May 21, 2026
The House of Representatives was about to vote on a war powers resolution tonight to limit President Trump’s ability to continue this war with Iran. But at the last minute, Speaker Mike Johnson canceled the vote and everyone went home for the long holiday recess.
Why?
Because that war powers resolution was probably going to pass. So instead of letting that happen, Johnson pulled it.
Here’s what happened. I told you in this video a few days ago that the Senate passed a war powers resolution which would require President Trump to either pull American troops out of Iran or get authorization from Congress to continue the military action in Iran — and that includes Trump’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. Today, the House was going to take up the same bill after Democrats brought it to the floor again.
Now, this bill failed in the Senate seven times before it passed on the eighth attempt on Tuesday. In the House, it’s been the same story. This bill has been brought up multiple times and has failed multiple times. But today, it was probably going to pass. And that’s because a Democrat — Representative Jared Golden from Maine — said he was changing his vote. Golden has been voting against the war powers resolution for months. But now he says he’s had enough. He said, “President Trump, like all his predecessors, has refused to recognize the limitations of the War Powers Act, but to me the law is clear. His window for unilateral military engagement has closed.”
And when you combine Golden’s flipped vote with the four Republicans who have already been voting yes on previous war powers votes — including Brian Fitzpatrick, Thomas Massie, Warren Davidson, and Tom Barrett — plus all the absences in the House tonight because of the holiday weekend, if the vote was allowed to take place, it probably would have passed. Democrats said they absolutely had the votes, and they were pissed at Speaker Johnson, saying he was playing political games.
Now, if this vote had taken place today and if the House passed it, it would have gone to President Trump’s desk for signature. It’s almost certain that President Trump would have vetoed this war powers resolution. He, like all modern presidents, does not believe the War Powers Resolution is constitutional. Trump says it violates his own constitutional powers as commander in chief.
But if this bill had passed in both the House and the Senate — where the elected members are, in theory, representative of the American people and their constituents across the United States — and Trump vetoed it, that might be a very valuable campaign ad for Democrats during the midterm elections, especially since this war, even by Trump’s own admission, is very unpopular.
It now appears that this war powers resolution vote will take place when the House comes back into session in the first week of June. It’s unclear what the vote count will look like at that point.
