Mike Johnson Wants Trump to Have More War Powers, Says Law Requiring Congressional Approval is Unconstitutional

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) told reporters on Capitol Hill on Tuesday that he believes President Donald Trump should have even more authority to commit the U.S. to foreign conflicts without congressional approval, arguing that the War Powers Act was unconstitutional.

Many critics of Trump’s bombing of Iranian nuclear sites over the weekend suggested that Trump violated the law by not seeking Congressional approval to go to war, a key provision of the War Powers Act.

“It also requires that the president inform Congress within 48 hours of use of military force. Obviously, President Trump did that. Obviously, in the modern era with the 24-hour news cycle and social media, nothing goes by unnoticed. This might have made some sense in 1973, but I’m not even sure it was constitutional,” Johnson said, adding:

And I’ll tell you about that as well. Many respected constitutional experts argue that the War Powers Act is itself unconstitutional. I’m persuaded by that argument. They think it’s a violation of the Article II powers of the Commander-in-Chief. I think that’s right. If you look back at the Founders’ intent, you read the Federalist Papers, you read the records of the Constitutional Convention, I think that is right.

And many more scholars believe the President is correct to use this executive authority in exactly the manner that he did over the weekend. I am a jealous guardian of Congress’s Article I authority. We are the defenders of it here, and we take it seriously, and I always will be. But exercising the authority to declare war isn’t something we’ve done since World War II. And everybody in this room knows, since then, we’ve had more than 125 military operations, from Korea and Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan. They have occurred without a declaration of war by Congress. Presidents of both parties have exercised that authority.

Watch the full clip above.