When Barack Obama bombed Libya in 2011, a number of conservative voices spoke out against the president starting an unconstitutional war. Those Republicans insisted that presidents must go through Congress to declare war, as Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution requires. As James Madison wrote to Thomas Jefferson in a 1798 letter: “The Constitution supposes, what the history of all governments demonstrates, that the executive is the branch of power most interested in war, and most prone to it. It has accordingly with studied care, vested the question of war in the legislature.”...

Republican Randy Fine wants to nuke Gaza. He said so after two Israeli Embassy employees were shot and killed in Washington DC on Wednesday. Fox News asked Fine on Thursday if he thought this could affect the ceasefire proposed between Israel and Palestine. Fine said the embassy deaths were due to “Muslim terror” and compared Palestinians to World War II-era Nazis and Japanese. “The fact of the matter is the Palestinian cause is an evil one,” Fine said. “We nuked the Japanese twice in order to get unconditional surrender. That needs to be the same here. There is something deeply, deeply...

Last week over two-hundred Republicans, including every GOP senator except Rand Paul (R-KY), signed a letter urging President Donald Trump to insist that Iran give up all enrichment capabilities in any nuclear deal with that country. In other words, they don’t want a new Iran deal. But most Republicans do want a deal. As Responsible Statecraft’s Stavroula Pabst reported on May 12, “As U.S.-Iran talks continue, new polling finds that nearly two-thirds of Republicans support a negotiated deal on Iran’s nuclear program over military action intended to destroy it.” Pabst explained: “Indeed,...

Whether it was President Barack Obama ordering airstrikes on Libya and Syria over a decade ago, or President Donald Trump directing strikes on Yemen and the Houthis today, non-interventionists often insist these presidents need congressional approval, as the Constitution demands. And, without fail, hawkish advocates of such unilateral, executive acts of war without congressional approval will cite President Thomas Jefferson going after the Barbary pirates for attacking ships that sailed Mediterranean in the early nineteenth century. They insist that Jefferson just did this, bypassing...