A senior Republican senator who has harshly criticized the Trump administration for keeping Congress in the dark on combat operations in Iran has begun drafting legislation that would force lawmakers to vote for the first time on whether to authorize the war.
Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska is working with a group of senators on a formal authorization for the use of military force against Iran, but has yet to introduce the resolution, a spokesman confirmed on Thursday. Such a measure would have to receive a swift vote in both chambers of Congress and would be all but certain to generate a politically charged debate just months before the midterm elections on a war that polls show is unpopular.
Ms. Murkowski described the move on Thursday as an act of desperation to try to put some parameters around the operation as the Trump administration refuses to provide answers to Congress about its objectives, cost and timeline, and has boxed lawmakers out of its decision-making on the conflict.
The development, reported earlier by Bloomberg Government, comes as Republicans in Congress have grown increasingly frustrated with the Trump administration’s handling of the war nearly a month into the conflict. Ms. Murkowski was one of the first Republicans to criticize the administration for not providing more details about the possible need for ground troops and the total cost or expected timeline of the war.
“We should have a better handle on where we’re going with this,” she said in a recent interview.
“This president came into office saying he was going to be the peace president,” Ms. Murkowski added. “How many times has he said, ‘We don’t like these long wars, these never-ending wars?’ People are asking me, ‘Is that what we’re moving into?’ And I can’t honestly tell them the answer, because I don’t know that answer.”
It is unclear when Ms. Murkowski might introduce the measure. And its fate would be highly uncertain. Even some Republicans who have staunchly supported the offensive against Iran may be reluctant to vote in favor of going to war, something Congress has not done since 2002 when it authorized the use of military force against Iraq.
Under the 1973 War Powers Act, such authorizations must be considered under expedited procedures and voted on within days of being filed. Congress is scheduled to depart for a two-week recess beginning on Friday, so any vote would likely come after that.
Should the Senate act, the House would be required to schedule a vote on the authorization soon afterward. Both chambers would be legally required to vote on such an authorization well before the 60-day mark of the conflict in Iran.
A moderate, Ms. Murkowski was the first Republican senator to call for senior members of the president’s cabinet to testify under oath on the war, even as the majority of her colleagues echoed the rationale the administration offered for the conflict and said they did not see a need for information to be shared outside classified briefings.
She voted three times in opposition to Democrat-led resolutions that would have forced Mr. Trump to withdraw U.S. forces from hostilities against Iran unless Congress voted to authorize the war. But she voted in support of a similar resolution earlier in the year that aimed to curb the president’s military moves against Venezuela.
Since the start of the war, Republicans have been nearly united in voting to block repeated Democratic efforts to curb Mr. Trump’s authority to carry out the campaign in Iran, even as some have begun to voice unease about how the conflict began and the administration’s shifting objectives.
Those votes, however, have largely been aimed at preventing limits on the president rather than explicitly endorsing the war. An authorization for the use of military force would pose a far more direct question, forcing lawmakers to go on record affirming the campaign and granting the president explicit permission to continue it.
“I’m glad to see a Republican senator taking this war seriously and understanding the constitutional obligation for them to come to Congress,” Senator Cory Booker, Democrat of New Jersey, said on Thursday. Senate Republicans last week blocked his resolution to terminate the war until Mr. Trump won authorization for it.
Megan Mineiro is a Times congressional reporter and a member of the 2025-26 Times Fellowship class, a program for early-career journalists.
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