The U.S. Senate for the first time approved a war powers resolution Tuesday (June 23, 2026) seeking to block U.S. military action against Iran, as lawmakers warily watch President Donald Trump’s efforts to resolve a conflict that the administration launched on its own and now needs Congress to fund.

It was the 10th time the Senate has tried to stop the war, and the outcome, on a vote of 50-48, was a stunning turnaround from past efforts. While the resolution is largely symbolic, and does not fully carry the force of law, it reflects the growing concerns from a number of Republican lawmakers in both the House and Senate over both the war and the deal Trump struck with Iran to end it. The House approved the resolution earlier this month.

“Time after time, the vast majority of Senate Republicans sided with Mr. Trump and his war instead of the American people,” said Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer.

Mr. Schumer said Americans have paid the price for “Trump’s historic blunder in Iran. It’ll go down in the history books as one of the worst foreign policy forays America has ever made.” In the past, as many as four GOP senators have voted for the war powers resolutions, and they did so Tuesday (June 23, 2026) — Republicans Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana. One Democrat, Sen John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, voted against.

On this vote, the absence of two Republicans, including Sen Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who was admitted to the hospital recently for an undisclosed matter, left the GOP without a full majority to halt the effort.

The vote also comes as the Pentagon is seeking $80 billion from Congress mostly for the Iran war as it backfills munitions and stockpiles.

Trump to meet senators as Republicans balk at Iran deal

Mr. Trump himself is headed to the Capitol this week to meet with GOP senators as Vice President JD Vance has been overseas working to negotiate with Iran to end that country’s nuclear ambitions, which had been among the stated rationales for the war.

The President is not pleased with the Republicans who have been critical of the deal he struck with Iran, according to one GOP senator granted anonymity to discuss the private dynamics.

The terms of the Iran deal are spelled out in a Memorandum of Understanding that Mr. Trump signed last week, starting a 60-day clock for the sides to reach a broader agreement over ending Iran’s nuclear programme.

But Republicans have particularly objected to the $300 billion fund to help Iran rebuild, which is far greater than the $1.7 billion then-President Barack Obama refunded the country under his administration’s 2015 Iran deal.

“I believe President Trump is getting very poor advice on Iran,” Sen Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said last week on his podcast after the deal was made public.

Democrats have repeatedly forced Iran votes

Over and again, Democrats have been forcing votes on the Iran war, almost since the U.S. and Israel launched missile strikes on Iran on February 28.

Nearly each week they are in session, the Senate Democrats have put forward war powers resolutions, but they have failed to amass the majority needed for passage in the narrowly split chamber, where Mr. Trump’s Republican Party holds the majority.

The House pushed its own version to passage earlier this month, with four Republicans joining all Democrats in approving the war powers resolution, over the objections of House Speaker Mike Johnson and the GOP leadership.

It is that House resolution that the Senate will consider Tuesday (June 23, 2026). While such resolutions do not go to the president for his signature or carry the force of law, passage would stand as a powerful, if symbolic, statement from Congress and a rebuke of the administration’s military actions.

“Why is this vote different?” asked Sen Tim Kaine, the Democrat from Virginia who has led his party’s efforts.

Mr. Kaine said the pause in fighting, as Mr. Trump’s team works to shore up a fragile ceasefire, provides the perfect time for Congress to step back and assess “what should the next chapter be.”

Hegseth seeks $80 billion from Congress for the Iran war

Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth is also on Capitol Hill this week, seeking roughly $80 billion in supplemental funding to shore up defense supplies in the aftermath of the Iran war, which is drawing scrutiny when many Americans are reeling from high gas prices and costs of living.

The Pentagon early on had estimated the war cost $11.3 billion during its first week, and experts have put the overall price tag at close to $100 billion.

The Defence Department’s funding request is part of a broader beef-up of military money the White House wants as part of its budget request this year.

