Hal Brands, Columnist

Congress Again Punts on Trump's War Powers

Lawmakers love to complain that the executive branch has stolen their authority, but are too timid to actually do anything about it.

April 20, 2018 at 11:00 AM UTC

By Hal Brands

Hal Brands is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist and the Henry Kissinger Distinguished Professor at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies.

Trump goes boom.
Photographer: Ford Williams/U.S. Navy via Getty Images

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Something odd is happening in the relationship between Congress and the executive branch regarding the use of military force. For decades, or even longer, countless senators and representatives have complained that presidents are not properly respectful of their constitutional prerogatives in making decisions on employing U.S. military power. And today, most Democrats and a number of Republicans seem to agree that President Donald Trump is an impulsive, erratic, even dangerous commander-in-chief.

Yet even at a time when so many on the Hill argue that the president cannot be trusted, Congress as a whole is showing little inclination to constrain executive authority in the use of force.