Three weeks ago, the U.S. House took a step that hardly seemed possible: The Republican-led chamber adopted a war powers resolution, reasserting Congress’ authority over the war. The 215-208 vote featured four GOP members joining all Democrats in support of the measure.

The vote was a stinging setback for Donald Trump, who condemned the developments with predictable rage, castigating the vote as “unpatriotic” and telling the four Republicans who backed the resolution that they “should be ashamed of themselves.”

Twenty days later, the Republican-led Senate did the same thing. NBC News reported:

The Senate on Tuesday approved a war powers resolution previously passed in the House that rebukes President Donald Trump by calling for an end to the U.S. war against Iran.

The resolution passed 50-48, with four Senate Republicans joining almost all Democrats in support of the measure. Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., opposed the resolution, and two Republicans did not vote. The nonbinding measure is Capitol Hill’s sharpest symbolic pushback on the war yet.

The resolution “directs the President to remove U.S. Armed Forces from hostilities against Iran unless explicitly authorized by a declaration of war or a congressional authorization for use of military force against Iran.”

In recent months, the Senate voted on war powers resolutions nine other times, and in each of those instances, Democratic proponents picked up some GOP support, but not enough to succeed. This week, the 10th time was the charm.

White House officials quickly downplayed the significance of the developments, emphasizing the fact that the nonbinding resolution won’t go to the president’s desk and has no force of law. That’s true, but it doesn’t mean that the votes were irrelevant.

Democratic Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the ranking member on the Senate Armed Services Committee, noted in a statement, “This marks the first time since the enactment of the War Powers Resolution of 1973 that both chambers of Congress have approved a concurrent resolution directing a sitting president to end a military conflict.”

In other words, Congress made history, taking a step that rebuked Trump in a sharp and unsubtle way. A New York Times report added that the measure underscored the GOP’s impatience “about continuing to defer to the president, who has never sought approval from Congress for the war.”

Not surprisingly, the president again turned to his social media platform to whine about Congress daring to act like a coequal branch of government.

“So, I have Iran on the ‘ropes,’ ready to go down for the fall, willing to give us practically anything, and for the first time in decades, respecting the hell out of the United States and its President, ME, and the U.S. Senate decides to have a poorly timed and meaningless War Powers Act Vote, telling the Number One Sponser [sic] of Terror in the World that the United States doesn’t like what I am doing to them, and I must stop, and by so doing has provided aid and comfort the Enemy,” Trump wrote. “Four Republican Losers voted with the Dumocrats, and Iran asked my people, ‘what does that all mean?’ These Senators have just made my job more difficult, but I will get it done, one way or the other, because I always get it done!”

Much of this was gibberish wholly detached from reality, though it’s the larger context that matters more: If we were looking for fresh evidence of Trump’s loosening grip on Capitol Hill, we’ve found some, whether the measure has the force of law or not.

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