Sen. Roger Wicker, the Republican chairman of the Armed Services Committee, tells TIME that he hopes to hold a public hearing with Trump Administration officials on the Iran war “sometime in the month of May.” That would fall after the conflict reached the 60-day mark that, under the War Powers Resolution, presidents must terminate military operations unless Congress has voted to declare war or passed legislation to authorize the use of force. “May is about the appropriate time,” Wicker added.
Whether that moment becomes an inflection point, or simply another deadline brushed aside, remains uncertain. “When you get up to that 60th day, based on what some Republicans are saying, that might be a watershed for them,” Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia tells TIME.
For now, however, there is little indication that Congress is preparing to meet that moment with the kind of urgency or institutional force the law envisions. Instead, the slow drift toward the deadline has underscored how thoroughly lawmakers have, at least temporarily, ceded their oversight role through a series of delays, deferrals, and diminished expectations about what Congress can or should demand in the midst of an ongoing conflict.
