House primed to vote on Iran war powers resolution
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) speaks to members of the media during a news conference on Capitol Hill on March 4, 2026 in Washington, DC. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — As lawmakers debate the legal basis of President Donald Trump’s decision to launch strikes against Iran, the House is primed to vote on a war powers resolution Thursday afternoon that attempts to curtail military action.
The resolution, which only expresses the sentiment of Congress, calls on the president to terminate the use of U.S. armed forces in hostilities against Iran or any part of the Iranian government or military unless a declaration of war or authorization to use military force is enacted.
The measure is non-binding and not subject to the president’s signature or veto.
Nevertheless, passage remains an open question in the closely divided House and could depend on attendance Thursday.
Speaker Mike Johnson argued Wednesday that the United States is “not at war” but only engaged in a “defensive operation” in Iran.
“We’re not at war right now,” Johnson told reporters at the Capitol. “We’re in — four days into a very specific, clear mission and operation.”
Later on Wednesday, Trump contradicted Johnson, repeatedly referring to the conflict in Iran as a “war” hours after Johnson said it wasn’t.
Sitting next to Johnson during a roundtable on energy prices, Trump said “we’re doing very well on — on the war front, to put it mildly.”
Johnson also expressed confidence that Republicans will defeat the resolution, despite some reservations voiced by a couple of conservatives.
“I think passage of a war powers resolution right now would be a terrible, dangerous idea,” Johnson said. “It would empower our enemies. It would kneecap our own forces, and it would take the ability of the U.S. military and the commander in chief away from completing this critical mission to keep everybody safe.”
The resolution’s prospects for passage rests largely on turnout in the House where Republicans hold a slim majority. Nine lawmakers missed votes on Wednesday, including four Republicans and five Democrats — enough truancy to sway the vote on Thursday.
The measure was debated on the House floor on Wednesday, though a vote was postponed until Thursday.
“We have lost our way,” Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna, the bill’s Democratic sponsor, said during debate. “Let us declare with courage and clarity that we reject this illegal and unjust war in Iran. Let us choose moral renewal over further moral decay.”
At least two Republicans — Reps. Thomas Massie, the bill’s Republican sponsor, and Warren Davidson — have announced they will vote in favor of the measure, though a handful of moderate Democrats are expected to offset those defections by opposing the resolution themselves.
On Wednesday, Senate Democrats failed to meet a 51-vote threshold on an alternate Iran war powers resolution sponsored by Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine and Republican Sen. Rand Paul. The resolution failed behind a 47-53 tally.
(WASHINGTON) — House Speaker Mike Johnson on Friday flatly rejected the Senate’s bill to fund most of the Department of Homeland Security except for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and parts of Customs and Border Protection.
Johnson said House Republicans will instead plow ahead with an alternative proposal: a short-term bill to fund the entire department for 60 days, until May 22.
“This gambit that was done last night is a joke,” Johnson told reporters in a news conference.
Johnson said the House would vote on the stop-gap proposal “as soon as possible.” Lawmakers were notified that votes are expected on Friday night, though the exact timing remains unclear.
If the House succeeds, the measure will head back to the Senate, where Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has vowed that it is “dead on arrival.”
All this means the partial government shutdown, now in its 42nd day, is likely to continue.
Amid the gridlock on Capitol Hill, President Donald Trump on Friday signed a presidential memorandum directing Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin to pay TSA employees. DHS said that workers will start seeing paychecks on Monday.
President Trump, in a phone interview with Fox News on Friday afternoon, said the Senate deal on DHS “wasn’t good” and “wasn’t appropriate.”
The Senate, at 2 a.m. on Friday morning, approved a funding bill that included TSA, Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Coast Guard and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.
The package did not include money for ICE or parts of CBP, though those agencies continue to receive funds due to an influx of cash provided in the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill passed by Congress last summer.
Also absent from the Senate bill are any of the reforms to ICE’s operating procedures that Democrats have been repeatedly demanding following the fatal shootings of two American citizens in Minneapolis by federal agents earlier this year.
Still, Schumer said he was proud of Democrats who “held the line” on their objection to funding ICE and CBP without reforms.
“Democrats held firm in our position that Donald Trump’s rogue and deadly militia should not get more funding without serious reforms and we will continue to fight for those reforms,” he said.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune lambasted Democrats on the floor for what he framed as their refusal to negotiate in good faith. He said Democrats could have secured some of their desired reforms if they hadn’t complicated negotiations.
“We could be standing here right now passing a funding bill with a list of reforms if the Democrats had made the smallest effort to actually reach an agreement. But they didn’t, because it’s now clear to everyone, Democrats didn’t actually want a solution, they wanted an issue, politics over policy, self-interest over reform, pandering to their base over actually solving a problem,” Thune said.
