In this episode of the All Things Policy podcast, Abhishek Kadiyala and Brigadier Anil Raman speak with Soren Dayton about why the U.S. Congress has repeatedly failed to restrain President Donald Trump's military operations against Iran, even as the 60-day clock under the War Powers Resolution of 1973 continues to tick. The conversation examines the structural weaknesses of the War Powers Resolution and how it has failed to keep pace with shifts in military technology, constitutional interpretation, and geopolitical reality. Tracing legislative precedents from President Harry Truman's Korea to President Barack Obama's Libya intervention in 2011, the episode maps how successive administrations have exploited legal grey zones, with the Trump administration going further by filing only classified War Powers reports. Despite warnings from Republican Senators John Curtis and Mike Rounds about the 60-day limit, the episode argues that the real obstacle is political will, not legal ambiguity. The episode ultimately asks whether the War Powers Resolution has become less a constraint on executive power and more a permission slip for it, and what a genuinely reformed version of the law would need to look like.
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All Things Policy is a daily podcast on public policy brought to you by the Takshashila Institution, Bengaluru.Find out more on our research and other work here: https://takshashila.org.in/research-areas