Murkowski's Iran AUMF still unfiled before recess

The Murkowski AUMF's structural logic rests on a constitutional asymmetry that the 71-day verbal-only track has exposed.

**Article I** of the US Constitution assigns Congress the power to declare war. The War Powers Resolution operationalises this through the 60-day clock, but the clock has never been successfully enforced because the Supreme Court has avoided ruling on its constitutionality, and every administration has argued that ongoing operations authorise themselves by Congress's failure to cut off funding.

The verbal-only Iran track has produced a new factual basis for the Article I argument: the President is waging a conflict without any signed presidential instrument visible in the Federal Register (no executive order, no published CENTCOM operations order, no Treasury designation with Iran specifically in scope since GL-U lapsed). An AUMF in this context would force the executive to choose between accepting conditions it has refused to commit to, or actively rejecting congressional authorisation, which produces a clean Article I test that courts could rule on.

Murkowski's specific leverage derives from her position as a centrist Republican whose vote is needed for several other White House legislative priorities. Her threat to file the AUMF functions as a negotiating instrument against an administration that needs her vote elsewhere in the same legislative session, separate from any constitutional outcome.