Pete Hegseth, the US Secretary of Defense, testified to the Senate Appropriations Committee on 12 May 2026 that Donald Trump has "all the authorities he needs under Article 2" and that an Authorisation for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) on Iran is not required1. The reply came under oath, on $29 billion of war spending, in answer to a question from Lisa Murkowski about whether an AUMF would help the President. "We don't need it," Hegseth said. The Washington Post described the appearance as marked by "intense bipartisan frustration".
The Senate Appropriations Committee is the panel that writes the Pentagon's cheques, not the panel that authorises war. That jurisdictional setting matters. Rand Paul and Susan Collins, who crossed the floor on the 30 April War Powers Resolution vote alongside Murkowski's four co-sponsors, were not in the room. The doctrinal moment landed in front of the committee that funds the operation rather than the committee that would constrain it. Article 2 of the US Constitution is the Commander-in-Chief clause; the executive branch has historically reserved Article 2 self-defence claims for short-window operations, not for 75-day sustained campaigns with declared blockades and 15,000 deployed personnel.
The testimony supersedes Murkowski's threatened Iran AUMF, still unfiled after the 9 May deadline passed, and rereads Trump's three contradictory 8 May Truth Social posts as the rhetorical surface of a settled administration position rather than a communications muddle. In practical terms the 60-day War Powers Resolution clock and the 30-day wind-down clock both lose their bite: if no AUMF is required, no clock can run out on a missing authorisation. The last US coercive Iran action before Hegseth spoke was OFAC's 11 May Hong Kong sweep , a Treasury-initiated package rather than a signed presidential instrument2.
Hegseth's appearance is the first time a cabinet officer has named the verbal-track method as policy rather than denied it. Every prior Trump pronouncement on the war ran through Truth Social or the briefing room. This one was sworn testimony in front of the appropriators. The constitutional weight depends on whether the Office of Legal Counsel, if asked, matches the position; the political weight does not.
