WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump isn’t the first president to order military strikes without congressional approval. But his decision to bomb Iran comes at a uniquely volatile moment — both at home and abroad.
Overseas, the U.S. risks deeper entanglement in the Middle East if fighting erupts again between Israel and Iran. At home, Trump continues to sidestep oversight, showing little regard for checks and balances.
His move has reignited a decades-old debate over the War Powers Act, a law passed in the early 1970s meant to divide authority over military action between Congress and the president. Critics say Trump violated the act by striking with little input from Congress, while supporters argue he responded to an imminent threat and is looking to avoid prolonged conflict.
Even after Trump announced late Monday that a “complete and total ceasefire” between Israel and Iran would take effect over the next 24 hours, tensions remained high in Congress over Trump's action. A vote is expected in the Senate later this week on a Democratic Iran war powers resolution that is meant to place a check on Trump when it comes to further entanglement with Iran.
Here’s a closer look at what the act does and doesn’t do, how past presidents have tested it and how Congress plans to respond:
Passed in the wake of American involvement in Vietnam, the War Powers Resolution prescribes how the president should work with lawmakers to deploy troops if Congress hasn't already issued a declaration of war.
It states that the framers of the Constitution intended for Congress and the President to use its “collective judgement” to send troops into “hostilities.” The War Powers Resolution calls for the president “in every possible instance” to “consult with Congress before introducing United States Armed Forces.”
But when Congress enacted the law, “it didn't install any hard requirements, and it provided a lot of outs,” said Scott Anderson, a fellow at the Brookings Institution.
“Habitual practice for presidents in the last few decades has been to minimally — almost not at all — consult with Congress on a lot of military action,” Anderson said. And “the language of the statute is so vague and open-ended that it’s hard to say it’s in clear contradiction” to the War Powers Resolution.
Unless a Declaration of War has already been passed or Congress has authorized deploying forces, the president has 48 hours after deploying troops to send a written report to congressional leadership explaining the decision. Trump did so on Monday, sending Congress a letter that said strikes on Iran over the weekend were “limited in scope and purpose” and “designed to minimize casualties, deter future attacks and limit the risk of escalation.”
In March, when Trump ordered airstrikes in Houthi-held areas in Yemen, he wrote a letter to congressional leadership explaining his rationale and reviewing his orders to the Department of Defense. President Joe Biden wrote nearly 20 letters citing the War Powers Resolution during his term.
If Congress doesn’t authorize further action within 60 to 90 days, the resolution requires that the president “terminate any use” of the armed forces. “That’s the hard requirement of the War Powers Resolution,” Anderson said.
Congress hasn’t declared war on another country since World War II, but U.S. presidents have filed scores of reports pursuant to the War Powers Resolution since it was enacted in 1973, over President Richard Nixon’s veto.
Presidents have seized upon some of the vague wording in the War Powers Resolution to justify their actions abroad. In 1980, for example, Jimmy Carter argued that attempting to rescue hostages from Iran didn’t require a consultation with Congress, since it wasn’t an act of war, according to the Congressional Research Service.
President George W. Bush invoked war powers in the weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and persuaded Congress to approve an authorization for the use of military force against Iraq in 2002.
Throughout his presidency, President Barack Obama faced pressure to cease operations in Libya after 90 days. But his administration argued that the U.S. use of airpower in Libya didn’t rise to the level of “hostilities” set forth in the War Powers Resolution.
Trump’s actions in Iran have drawn the loudest praise from the right and the sharpest rebukes from the left. But the response hasn’t broken cleanly along party lines.
Daily developments have also complicated matters. Trump on Sunday raised the possibility of a change in leadership in Iran, before on Monday announcing that Israel and Iran had agreed to a “complete and total” ceasefire to be phased in over the next 24 hours.
Nevertheless, the Senate could vote as soon as this week on a resolution directing the removal of U.S. forces from hostilities against Iran that have not been authorized by Congress.
Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., the bill’s sponsor, told reporters Monday — prior to the ceasefire announcement — that the vote could come “as early as Wednesday, as late as Friday.” He expects bipartisan backing, though support is still coming together ahead of a classified briefing for senators on Tuesday.
“There will be Republicans who will support it,” Kaine said. “Exactly how many, I don’t know.”
He added that, “this is as fluid a vote as I’ve been involved with during my time here, because the facts are changing every day.”
Passing the resolution could prove difficult, especially with Republicans praising Trump after news of the ceasefire broke. Even prior to that, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., defended Trump’s actions on Monday and said he’s operating within his authority.
“There’s always a tension between Congress’ power to declare war and the president’s power as commander in chief,” said Sen. John Kennedy, R-La. “But I think the White House contacted its people, as many people as they could.”
A similar bipartisan resolution in the House — led by Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna and Republican Rep. Thomas Massie — could follow soon, although Massie signaled Monday that he may no longer pursue it if peace has been reached.
Khanna was undeterred.
“In case of a conflict in the future, we need to be on record saying no offensive war in Iran without prior authorization," Khanna said. "We still need a vote.”
Associated Press writers Mary Clare Jalonick and Matt Brown contributed to this report.
President Donald Trump speaks from the East Room of the White House in Washington, Saturday, June 21, 2025, after the U.S. military struck three Iranian nuclear and military sites, directly joining Israel's effort to decapitate the country's nuclear program, as Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth listen. (Carlos Barria/Pool via AP)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Becky Pepper-Jackson finished third in the discus throw in West Virginia last year though she was in just her first year of high school. Now a 15-year-old sophomore, Pepper-Jackson is aware that her upcoming season could be her last.
