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There are a number of implications here.
War powers. First, we are likely to see a revival of the concurrent war powers resolution that passed both houses of Congress in June. That resolution, which instructs Trump to end hostilities in Iran, is being ignored by the White House, initially on the no-longer-operative grounds that the war was over. Now, the courts would need to affirm that it’s legally binding, for the first time in the history of the War Powers Act.
There are a couple of hurdles. First, because it was a concurrent resolution, Trump didn’t have the ability to veto it. But two Republicans flipped in the Senate, reversing the passage of the resolution a week after it had passed. However, Democrats, including Sen. Tim Kaine (VA) and Rep. Gregory Meeks (NY), when talking about weighing their options, certainly aren’t acting as if a new resolution needs to be passed that supersedes the old one.
“Our view is that H.Con.Res.86 still stands,” said Erik Sperling with Just Foreign Policy. “A later, different war powers measure failing after two members voted differently doesn’t undo the earlier bicameral passage … it remains Congress’s formal directive under the War Powers Act to remove U.S. forces from unauthorized hostilities with Iran.”
Second, the mechanism for Congress to sue the president to enforce its resolution has never been tested before, as Bruce Ackerman wrote for the Prospect back in 2020, when the issue involved a different resolution on, yes, hostilities with Iran. It’s unclear whether litigation would be invoked by the Republican congressional leadership, the Republican-controlled Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group (BLAG) that counsels the House on these matters, or by any member, including a Democrat. You could even see Republicans countersue, on the grounds that the Iran war referred to in the concurrent resolution ended, and this flare-up is a new war, meaning the president could continue fighting for another 60 days.
Sperling and other anti-war advocates are proposing that members of Congress could identify other plaintiffs, like service members sent to Iran, and offer amicus briefs in support. And pressure could be placed on BLAG to authorize litigation; Congress could even authorize litigation through a new resolution. “We don’t think members should concede in advance that the resolution is unenforceable or that they have no role in enforcing it,” he said. “Lawmakers should make a major public and legal fight out of the administration’s refusal to comply.”
The Supreme Court, which would hear the case, is of course dominated by very partisan Republicans. The cost of an adverse ruling could render the War Powers Act moot. But that’s not a reason to fold, Sperling said. “Congress acted, the public wants this war ended, and the president is defying both the law and the will of the people.”
War funding. The Trump administration has already submitted a $67 billion war supplemental. That ticker is moving ahead with every precision-guided bomb the Pentagon decides to launch. But there is no plan to pass a supplemental; Democrats are thoroughly uninterested and want to stop the war entirely. The process of boosting the Pentagon budget by $350 billion, by a combination of regular order and a mythical third reconciliation bill, is highly dubious as well. The votes aren’t there on a party line for Republicans, and it implicates the impossible-to-pass SAVE Act, which has frustrated any legislative efforts over the past several weeks. Since regular order hinges on what Republicans can get out of reconciliation, that’s stalled too.
Denying war funding would be a separate exercise of Congress’s authority to declare war, complementing the war powers vote.
Oil and gas. The administration had at least a colorable argument that it had tamed the inflationary beast. Walmart reducing prices on thousands of items, which was more about regaining market share, was nonetheless seized upon by Trump as evidence of his success. And the administration has touted these new, odd “Freedom Fuel” gas stations selling at $3.47 a gallon (the 47th president, get it?), which, incidentally, is 50 cents higher than the pre-war price but lower than the national average. The brand-new Freedom Fuel Network owns 25 stations in Pennsylvania and New Jersey; there are more than 211,000 gas stations nationally. Nonetheless, it was a useful talking point, even if there’s no explanation for why a company that just popped up is selling gas below cost.
Anyway, the resumption of the war blows these green shoots away. Oil prices spiked to $80 a barrel before settling in lower. Freedom Fuel may continue its (perhaps subsidized) money-losing venture, but the other hundreds of thousands of gas stations will push their prices back up. Higher oil prices means higher prices for everything else that’s shipped by truck; so, pretty much everything.
Traversing the strait will simply remain unstable for who knows how long, with shipments stalled, risk insurance going up, and costs along with it. Qatar’s LNG facility, which was damaged by attacks during the war, is on an indefinite pause because they don’t want to send product out on the strait.
The only product that went out during the ramp-up in travel through the strait (41 ships on Tuesday, relative to the 130-a-day average before the war) mostly reflected the ships that were trapped before. There was no return to normal, which was already going to take months even before the truce was scrapped. Remember that Trump said he signed the memorandum of understanding because there was going to be “economic catastrophe” if the fighting continued, due to dramatically lower oil inventories. Well …
Alternatives. The war was already causing a reckoning on the future reliability of the Strait of Hormuz. Part of that is about the Gulf powers finding a way to get their oil out. The Saudis are rapidly extending their East-West Pipeline to bypass the strait, and other countries are hoping to piggyback on that. And U.S. exports have been soaring: A report out this week from the Energy Information Administration shows April petroleum exports hitting a new record high.
But alternatives also include energy other than fossil fuels. U.S. electric-vehicle sales in May hit their highest level since the end of the federal $7,500 tax incentives, and globally sales are soaring. Recent difficulties with natural gas supply chains mean that renewables are actually the option with the fastest potential to get onto the grid. And the Hormuz crisis, which seems never-ending, makes a hard-to-miss connection between fossil fuels and geopolitical volatility. Propping up shipping of oil and gas has already been disrupted. Renewable build-out could make that permanent.
–David Dayen |
