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A Short List of Members Who Tried

· 8 min read
xJ4cks
xJ4cks
Software Dev, Fabulist

This site exists to document congressional failure — the votes tabled, the resolutions killed, the authorizations never sought and never given. It is, by design, a catalog of abdication.

This piece is different. It names the members of Congress who used every mechanism available to them to say, formally and on the record, that what this administration is doing is illegal. They have been a small group. They have lost every time. The record of their efforts belongs on this site alongside the record of everyone who ignored them.

The Mechanisms​

Congress has three tools to respond to unauthorized executive war-making: the impeachment power, the War Powers Resolution, and the power of public pressure through letters and floor statements. All three have been deployed since January 20th, 2025. All three have failed. But they were used, and that matters.

Impeachment: Al Green (D-TX-9)​

Representative Al Green of Houston is the only member of Congress to have formally moved to impeach Donald Trump during the second administration. He has done it twice.

House Resolution 537 — filed June 24th, 2025, following the US bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities without congressional authorization. Tabled by the House, 314 to 101. One hundred and twenty-eight Democrats voted to table their own colleague's impeachment motion. Nearly the entire Republican caucus joined them.

House Resolution 939 — filed December 11th, 2025. Tabled again. This time seventy-three Democrats voted YEA to kill it; forty-seven voted "Present," a gesture that functions as a soft no while avoiding the optics of one. Twenty-three Democrats voted openly with the GOP. HR 939 failed without ever reaching a meaningful floor debate.

Green has filed these motions knowing they would be tabled. He has filed them anyway, because the Constitution requires that someone do so when a president commits high crimes, regardless of whether the political calculus is favorable. His colleagues have consistently disagreed. He has continued.

"I rise because I believe that if we don't impeach the president, history will judge us all." — Rep. Al Green, floor statement, December 2025

War Powers Resolutions: Tim Kaine (D-VA) and Rand Paul (R-KY)​

Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia has introduced or co-sponsored three War Powers resolutions since June 2025 — one for each major unauthorized military campaign. Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky co-sponsored the third and voted in favor of all three. They are, in this specific respect, the most consistent defenders of congressional war authority in the 119th Senate.

DateResolutionSubjectResult
Jun 27, 2025S.J.Res. 59 (Kaine)Iran Phase 1 — Operation Midnight Hammer47–53, Failed
Jan 14, 2026S.J.Res. 98 (Kaine, Schumer, Schiff)Venezuela — Operation Absolute Resolve50–50, Killed by VP Vance
Mar 4, 2026S.J.Res. 104 (Kaine, Paul)Iran Phase 2 — Operation Epic Fury47–53, Failed

Paul's position is worth examining carefully, because it complicates the usual partisan framing. He voted to table the June 2025 impeachment motion (HR 537) along with the rest of the Republican caucus. His objections are not to Trump broadly — they are specifically constitutional and libertarian in nature. He has argued, consistently and in writing, that no president of any party has the authority to unilaterally commit the United States to acts of war without congressional approval. He is right, and the members of his party who have downplayed the president's illegal aggression are wrong.

Kaine has been unmoved by his party's leadership consensus that these votes are strategically counterproductive. He filed S.J.Res. 104 nine days after US and Israeli aircraft killed the Supreme Leader of Iran and began the largest American bombing campaign since the Iraq War. There was no political upside, and he filed it anyway.

On the House Side: Khanna, Jayapal, Massie, McGovern, and Others​

In the House, war powers accountability has been bipartisan in a way the Senate has not quite managed.

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA-17) co-sponsored H.Con.Res. 38 — the House Iran WPR that failed 212 to 219 on March 5th — and co-signed the April 2025 demand letter to the administration demanding legal justification for Operation Rough Rider in Yemen. The Yemen letter produced no response from the administration and no floor vote. But it is in the record.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA-7) led the Yemen demand letter alongside Khanna and Rep. Lori Trahan (D-MA). The letter was sent April 9th, 2025. The United States had been bombing Yemen for nearly a month, without authorization, without notification, with 1,100+ strikes in 52 days. No WPR floor vote was ever taken on Yemen.

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY-4) co-sponsored both H.Con.Res. 64 (Venezuela, December 2025) and H.Con.Res. 38 (Iran, March 2026), and voted in favor of both. He also voted to table the June 2025 impeachment motion, so his record here is specific rather than comprehensive — he has drawn his line at executive war-making authority, not at accountability for Trump generally. That line is narrower than it could be; it has still been drawn more consistently than most of his colleagues on either side of the aisle.

Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA) and Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY) sponsored the December 2025 Venezuela resolutions. Both narrowly failed.

Rep. Warren Davidson (R-OH) voted in favor of H.Con.Res. 38, joining Massie as one of only two Republicans to do so.

In the Senate, Senators Susan Collins (R-ME) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) voted in favor of S.J.Res. 98 at both the discharge stage and the final passage vote, holding their position when Hawley and Young accepted a letter from Rubio and flipped.

What They Have in Common​

None of these members have the votes to win. They have known this each time they filed, each time they called for a roll call, each time they put their name on a resolution that leadership of both parties preferred to bury.

What they share is a willingness to be on the record. In an era when the most common congressional response to executive lawlessness has been procedural silence — "Present," abstention, tabling, referral to committee — these members have forced votes, filed motions, and written letters that will exist in the permanent record of the 119th Congress.

The administration has bombed seven countries without a declaration of war! It has captured a head of state. It has killed a supreme leader. It has notified Congress after the fact, cited no statute, and faced no institutional consequence. Eight War Powers votes have been held. Eight have failed.

This is not a story with a hero. It is a story about a small group of people who did what the Constitution required of them, while the institution around them declined to do the same. The gap between those two things is the story of this Congress.

Summary Table: Who Used Available Mechanisms​

MemberChamberPartyAction(s) taken
Al Green (TX-9)HouseDHR 537 (Jun 2025), HR 939 (Dec 2025) — impeachment motions
Tim Kaine (VA)SenateDS.J.Res. 59, 98, 104 — three WPR resolutions
Rand Paul (KY)SenateRVoted YEA on all three Senate WPR measures; co-sponsored S.J.Res. 104
Ro Khanna (CA-17)HouseDH.Con.Res. 38 sponsor; Yemen demand letter
Pramila Jayapal (WA-7)HouseDYemen demand letter (Apr 2025)
Thomas Massie (KY-4)HouseRH.Con.Res. 64 + H.Con.Res. 38 sponsor; YEA on both
Jim McGovern (MA-2)HouseDH.Con.Res. 61 + H.Con.Res. 64 sponsor
Gregory Meeks (NY-5)HouseDH.Con.Res. 61 sponsor
Warren Davidson (OH-8)HouseRYEA on H.Con.Res. 38
Susan Collins (ME)SenateRYEA on S.J.Res. 98 — discharge + final passage
Lisa Murkowski (AK)SenateRYEA on S.J.Res. 98 — discharge + final passage

Sources​