Unauthorized

When the May 1 deadline passed for Donald Trump to make his case to Congress to continue the war in Iran, the outcome was fairly predictable. A Republican majority backed Trump and Democrats again decried the President’s usurping of Congress’s authority. In any event, the war in Iran will likely continue. The failure to contain that conflict is not just a political one; it is a constitutional failure.

Under the Constitution, the President acts as Commander in Chief of the United States Armed Forces while Congress raises, maintains, and funds them. Only Congress has the constitutional authority to declare war. Yet despite decades of American military engagements abroad, Congress has not actually declared war since World War II.

Since then, both Republican and Democratic presidents have committed American troops to what qualifies as war. As the Vietnam War limped on with no clear goal or end in sight, and to reign in the administration’s disregard of the Constitution, Congress passed the War Powers Resolution. It requires the President to notify Congress within forty-eight hours of committing troops and to regularly report on the hostilities. It also sets a sixty-day deadline for Congress to authorize that intervention, whether or not Congress declares it a war. May 1 marked sixty days since the United States joined Israel in launching attacks on Iran.

Republicans in the House and Senate have since repeatedly rejected Democratic efforts to withdraw forces. Some lawmakers are playing tit-for-tat by pointing out how previous presidents launched military offenses without Congressional approval. Others echo Trump’s claims the War Powers Resolution is itself unconstitutional. The Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, and the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, now claim the current ceasefire obviates Congressional approval. Ceasefire, blockade, peacekeeping mission, offensive, war. They are all still military interventions.

While the war of words continues to play out on Capitol Hill and on the President’s social media platforms, an actual war rages on in Iran, and by extension, the broader Middle East. Human lives, economic stability, and the legitimacy of the US government are all being lost each day. Iran now appears like military entanglements that came before it, with no clear goal or end in sight.

The United States should take note from another liberal democracy when it comes to military interventions abroad. Once France was liberated from Nazi occupation during World War II, it adopted a new constitution committing the country to the new international order. France began to shed its colonial ambitions for good. One by one, former colonies gained their independence or, as in the case of Vietnam, were taken over by the Americans in a fool’s errand to conquer in the name of freedom.

A few years later, France nearly succumbed to civil war over the independence of Algeria, a territory it claimed for over a hundred years. Rising out of that crisis, France adopted another constitution, which rebalanced power between its executive and legislative branches, the very problem that plagued its previous republic. That constitution is still in force today and is the backbone for France’s most stable and peaceful regime of the modern era. Further, it retains the key preamble from the previous constitution, which states that the French Republic “shall undertake no war aimed at conquest, nor shall it ever employ force against the freedom of any people.”

France even borrowed from the War Powers Resolution when it revised its constitution in 2008. Like the US Congress, French Parliament is the branch of government responsible for declaring war. Parliament now also requires the executive branch to report on any foreign military interventions and their objective. The importance of this cannot be overstated. France has inscribed into its constitution its commitment to uphold international law, avoid wars of conquest, and require its executive branch to be accountable to the legislative branch for any foreign military intervention.

More importantly, France has actually been upholding these words. Surely, it has joined multiple military operations under the aegis of international organizations like the United Nations and NATO, but has not unilaterally declared war against another country. Moreover, Parliament has authorized all of the French government’s foreign military interventions since the constitutional revision.

Meanwhile, the United States has been steadily moving in the opposite direction as its sister republic. The United States flouts the very international laws it helped create and conquers any people who get in the way of its national interests, however real or imagined threats to them may be. Worse, the United States now appears to simply ignore the words of its own constitution and related laws when it comes to military conflicts. The President can launch them at will and with little to no accountability to the American people through their representatives in Congress.

May 1 passed as just another date on Trump’s calendar. Meanwhile, there are over two more years of his term left and the midterm elections, and a potentially realigned Congress, are still months away. Besides, hoping for elections to change things will not solve the underlying problem of constitutional failure. Instead, Americans should place a more crucial deadline on their elected officials: either honor their oath to uphold the Constitution or perhaps consider rewriting it.

The Palace Became a Circus

There are times critics from France sum up succinctly the current problems of the Trump administration. Senator Claude Malhuret of the center-right party, Horizons, elevates that critique to an art form. Last year, he gave an eloquent speech comparing Trump to the tyrannous Roman emperor Nero. This year, Malhuret returned with an acerbic Senate floor speech that outdid himself. While he caught the eyes of many in the American press for the parts mocking Trump and his administration, the full speech captures the urgency of reforms in France and Europe in order to contend with the new world order.

Malhuret’s speech of March 27, 2026 is available in French in its entirety on the Public Sénat website. I will not comment on his commendable speech, but humbly offer a translation of it in the hopes of having done it justice. I did add in brackets some explanatory text for the non-Francophone reader or for clarification. The eloquence in French is all his; any shortcomings in the translation are of course mine.

Mr. President, Mr. Prime Minister, Ladies and Gentlemen Ministers, in February 2022, a dangerous madman drunk on grandeur lit a fuse in Ukraine which exploded a barrel of gunpowder and wreaked havoc on the world order. The war was supposed to last a week. It is entering its fifth year.

In February 2026, another dangerous madman lit another fuse in the Middle East which called into question once more the international balance. That war was also supposed to last a week. A month later, the whole world is asking the question: What’s going to happen? The answer, simple, short, and precise is the following: God only knows.

