Donald Trump sent near-identical letters to Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate President pro tempore Chuck Grassley on Friday 1 May, stating 'The hostilities that began on February 28, 2026 have terminated' and 'There has been no exchange of fire between United States Forces and Iran since April 7, 2026'1. Both letters were filed under the War Powers Resolution (WPR), the 1973 statute that gives a president 60 days to wind down unauthorised military action.
The paper is Trump's first signed Iran instrument since 28 February. For 65 days the verbal claim that the war was 'Militarily WON' sat on White House transcripts without a corresponding signature; on 1 May the signature finally arrived, and what it certified is that the war is over rather than that it should continue. The instrument asserts an end-state rather than authorising any further action.
The legal architecture underneath came from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who told the Senate Armed Services Committee on 30 April that the ceasefire 'pauses or stops' the 60-day clock. Senator Tim Kaine rejected that reading on the floor: 'I do not believe the statute would support that.' War powers expert Katherine Yon Ebright at the Brennan Center for Justice was blunter: nothing in the text or design of the WPR suggests the clock can be paused or terminated by ceasefire2. Trump separately told reporters that the 1973 statute is itself unconstitutional, leaving The Administration running three mutually weakening positions in parallel: hostilities have ended, the clock has paused, and the statute is void. No Office of Legal Counsel opinion has endorsed any of them.
The practical effect is that any federal-court challenge to the war's legality now has a written instrument to cite, beyond a verbal claim from a podium. The contradiction with OFAC's same-day enforcement package, dispatched hours later, lands in the next event: two signed US government documents dated 1 May that argue with each other about whether there is still a war.