Senate Republicans vowed to work on a package later this year to approve even more funding for ICE and CBP, saying they aim to do it using reconciliation — a budget tool that, if successful, would allow them to sidestep Democratic objection and pass the bill without any Democratic support.
Republicans are already warning that that bill will be a much harsher and Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., vowed it would “supercharge deportations.”
ABC News’ Allison Pecorin and Lalee Ibssa contributed to this report.
In this U.S. Navy released handout, Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Frank E. Petersen Jr. (DDG 121) fires a Tomahawk Land Attack Missile during operations in support of Operation Epic Fury, on February 28, 2026 at Sea. (Photo by U.S. Navy via Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — While President Donald Trump says Operation Epic Fury could last several weeks, a question some are raising is how long U.S. and allies’ missile defense stockpiles can last in an extended conflict with Iran.
Trump has insisted that the U.S. is well equipped to fight, with a “virtually unlimited supply,” and other Gulf states have pushed back on claims that they are running missiles.
How much of the U.S. interceptor stockpile is being used up to defend against Iran’s continued heavy missile and drone attacks is classified, but it’s expected to be among questions lawmakers have for top Trump administration officials this week when they brief lawmakers on Capitol Hill.
Some experts are also raising concerns about America’s cache of the expensive air defense missiles as the Iranian military continues to target U.S. assets and other allies in retaliation.
Kelly Grieco, a senior fellow at the Stimson Center think tank and former assistant professor at the Air Command and Staff College, told ABC News that the conflict is becoming a “war of attrition.”
Watch special coverage on Nightline, “War with Iran,” each night on ABC and streaming on Disney+ and Hulu.
The U.S. and Israeli militaries are now in a race to destroy Iran’s missile capabilities, including launchers and production facilities, before the U.S. and Israel’s own stockpile of air defense interceptor missiles in the region is depleted, according to Grieco.
“The question is becoming who runs out of missiles first. Does the defender run out of interceptors,” she asked, referring to the armies of the U.S., Israel and the Gulf states. “Or does Iran run out of missiles, or their ability to launch missiles?”
“If the Iranians are able to launch with the kinds of numbers they have been launching over the past 48 hours over the next four to five weeks, that does not seem sustainable from an interceptor perspective,” she added.
“But if those numbers drop off because the U.S. and Israel destroy the launchers themselves, or their storage facilities, and the numbers drop dramatically, then we could potentially sustain this campaign,” Greico said.
Retired Lt. Gen. Dan Karbler, former commander of the U.S. Space and Missile Defense Command, told ABC News Live Tuesday that extensive drone use by the Iranian military has prompted the use of smaller short-range missiles as interceptors.
“We don’t want to shoot Patriot missiles at the drones,” he said. “So, some of our short-range air defense, more capability of that type of nature needs to flow into countries so we’re using our short-range missiles to take out these drones not our very limited patriot missiles.”
President Trump attempted to assuage concerns about the stockpile Tuesday — but also acknowledged the number of some of the highest-grade munitions is “not where we want it to be.”
“The United States Munitions Stockpiles have, at the medium and upper medium grade, never been higher or better — As was stated to me today, we have a virtually unlimited supply of these weapons,” Trump wrote on social media early Tuesday morning.
And even as he says the U.S. will “easily prevail” in this war and that the U.S. is prepared for the operation to go on for “whatever it takes,” Trump wrote that “Wars can be fought “forever,” and very successfully, using just these supplies.”
The U.S. was already concerned about its stockpile before this war as the Russian-Ukraine conflict, the Israeli-Gaza conflict and last summer’s conflict with Iran have dramatically increased demand for Patriot and THAAD missiles, according to Greico.
Terminal High Altitude Area Defense missiles that are used to defend against Iran’s most powerful ballistic missiles are in particularly short supply. Grieco estimated that if the U.S. uses its THAAD missiles at same rate as the 12-day conflict with Iran last year, it likely only has enough for about two weeks now at most.
Grieco said it will take a long time, and be costly, for the U.S. and other countries to replenish their antimissile stockpiles, which are more time consuming and expensive to produce than the Iranian weapons they defend against.
Iran has not launched missiles at the same scale so far compared to the attacks during conflict with Israel last year.
Israeli officials and independent experts said they believe that may reflect a strategy by Iran to run down air defense supplies with relatively smaller but steady attacks over a longer period.
In this Aug. 8, 2020, file photo, an offshore petroleum drilling rig is shown in the Gulf of Mexico. (UIG via Getty Images, FILE)
(WASHINGTON) — A federal committee, comprised of senior Trump administration officials, voted unanimously to grant an exemption under the Endangered Species Act for oil and gas operations in the Gulf, citing national security concerns.
Environmental groups criticized the decision, warning that it could significantly jeopardize the conservation of dozens of threatened and endangered species in the region, including whales, sea turtles, whooping cranes and manatees.
The Endangered Species Committee convened Tuesday after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth issued a national security finding that triggered the exemption process.