Here a year ago today, I compared the Trump presidency to the Court of Nero. I was wrong. It’s the Court of Miracles [parts of 17th-century Paris where beggars pretending to be ill resided and disappeared at night “as if by miracle”]. An antivaxxer and former heroin addict is Health Secretary [Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.], a climate skeptic head of the Environmental Protection Agency [Lee Zeldin], an alcoholic TV personality is Defense Secretary [Pete Hegseth], a former agent for Qatar is Attorney General [Pam Bondi], and a Putin groupie is Director of Intelligence [Tulsi Gabbard]. A Turkish proverb says, “When a clown moves into a palace, he doesn’t become king. The palace becomes a circus.”

This fine team decided to create a competitor to the United Nations. Since its Board of Peace has been around, Trump has launched more military strikes than Biden during his entire term. Each time the Epstein affair comes back up, the bombs explode in some part of the world and create a diversion. Bomb more to earn more. There isn’t a country where Trump hasn’t profited from the situation to enrich himself, and let’s not forget his family. Personal Boeing gifted by Qatar, investments in every Gulf project or elsewhere, manipulating stock prices which insiders benefit from. Just one of his conflicts of interest would have prompted an immediate procedure for removal of office here. But we’re not here. We’re in MAGA America, the conduct of public affairs in the service of private interests.

After the tariffs, Greenland, deserting Ukraine, humiliating allies, the ineffective back and forth with Venezuela, and many others, a new senseless adventure begins. So I’m not misunderstood: I am the last person to complain about the beheading of the mullah regime [Islamic Republic of Iran] and the first to demand freedom for the Iranian people. But what is the strategy to reach it? Has the collateral damage, including for the Iranians, been measured? The answer is there is no strategy and the collateral damage has been written off. Just like in January, Trump called for Iranians to take to the streets only for them to then be massacred by the Basij [volunteer paramilitary force within the Islamic Revolutionary Guard].

After the pretext of an imminent nuclear threat from Iran, contradicted by the Director of Intelligence herself, then the argument for regime change, it was Marco Rubio who spilled the beans. We went there because we followed Netanyahu. In other words, we have no objective of our own. Trump dismissed the warnings from the rare few who had the courage to tell him what was obviously going to happen: the closing of the Strait of Hormuz, the widening of the war across the entire Middle East, and finally the fall-out the whole world over.

In the latest fake news, the only goal of which was to calm oil prices and falling stock markets, he announces that negotiations are underway. The president of the Iranian parliament refutes this in the hours that follow. It’s the first international negotiation where one of the parties finds out it’s negotiating by watching the news on TV.

Oil tankers are blocked in the Gulf. The United Arab Emirates are closing their airspace. Influencers on the beach in Dubai are begging to be repatriated. Refineries and oil fields are on fire.

After having assembled the strongest army in the world, failed to win a war against a middle power, blew up the price of oil and gas, and held speeches one couldn’t make heads or tails of, the golfer from Mar-a-Lago shamelessly admits to being surprised by Iranian counterattacks—which were perfectly predictable—and calls for help from allies he was insulting the day before. And they answered: “You consulted no one. You have no plan. And we have no reason to follow you blindly into the dark.”

Trump, the only bull in the world who goes around with his own china shop, has nothing left but two bad choices, one as bad as the other: pitifully withdraw while claiming no one had attained their objectives or escalate with results that have been known since Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan: stalemate and in the end a shameful departure leaving a free rein to the Communists, the Islamic State, or to the Taliban.

Europe’s problem is that we can’t stop a disaster with pretty statements while pleading with Israel and Hezbollah to put aside their arms while declaring that Hormuz is not our war. It’s true but that only underlines our powerlessness. In the short term, France’s position is the right one. We will not participate in an offensive without an aim, a strategy, and a clear view. But we will maintain our international engagements that protect our allies in the Gulf and in the Mediterranean while being ready to take part in the free movement in the strait because we are the only European country to have kept its air and sea forces operational. This position has to be upheld.

But the twenty-seven [member states of the European Union] are also going to have to begin to solve their urgent and serious problems. The wars in Ukraine and the Middle East are sending us a plain and simple message: we can’t rely on ourselves. De Gaulle understood it first sixty years ago. His message has been forgotten by Europeans. It has been more than enough time to reconsider it. Europe has three major challenges: guarantee its own security, produce an efficient decision-making system, and become part of the great technological, cognitive, and financial revolution of the 21st century. Otherwise, the alternative will be simple: subjugation to our allies or submission to our enemies. The objective? To become military power Europe through rearmament which requires re-industrialization and massive investment. To become political power Europe by extending decision-making to the qualified majority among others. To become economic and business power Europe by putting in place the Draghi report [on EU competitiveness by Mario Draghi, former head of the European Central Bank] and national reports. Everyone knows it but little is happening.

In 2022, we were told that Europe was entering into a wartime economy. Four years later, orders aren’t up to level. The great European project, the single market, remains far from the objectives of ’93 [which created the European Single Market]. As far as the technological revolution goes, we are light years from setting up indispensable financial instruments to catch up with the economies of the United States and China.

France occupies a paradoxical place in this issue. It is the European country that better understands the situation, the only one that has kept an army other than a symbolic one, and a deterrent force. But today it is also, after forty years of demagoguery and untenable promises, in great budgetary difficulty.John Adams, the second president of the United States said: “There are two ways to conquer and enslave a nation. One is by the sword. The other is by debt.”

Despite these difficulties, you have announced to us, Mr. Prime Minister, a sensible budget increase for military programs and an update on goals after you made them three years ago. It’s an effort that I’m keen to acknowledge but it’s also a challenge.

The presidential election campaign will begin soon. The demagoguery from the two extremes, which will not stop appealing to financial waste and explaining that we can have our cake and eat it too, will place a tremendous burden upon reasonable candidates. Nevertheless, it’s imperative to rise to the challenge of our security and the cleanup of our public spending.

The crucial question that we ask ourselves today is how to convince our fellow citizens.