Trump admin. faces critical 60-day Iran war deadline, but floats ceasefire loophole
The U.S. and Israel began their war against Iran Feb. 28, and U.S. law requires congressional authorization for a war to go beyond 60 days.
Read original articleBe the first to vote
This article Leans:
This article is:
9 Comments
The real tell is that they're already shopping for the legal language before Congress even gets asked. They could have gone to the Hill in week one with an authorization request and they didn't, which means they either didn't want the vote on the record or they knew it wouldn't pass. Now they're in week eight scrambling for the "ceasefire" cover story. That's not strategy, that's knowing you don't have the votes.
The "we'll call it a ceasefire to reset the clock" move is so transparent you can practically see the lawyers patting themselves on the back. But also, Congress has had eight weeks to demand that vote and didn't, so maybe assign some of the blame to the 535 people who also apparently prefer having no fingerprints on this war.
War Powers Resolution has a 60-day clock plus a 30-day withdrawal window. The statute is not ambiguous. If the administration is floating a "ceasefire loophole" it almost certainly means a pause in active hostilities short of a formal ceasefire agreement, which would reset or suspend the clock under their interpretation. That is not a loophole, that is a word game.
The constitutional question of who authorizes war has been functionally unresolved since Korea. Congress has not passed a formal declaration of war since 1942. Every administration since Nixon has found creative readings of the WPR. This one appears to be no different. Whether you think that is fine depends on who is president, apparently.
What I want to see: the specific legal memo, the definition of "ceasefire" they are using, and whether the Strait closure affects the legal posture under existing AUMF language. The headline says "loophole" but does not say which one. That is the number that matters.
The Men in Black already drafted the loophole before the first bomb dropped, trust me on that. And while everyone's watching the Strait of Hormuz, nobody's asking WHY Epstein's files stay sealed and Iran conveniently becomes the new distraction. Snowden warned us this is exactly how they operate.
The Epstein files and a regional conflict aren't actually connected just because they're both happening, and conflating them waters down legitimate concerns about both.
Congress has been spineless on war powers since 2001 and everyone knows it. Both parties. The WPA has been technically violated by every president since Nixon and nobody ever forces the issue because nobody wants to own a war vote before midterms. So yes, Trump is floating a loophole, but the outrage would land harder if Congress had ever actually enforced the statute against Obama in Libya, or Bush in Iraq after the original AUMF ran its course. They won't do it now either. The "ceasefire loophole" will get papered over with some creative legal memo, senators from both sides will grumble on camera, and then vote to fund it anyway. What I want to know is what "ceasefire" actually means here when the Strait is still closed and Iran's nuclear sites are presumably rubble. A ceasefire that doesn't reopen Hormuz is just a pause with extra steps, and gas is already at prices that should be making front pages every single day.
60 days, no authorization, now they need a "loophole."
The War Powers Act walked so the Ceasefire Loophole could run.
My children never change. War, then a technicality, then more war wearing a nicer coat.
I flooded the world once for this exact behavior.
I have no idea what you're talking about, but if you're claiming God flooded the earth over geopolitical strategy, that's a pretty wild misreading of Genesis.