West Virginia has banned transgender girls like Pepper-Jackson from competing in girls and women's sports, and is among the more than two dozen states with similar laws. Though the West Virginia law has been blocked by lower courts, the outcome could be different at the conservative-dominated Supreme Court, which has allowed multiple restrictions on transgender people to be enforced in the past year.
The justices are hearing arguments Tuesday in two cases over whether the sports bans violate the Constitution or the landmark federal law known as Title IX that prohibits sex discrimination in education. The second case comes from Idaho, where college student Lindsay Hecox challenged that state's law.
Decisions are expected by early summer.
President Donald Trump's Republican administration has targeted transgender Americans from the first day of his second term, including ousting transgender people from the military and declaring that gender is immutable and determined at birth.
Pepper-Jackson has become the face of the nationwide battle over the participation of transgender girls in athletics that has played out at both the state and federal levels as Republicans have leveraged the issue as a fight for athletic fairness for women and girls.
“I think it’s something that needs to be done,” Pepper-Jackson said in an interview with The Associated Press that was conducted over Zoom. “It’s something I’m here to do because ... this is important to me. I know it’s important to other people. So, like, I’m here for it.”
She sat alongside her mother, Heather Jackson, on a sofa in their home just outside Bridgeport, a rural West Virginia community about 40 miles southwest of Morgantown, to talk about a legal fight that began when she was a middle schooler who finished near the back of the pack in cross-country races.
Pepper-Jackson has grown into a competitive discus and shot put thrower. In addition to the bronze medal in the discus, she finished eighth among shot putters.
She attributes her success to hard work, practicing at school and in her backyard, and lifting weights. Pepper-Jackson has been taking puberty-blocking medication and has publicly identified as a girl since she was in the third grade, though the Supreme Court's decision in June upholding state bans on gender-affirming medical treatment for minors has forced her to go out of state for care.
Her very improvement as an athlete has been cited as a reason she should not be allowed to compete against girls.
“There are immutable physical and biological characteristic differences between men and women that make men bigger, stronger, and faster than women. And if we allow biological males to play sports against biological females, those differences will erode the ability and the places for women in these sports which we have fought so hard for over the last 50 years,” West Virginia's attorney general, JB McCuskey, said in an AP interview. McCuskey said he is not aware of any other transgender athlete in the state who has competed or is trying to compete in girls or women’s sports.
Despite the small numbers of transgender athletes, the issue has taken on outsize importance. The NCAA and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committees banned transgender women from women's sports after Trump signed an executive order aimed at barring their participation.
The public generally is supportive of the limits. An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted in October 2025 found that about 6 in 10 U.S. adults “strongly” or “somewhat” favored requiring transgender children and teenagers to only compete on sports teams that match the sex they were assigned at birth, not the gender they identify with, while about 2 in 10 were “strongly” or “somewhat” opposed and about one-quarter did not have an opinion.
About 2.1 million adults, or 0.8%, and 724,000 people age 13 to 17, or 3.3%, identify as transgender in the U.S., according to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law.
Those allied with the administration on the issue paint it in broader terms than just sports, pointing to state laws, Trump administration policies and court rulings against transgender people.
"I think there are cultural, political, legal headwinds all supporting this notion that it’s just a lie that a man can be a woman," said John Bursch, a lawyer with the conservative Christian law firm Alliance Defending Freedom that has led the legal campaign against transgender people. “And if we want a society that respects women and girls, then we need to come to terms with that truth. And the sooner that we do that, the better it will be for women everywhere, whether that be in high school sports teams, high school locker rooms and showers, abused women’s shelters, women’s prisons.”
But Heather Jackson offered different terms to describe the effort to keep her daughter off West Virginia's playing fields.
“Hatred. It’s nothing but hatred,” she said. "This community is the community du jour. We have a long history of isolating marginalized parts of the community.”
Pepper-Jackson has seen some of the uglier side of the debate on display, including when a competitor wore a T-shirt at the championship meet that said, “Men Don't Belong in Women's Sports.”
“I wish these people would educate themselves. Just so they would know that I’m just there to have a good time. That’s it. But it just, it hurts sometimes, like, it gets to me sometimes, but I try to brush it off,” she said.
One schoolmate, identified as A.C. in court papers, said Pepper-Jackson has herself used graphic language in sexually bullying her teammates.
Asked whether she said any of what is alleged, Pepper-Jackson said, “I did not. And the school ruled that there was no evidence to prove that it was true.”
The legal fight will turn on whether the Constitution's equal protection clause or the Title IX anti-discrimination law protects transgender people.
The court ruled in 2020 that workplace discrimination against transgender people is sex discrimination, but refused to extend the logic of that decision to the case over health care for transgender minors.
The court has been deluged by dueling legal briefs from Republican- and Democratic-led states, members of Congress, athletes, doctors, scientists and scholars.
The outcome also could influence separate legal efforts seeking to bar transgender athletes in states that have continued to allow them to compete.
If Pepper-Jackson is forced to stop competing, she said she will still be able to lift weights and continue playing trumpet in the school concert and jazz bands.
“It will hurt a lot, and I know it will, but that’s what I’ll have to do,” she said.
Heather Jackson, left, and Becky Pepper-Jackson pose for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Heather Jackson, left, and Becky Pepper-Jackson pose for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Becky Pepper-Jackson poses for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
The Supreme Court stands is Washington, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
FILE - Protestors hold signs during a rally at the state capitol in Charleston, W.Va., on March 9, 2023. (AP Photo/Chris Jackson, file)
