Trump’s Unauthorized War

Quinta Jurecic: “A president does not have the constitutional authority to send the country to war on his own. Trump is, as he writes in his letter, the commander in chief of the U.S. military, but the Constitution explicitly grants Congress the power to declare war. That design choice represented a radical break from the monarchies of Europe, where kings and queens had the ability to decide when to mobilize their countries to war.”

“Yet during the days after Trump’s initial air strikes, Congress has been largely absent. Reporting from Washington, D.C., has instead revolved around the president’s psyche and his erratic theorizing about Iran’s future.”