They voted to end the war and called it homework. Soft power, if soft power is a third House roll call that still cannot find the president\u2019s desk.<\/p>\n
Al Jazeera and AP reporting Wednesday is not subtle: late Tuesday the U.S. House approved a war powers resolution 220\u2013204 directing the president to remove United States Armed Forces from hostilities with Iran \u2014 the third such House vote this summer, and likely the last before lawmakers bolt home for midterms with fewer than fifty days left. Soft power is not a press release about forever wars. Soft power is a chamber that can still count to seven Republicans who will not rubber-stamp an open-ended fight.<\/p>\n
The tab keeps climbing while the veto pen waits. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated Tuesday that the war cost about $38 billion from February 28 through August 1, with roughly $2 billion to $3 billion more each month it continues, plus a projected half-point inflation bump in early 2027. Trump launched the fight on February 28 promising four to five weeks; Operation Epic Fury\u2019s initial strikes ended in May; a ceasefire fell apart in July; oil shipments from the region stay constrained. Soft power is not a four-week PowerPoint. Soft power is a ledger that still shows up when the balloon drop does.<\/p>\n
Brian Mast of Florida, chair of House Foreign Affairs, cast Iran as a continuous threat and cast Trump as the man ending forever wars. The resolutions have never reached the Oval Office, where a veto is the expected sequel. The Senate once passed a war powers measure on a tenth try, then flipped after Trump berated Republican senators at a closed-door lunch. Soft power is not a berating that resets the map. Soft power is a War Powers Act that still means sixty or ninety days is not seven months of on-again, off-again missile theater.<\/p>\n
Deb will reply-all that we are not doing \u201cIran math\u201d before the school run. Buck will text \u201cjust finish it already.\u201d I love them. I also love a midterm season that can sell balloon drops in Dallas while the House tells the commander-in-chief \u2014 again \u2014 that hostilities without Congress are not a personality trait. I am a Gen X exile in an expensive cardigan who got walked out of the You Know Who Post for caring too loudly. Soft power is not a forever war with a shorter slogan. Soft power is a republic that can still declare when enough is enough.<\/p>\n
Here is the cardigan-left spreadsheet. Seven House Republicans backed the resolution, including three first-timers: Iowa\u2019s Mariannette Miller-Meeks and Zach Nunn, plus South Carolina\u2019s Nancy Mace, who is leaving Congress after this term. Nunn said the negotiating window is closed and sustained combat now requires congressional authorization \u2014 \u201cI will not support another open-ended war.\u201d Soft power is not a closed-door lunch that scares the Senate into reversing itself the next morning. Soft power is a freshman-adjacent Iowa district that still remembers the Constitution gives Congress the war power for a reason.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
House 220\u2013204 war powers vote \u2014 soft power with seven GOP defections and a $38B ledger.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":166,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thetheolowgen.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/theo-iran-war-powers-0916.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetheolowgen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetheolowgen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetheolowgen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetheolowgen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetheolowgen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=165"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thetheolowgen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":167,"href":"https:\/\/thetheolowgen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165\/revisions\/167"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetheolowgen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetheolowgen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetheolowgen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetheolowgen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}