powers Act Vote” in the middle of ongoing negotiations with Iran. He wrote that the vote 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,” language he said amounted to providing “aid and comfort” to Iran. Trump also criticized the four Republicans who crossed party lines to support the measure, calling them “Four Republican Losers” who “voted with the Dumocrats.”
Legal Uncertainty Over the Resolution’s Force
Despite the historic nature of Tuesday’s vote, legal experts caution that its practical effect remains uncertain. Because the resolution is a concurrent measure passed by both chambers, it does not go to the president for signature under the 1973 War Powers Act — a structure Congress originally designed specifically so such resolutions could compel an end to hostilities without requiring presidential sign-off. But a 1983 Supreme Court ruling held that measures of this kind generally must be presented to the president for a signature or veto to carry legal force, and no prior war powers resolution had cleared both chambers to test that question directly.
Scott Anderson, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and senior editor of the legal publication Lawfare, said the issue is likely to be settled in court rather than through the resolution itself, 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.”
Democrats Vow Continued Pressure
House Democratic leadership, including Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and his top deputies — Whip Katherine Clark of Massachusetts and Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar of California — issued a joint statement after the House’s earlier vote calling on Senate Republicans “to do the right thing.” Following Tuesday’s Senate passage, Democratic lawmakers signaled they would continue forcing additional war powers votes to keep pressure on Republicans ahead of the November midterm elections.
Senate Republican Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota said separately on Tuesday that he expects Congress will review and vote on any final Iran peace agreement, a process that would be triggered under a 2015 law tied to congressional oversight of Iran’s nuclear program.
What’s Next
The vote comes as the Trump administration is expected to formally ask Congress to authorize tens of billions of dollars to fund continued operations tied to the conflict — a request likely to reopen many of the same partisan and economic arguments that have defined the debate over the war since it began on February 28, 2026.