Roughly 40 days after the U.S. war with Iran began, the Republican-led Congress still hasn’t held a single hearing about the deadly and costly military offensive. Common sense would suggest that lawmakers might at least want to ask some questions — about the war, its merits, its cost, its objectives, the way in which it’s been executed, etc. — but to date, the grand total of public hearings remains at zero, despite Democratic appeals for Congress to do its job.

It’s emblematic of a larger problem: Against a backdrop of war, GOP lawmakers are embracing their own irrelevance.

On Wednesday, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York sent a letter to colleagues, which said in part, “A two-week ceasefire is woefully insufficient. Accordingly, we have demanded that the House come back into session immediately in order to vote on our resolution to permanently end the war in the Middle East.” Those demands have gone ignored.

A day later, Democrats made related plans to pass a war powers resolution during a pro forma session, as part of an effort to limit the president’s authority to continue military operations in Iran without explicit congressional approval, but Republicans ended up ignoring the gambit and adjourned the session.

The effort was doomed from the start, since it needed unanimous support, but it was born of desperation: Democratic leaders and the vast majority of their members want to do something to exert congressional authority, limit Trump’s powers or preferably both, even as Republicans have agreed to leave questions over war and peace in the hands of a scandal-plagued and unpopular president who doesn’t appear to have any idea what he’s doing.

But Thursday morning’s rejection of the latest Democratic effort was part of a larger pattern. Indeed, The New York Times highlighted GOP leaders’ scandalous indifference:

The speaker of the House was tweeting about transgender athletes. The Republican senator who leads oversight of the Pentagon was promoting Trump-branded investment accounts for children. The chairman of the main foreign affairs panel in the House was posting photos of newborn bald eagles.

As President Trump swung this week from threatening to annihilate Iran to announcing a cease-fire whose terms and durability remain murky, Congress — the branch of government vested with the power to declare war and regulate trade — remained in recess and largely in the dark.

Even on Tuesday, as much of the world assessed a tenuous ceasefire agreement, “public remarks from Republican leaders were sparse,” the Times added.

Our system of government was not designed to work this way, but in 2026, nearly all GOP lawmakers appear perfectly comfortable surrendering their own authority to the White House, not after a protracted fight over power, but rather, without any fight at all.

In our Madisonian system, there have long been disputes over institutional powers and limits, with lawmakers and presidents engaged in push-and-pull fights over authority. But nearly seven weeks into the U.S.’ latest war in the Middle East, the nation is confronting an awkward dynamic in which the legislative branch’s majority party is choosing impotence, content to let the executive branch do as it pleases.

This post updates our related earlier coverage.

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