Donald Trump said in a letter sent to congressional leaders on Friday that hostilities with Iran have “terminated”, suggesting that the 60-day deadline to seek approval from the legislative branch no longer applied.
Friday marks 60 days since the US president notified members of Congress that the US and Israel launched strikes against Iran on 28 February. Under the War Powers Act of 1973, the president can deploy troops to respond to an “imminent threat” but must receive congressional approval within 60 days to continue military operations.
In the letter, dated 1 May, Trump said he initiated Operation Epic Fury against Iran and notified Congress on 28 February “consistent with my responsibility to protect Americans and United States interests at home and abroad, and in furtherance of United States national security and foreign policy interests”.
“On April 7, 2026, I ordered a 2-week ceasefire,” the letter, addressed to Republican House speaker Mike Johnson and Republican senator Chuck Grassley, the president pro tempore of the Senate, continues. “The ceasefire has since been extended. There has been no exchange of fire between United States Forces and Iran since April 7, 2026. The hostilities that began on February 28, 2026, have terminated.”
The letter effectively waves off the 1 May legal deadline, which was already expected to lapse without intervention from Republican lawmakers, most of whom have been reluctant to challenge the president’s unilateral use of force.
As he departed the White House on Friday, Trump told reporters that he had no intention of seeking congressional approval for the military campaign because “it’s never been sought before” and suggested the War Powers Act was “totally unconstitutional”.
“Nobody’s ever asked for it before. It’s never been used before. Why should we be different?” he said.
Trump’s letter underscores an interpretation of the War Powers Act that is fiercely contested by legal scholars and Democrats, who have argued for weeks that the president’s war in Iran tramples the separation of powers between the three branches of government.
“That’s bullshit” the Senator minority leader, Chuck Schumer, said on X. “This is an illegal war and every day Republicans remain complicit and allow it to continue is another day lives are endangered, chaos erupts, and prices increase, all while Americans foot the bill.”
Jeanne Shaheen, the ranking member of the Senate armed services committee, said Trump’s declaration “doesn’t reflect the reality that tens of thousands of US service members in the region are still in harm’s way, that the administration continually threatens to escalate hostilities or that the strait of Hormuz remains closed and prices are skyrocketing at home”.
“President Trump entered this war without a strategy and without legal authorization and today’s announcement doesn’t change either fact,” Shaheen wrote.
On Friday, the ACLU sent a letter to the White House, expressing “profound concern” that the president was “carrying out an illegal war”.
“Even a quick reading of the short and clearly written War Powers Resolution makes clear that there is no pause button – and certainly no reset button – under the statute,” the ACLU letter states.
The letter comes one day after Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, put forward a similar argument in his testimony before the Senate armed services committee, on Thursday. In an exchange with the Democratic senator Tim Kaine, who has forced a vote on several ultimately unsuccessful war powers resolutions on the Iran war, Hegseth claimed that “the 60-day clock pauses or stops in a ceasefire”.
“I do not believe the statute would support that,” Kaine said, adding that Trump’s prosecution of the war raised “serious constitutional concerns”.
On Thursday, Senate Republicans again blocked a war powers resolution brought by Democrats aimed at ending the conflict in Iran.
“Even if you accept the premise that Trump’s war in Iran was responding to an imminent threat, which I certainly don’t, under the War Powers Act he has no authority to continue this war past 60 days,” Adam Schiff, a California Democratic senator who brought the latest war powers resolution, said in a statement after the failed vote on Thursday.
Though Trump has previously claimed that the war would be over “very soon”, his letter made clear that the operation was very much ongoing.
“Despite the success of United States operations against the Iranian regime and continued efforts to secure a lasting peace, the threat posed by Iran to the United States and our Armed Forces remains significant,” Trump stated in the letter, adding that the Pentagon would continue to “update its force posture” across the region “as necessary and appropriate, to address Iranian and Iranian proxy forces’ threats”.
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