Under the Endangered Species Act, the Endangered Species Committee can grant rare exemptions when a federal action is of national or regional significance and the benefits of proceeding clearly outweigh the benefits of alternatives that would conserve the species. Economic, security and other public-interest factors can be considered alongside conservation mandates, though exemptions are rarely used.
“At the request of the Department of War, the Endangered Species Committee convened today to consider a national security exemption under the Endangered Species Act with respect to oil and gas activities in the Gulf of America,” the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said in a statement to ABC News.
“The Committee voted in favor of the national security exemption, acknowledging the critical risks involved in restricting oil and gas activities in the Gulf of America, and also recognizing that the action encompassed protective measures for endangered species.”
Officials emphasized that sustained oil and gas production in the region is essential to U.S. national security and economic stability, and cautioned that critical energy operations should not be jeopardized by the threat of disruptive litigation.
The committee, created in 1978, is very rarely convened due to the strict, narrow standards for its implementation. It has not met in more than 30 years, and this is the first time a national security justification has been used to convene the committee.
The Endangered Species Committee, composed of the Secretary of the Interior, the Secretary of Agriculture, the Secretary of the Army, the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency and the administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, was fully present and voted unanimously in favor of granting the exemption.
“This meeting made clear that energy streams in the Gulf of America must not be disrupted or held hostage by ongoing litigation,” said Secretary Burgum. “Energy production in the Gulf of America is indispensable to our nation’s strength, safeguarding our energy independence and preventing reliance on foreign adversaries. Robust development in the Gulf keeps our economy resilient, stabilizes costs for American families and secures the U.S. as a global leader for decades to come.”
On March 13, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth notified Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, chair of the Endangered Species Committee, that a national security exemption under Section 7(j) of the Endangered Species Act, was necessary, prompting Secretary Burgum to publish a notice of the meeting in the Federal Register.
The meeting began with the defense secretary addressing the committee, stressing the importance of a steady, affordable domestic energy supply, which is currently under threat. He thanked the committee members for convening to discuss what he called “a matter of urgent national security.”
“This is not just about gas prices. It’s about our ability to power our military and protect our nation. That vital energy supply right now is under threat,” Hegseth said. “In January, well before Operation Epic Fury, the Department of the Interior notified the Department of War about ongoing Endangered Species Act litigation that threatened to halt oil and gas production in the Gulf of America.”
According to Hegseth, the litigation seeks to stop Gulf oil and gas activities rather than allow them to proceed alongside responsible endangered species protections.
“These legal battles waste critical government resources and make it impossible for energy companies to plan and invest in new projects. When development in the Gulf is chilled, we are prevented from producing the energy we need as a country and as a department,” Hegseth added. “The Strait of Hormuz is the world’s busiest oil route and recent hostile action by the Iranian terror regime highlights yet again why robust domestic oil production is a national security imperative.”
However, environmental groups argue this is not what the authors of this landmark law intended.
The Center for Biological Diversity sued Secretary Burgum on March 18, attempting to block the committee meeting, saying the government missed legal requirements, including filing deadlines, providing ample public notice, and having an administrative law judge preside. Following the committee’s decision, the group announced it will amend its existing lawsuit to challenge the defense secretary’s national security determination and the exemption.
“Americans overwhelmingly oppose sacrificing endangered whales and other marine life so the fossil fuel industry can get richer. This has nothing to do with national security and everything to do with Trump and his lackeys kowtowing to Big Oil,” Brett Hartl, government affairs director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement.
Environmental groups are particularly concerned about the Rice’s whale, which, according to NOAA, is one of the rarest and most endangered whales in the world and is found only in the Gulf.
NOAA Fisheries, which manages protections for marine species under the Endangered Species Act, listed the Gulf of Mexico Bryde’s whale as endangered in 2019 and, in 2021, updated its name to Rice’s whale to reflect the newly accepted scientific taxonomy and nomenclature of the species.
According to the Marine Mammal Commission, the most recent population estimates show there are only 51 Rice’s whales remaining.
The Rice’s whale’s small population, limited range and low genetic diversity make it highly vulnerable to threats such as vessel strikes and oil spills. NOAA says the 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill exposed about 48 percent of its habitat in the eastern Gulf, likely causing a population decline of up to 22 percent and leaving lasting impacts on reproduction and growth.
The committee’s decision will not have any immediate effect, and lawsuits challenging the action could delay its implementation further. It could be several years before any future additional oil production tied to the decision is realized.
“The action could make it easier for applications to be granted for further oil and gas exploration and development in the Gulf; but it takes several years between the filing of an application and the production of the first barrel of oil,” said Michael Gerrard, a professor at Columbia Law School and the faculty director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law. ”No court has ordered oil and gas production to be shut down in the Gulf, and such an order seems very unlikely.”
