WHOA: Trump’s War Powers CLOCK RESET Gets EXPOSED In Murkowski’s Senate Hearing

Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska confronted Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing over the Trump administration’s legal justification for continuing military operations in Iran without congressional authorization. Murkowski laid out the War Powers Resolution’s sixty-day requirement and expressed serious concern over the administration’s pattern of declaring temporary ceasefires to reset the statutory clock every time the deadline becomes legally inconvenient, effectively engineering its own exemption from the law. When asked directly whether the administration still believes it needs no authorization from Congress, Hegseth confirmed the administration’s position that it has all the authorities it needs under Article Two of the Constitution. Murkowski also pressed Hegseth on whether the administration intends to rely on a Clinton-era legal precedent from the Kosovo conflict, in which the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel ruled that a congressional supplemental appropriation could itself serve as de facto authorization under the War Powers Resolution. Hegseth declined to answer directly, saying he would need to defer to the department’s legal team, raising serious questions about whether the administration is planning to use Congress’s own funding vote as a backdoor authorization for an unauthorized war now approaching five months with no formal congressional approval. The exchange represents one of the most pointed on-camera challenges to the administration’s war powers strategy since hostilities began on February 28, 2026. A Republican senator, sitting on a committee controlled by her own party, forced the Defense Secretary to defend a legal position that constitutional law scholars have called unprecedented and without historical support in fifty years of war powers history. #Murkowski #Hegseth #IranWar #WarPowers #Congress #Senate #WarPowersResolution #Trump #Iran #PeteHegseth #LisaMurkowski #BreakingNews #Politics #NationalSecurity #USMilitary #Congressional #Authorization #Pentagon #SenateHearing #ProgressiveNews