From The Veteran and Military Families Committee Chair Sarah Czech , Marine Corps Sergeant E-5 & Vice-Chair Collin Grier, former Navy Lieutenant O-3
Of the many unprecedented behaviors Americans have observed during the second Trump Administration, one throughline has been the President’s fixation on the Nobel Peace Prize. This fixation and Trump’s professed interest in peace coincide with his campaign rhetoric promising an end to wars and foreign entanglements.
Yet rhetoric does not constrain presidential power. Constitutional checks and balances do. It is precisely the erosion of these critical checks and balances – most notably Congressional oversight – that has allowed recent presidents of both parties to wield military force with little meaningful restraint.
This erosion helps explain the paradox of the past year: despite Trump’s stated desire for peace, he’s now launched a major assault on Iran, resulting in the deaths so far of six American servicemembers. This is in addition to the earlier bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities, the use of drones to strike Caribbean drug (or fishing) vessels, and the deployment of U.S. special forces to depose Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. From Iran to the Caribbean, all of these actions were undertaken without any direct authorization from Congress or even clear strategic objectives. Only time will tell the effect of this chaos on global stability – and whether it truly improves our security overall.
Political pundits and opponents may debate Trump’s motivations, but the underlying reality is more troubling. And that is that the modern presidency operates in a system where the power to make war is vast, elastic, and essentially unconstrained in the absence of congressional will.
This challenge has confronted our republic since its founding, when a fledgling Congress debated whether it could raise a navy to confront North African pirates. What is new though, is the degree to which Congress has surrendered its role. The escalation of unchecked presidential authority, combined with a sclerotic and invertebrate legislature that has once again failed to restrain the executive, presents a genuine threat to democratic governance. And it has strained relationships with our allies in unprecedented ways.
This problem did not begin with Donald Trump, though Trump has exploited his lack of constraints with characteristic enthusiasm. Nor will it likely end with him. The problem is systemic, and it is bipartisan; recall President Obama’s controversial military actions in Libya and Yemen, including the targeted killing of an American citizen on foreign soil. The constitutional concern lies not in the identity of the president, but in the steady normalization of unilateral action.
To be clear, this is not an argument in defense of individuals such as Nicolas Maduro, Qasem Soleimani, Ayatollah Khamenei, or Anwar al-Awlaki. They were all malign actors, and pragmatically, the world is better off without them. But the essential question for Americans is not one of pragmatic results or administrative convenience; it is about constitutional authority. How much unilateral power should a president possess when the Constitution vests the power to declare war unequivocally in Congress? And what is the proper balance between ensuring a president can respond immediately to urgent threats while also ensuring that the United States isn’t embroiled in a war undeclared by Congress?
To be fair, the Framers did not design Congress to be efficient. But they did design it to be naturally protective of its power. Yet that instinct has been replaced by fear: fear of primaries, fear of donors, fear of partisan backlash. The reality is that our two-party system increasingly rewards partisan loyalty over institutional responsibility. When combined with gerrymandered districts designed to eliminate competition, the result is exceptionally high incumbent re-election rates for members of Congress who have a collective approval rating in the teens.
If we want Congress to act like a co-equal branch again – and one that serves the interests of the American people – we must give its members political permission to do so. This requires reforming a system that currently punishes independence and rewards tribalism.
The good news is that there are ongoing efforts to accomplish real, systemic reform. For instance, closed partisan primaries dominated by ideological extremes all but guarantee that the greatest threat to an elected official is not their constituents but their own party. Expanding open primaries – already in place in states such as California, Alaska, and Virginia– can reduce the grip of party orthodoxy and allows moderate and independent voices a chance to prevail. Ranked-choice voting further allows voters to express their actual preferences without fear of spoilers, rewarding seriousness, cooperation, and constitutional fidelity rather than performative outrage.
More broadly, the dominant “red versus blue” narrative, relentlessly amplified by the media and political industrial complexes, masks a quieter truth: most Americans view one another not as enemies but as fellow citizens increasingly weary of divisive rhetoric as a governing strategy. Poll after poll recognizes this truth, even if online algorithms and one-sided journalism fail to promote it.
To break the status quo in our 250th year, we must look to reform our political system which is unrelentingly hostile to real competition from outside the two major parties. One group seeking to do this is the Forward Party – a coalition of advocates, public servants, and reformers not united by rigid policy prescriptions but by a commitment to democratic norms, the rule of law, and institutional accountability. Forward is not about moderation for its own sake, but instead about restoring constitutional balance by making independence, coalition-building, and congressional courage politically viable again. Forwardists may even disagree amongst themselves on key issues, but are united in their view that fellow citizens can disagree without being disagreeable, debate each other without animosity, and understand that most Americans hold the same aspirations while perhaps differing on the best means of achieving them.
Powerful forces will resist this effort. The two-party duopoly is deeply entrenched and well-financed. But optimism lies in the extraordinary dissatisfaction Americans feel with the current system. As the oft-attributed Churchill adage goes, Americans can be counted on to do the right thing only after trying everything else. We have tried the current, failed approach for long enough.
The use of military force without congressional authorization is only one of many manifestations of this failure, albeit a particularly poignant one. Similar failures appear in the deployment of federal law enforcement against fellow citizens, deportations of non-criminal immigrants without due process, and in tariffs imposed without meaningful legislative oversight. Absent structural change, these challenges will become even more serious, and others will arise.
Groups like the Forward Party are working to meet this moment. But real reform will not come from any organization alone. It will only come when Americans insist on a Congress that governs, a presidency that is constrained, and a political system worthy of the Constitution it claims to serve.
