March 8, 2026, 4:15 a.m. ET
- Thomas Suddes argues the United States has become a “warfare state” due to congressional inaction.
- Congress has not formally declared war since 1942, ceding its constitutional war-making power to presidents.
Thomas Suddes is a former legislative reporter.
Ohio patriots should make a pilgrimage to the suburban Cincinnati grave of U.S. Sen. Robert A. Taft (1889-1953), who warned Americans that their nation — founded on liberty — could instead become a warfare state, in part because of congressional indifference.
And so it has.
The United States has been at war, someplace, somehow, continuously since Dec. 7, 1941, when the grandfather of today’s Japanese emperor agreed to a sneak attack on the Pearl Harbor naval base, Hawaii.
Then, as the U.S. Constitution provides, the Congress of the United States duly declared war on Japan, a war the United States won after sacrificing the lives of hundreds of thousands of young Americans — and killing countless civilians trapped worldwide between the contending armies.
Crickets and more crickets
In January, leaving aside Washington gobbledygook, President Donald Trump launched a war against the government of Venezuela, ostensibly because it was a bestial regime. Complete coincidence: Forbes magazine reports that Venezuela has massive oil resources, “approximately 17% of the global total, even more than Saudi Arabia” — even more than Saudi Arabia. Congressional reaction to Trump’s coup in Caracas: crickets.
Then, most recently,Trump on his own (presumed) authority, set the entire Near East afire by accomplishing the assassination of Iran’s murderous leader and lancing that 93-million-resident pustule of terror to the benefit of America’s one steadfast ally in the region, Israel.
Congressional reaction to Trump’s decapitation of Iran’s leadership clique: more crickets. And you can expect that to remain the case unless and until the bodies of young, uniformed Americans start arriving at U.S. military mortuaries if Iranian payback happens.
The congressional vending machine
Congress has the exclusive power to declare war on other countries. Let’s duck into the history hutch to see when the last time that happened.
Ah, there it is — June 4, 1942, almost 84 years ago. That’s when Congress heaved its paunches out of their cozy Capitol seats and declared war on three Balkan allies of Germany — Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania. (Minor-league royalty ran Bulgaria and Romania, while an admiral without a navy ran Hungary).
That’s it. Korea. Vietnam (including Cambodia, Laos and Thailand); Ronald Reagan’s Grenada show; Bill Clinton’s bid to pacify the Balkans; George H.W. Bush’s kidnapping of Panama’s then dictator. None of these extraconstitutional sallies into the world drew more than harrumphs from people who — in theory — are supposed check and balance adventurism by presidents, especially members of the Senate, which has some specific foreign policy responsibilities under the Constitution.
Congress has become nothing more than a vending machine for after-the-fact “react-folo” quotes about presidential warmaking.
But speculators in war (“defense”) stocks are sitting pretty, as the Wall Street Journal reported Monday: “Defense stocks rallied … after the U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran,” specifically citing Lockheed Martin and Northrup Grumman, whose factories are scattered across the Sun Belt.
That builds “back-home” support for weapons spending when someone asks a local member of Congress why arms are a congressional priority, not, say, decent housing or better health care. (Fact: “Among peer countries, the U.S. has the lowest life expectancy at birth for both women and men,” according to the Peterson Center for Health Care.)
How ‘bout them Buckeyes?
Ohio, as it happens, is being treated to a U.S. Senate campaign this year, with appointed Republican Sen. Jon Husted, of Upper Arlington, formerly of Kettering, challenged by former Sen. Sherrod Brown, of Bexley, originally of Mansfield.
Gov. Mike DeWine appointed Husted to the Senate when then-Sen. JD Vance, a Cincinnati Republican, resigned to become Trump’s vice president. Ohio’s other U.S. senator is Bernie Moreno, a Westlake Republican born in Colombia, who has evidently never heard Donald Trump say anything that Moreno disagrees with.
Trump’s usurpations of the war-making power of the United States doesn’t much concern these Ohio Republicans, though time was it would have.
When the key question at Ohio’s breakfast tables is, “How ‘bout them Buckeyes?” rather than “Who are we bombing today?” you know that President Trump has voters exactly where he wants them: distracted.
And thanks in part to their congressional delegation, Ohioans are. Today, the first Bob Taft would be dismissed as an irrelevancy — rather than as the prophet he has proven to be.
Thomas Suddes is a former legislative reporter.
