Pete Hegseth, the US Secretary of Defense, told the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) on Thursday 30 April 2026 that "we are in a ceasefire right now, which our understanding means the 60-day clock pauses or stops in a ceasefire"1. The 60-day clock is the WPR mechanism, the standard congressional check on undeclared hostilities. Tim Kaine (D-VA) rejected the theory directly: "I do not believe the statute would support that."
This was the first time The Administration formally argued a clock-pause legal theory before a congressional committee. Twenty-four hours later, the same administration moved past it to a stronger and incompatible position, that the United States is not at war at all captures the procedural context within which the legal theories were aired. A paused clock can resume; a clock that never ran cannot. Hegseth and the 1 May spokesperson now sit on opposite sides of a definitional split that the same congressional record captures.
The political backdrop matters. Lisa Murkowski's drafted Iran AUMF missed its 28 April filing target; Murkowski has now set the week of 11 May as her new target, conditional on no White House plan in the interim. Hegseth's testimony was The Administration's last chance to offer a unified legal theory before the WPR deadline expired; it offered two.