The Trump administration is seeking $1.5 trillion in defence funding this year — a 50% increase — including $350 billion that it wants in a so-called budget reconciliation package. Johnson and GOP leaders are working to pass that package on their own, over the objections of Democrats, much the way they approved Mr. Trump’s big tax cuts bill last year.

The 2025 tax cuts package also included a sizable plus-up of about $175 billion for the military.

Published – June 24, 2026 04:01 am IST

The Senate passed a bipartisan housing bill on Monday (June 22, 2026) that aims to reduce federal regulations and expand local control, one of the most sweeping efforts in recent decades to increase supply and bring down prices.

The bill, which passed 85-5 and now heads to the House, has been the focus of intense negotiations in recent weeks as lawmakers in both parties try to address housing costs in an election year.

The final version of the legislation bans corporate investors from buying single-family homes but doesn’t include a Senate provision that would have required investors to sell newly constructed homes within seven years.

The measure was the result of years of work to “lower costs, expand housing supply, cut red tape, protect taxpayers, and help more Americans achieve the dream of homeownership”, said Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Scott, who worked with Democrats to get the bill passed.

Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, the top Democrat on the banking panel, said it is the most significant housing bill to pass Congress since 1990, when the average home in America was sold for USD 150,000. Now it costs more than $500,000, she said.

The bill “acknowledges that the federal government has a role to play in lowering housing prices”, Ms. Warren told The Associated Press.

“For the first time ever, private equity will be blocked from buying up single-family homes and trying to turn housing into one more Wall Street investment.” Senate passage of the bill shapes up as a rare bipartisan legislative achievement when much of Republicans’ agenda has stalled. The House is expected to give final approval later this week and send the bill to President Donald Trump, who has signalled his support.

Democratic Rep Maxine Waters of California, who helped negotiate the legislation, said it was a “huge step toward finally addressing the affordable housing and homelessness crises in this country.”

Housing costs are a concern for both parties

Republicans and Democrats have embraced the bill as a way to show they are addressing the nation’s affordability crisis, driven in part by rising home prices due to a shortage of affordable housing.

The U.S. housing market has been in a slump dating back to 2022, when mortgage rates began to climb from pandemic-era lows.

Sales of previously occupied U.S. homes have been hovering close to a 4-million annual pace going back to 2023 – well short of the 5.2-million annual pace that’s historically been the norm. Sales slowed last year to a 30-year low and have remained sluggish so far this year, declining in January and February versus a year earlier.

The Economic Report of the President in April found a shortage of 10 million homes, while a report this month from the Joint Center For Housing Studies at Harvard University found sales of existing homes were at three-decade lows and inventories were rising due to high home buying costs.

“Cost burdens for both renters and owners continue to climb, while assistance remains profoundly underfunded,” the report said.

While the median U.S. monthly rent has been declining for nearly three years, it was still 17.2 per cent higher in May than it was before the pandemic, according to data from Realtor.com.

Changes for grants, Section 8 and manufactured housing

To increase the supply of housing, the bill would streamline environmental reviews and speed up the construction process.

It would offer funding to local governments that build more housing, including Community Development Block Grant money to places exceeding the median rate of homebuilding.

It would also provide new dollars for communities to turn abandoned infrastructure into housing, and offers a framework for communities that want to reform outdated zoning regulations, which often limit larger housing developments.

The legislation would allow banks to invest more in affordable housing and raise limits on the number of public housing units that can receive private financing through Section 8 funding to rehabilitate properties. And it would remove outdated requirements and expand federal financing to make manufactured homes more affordable.

“Manufactured housing produces some of the most cost-effective housing in America, but access to financing has been tightly restricted,” Ms. Warren said.

“This creates the opportunity for more manufactured housing and, at the same time, creates a structure for people living in manufactured housing communities to organise and protect their investment in their homes.”

Lawmakers compromised on disaster programme

One of the sticking points between the two chambers was over a federal disaster recovery programme.

An earlier Senate bill had permanently authorized block grant recovery funds, a change intended to ensure that funding requests aren’t needed after every disaster.

House lawmakers opposed that provision because of concerns over how the program was run, so they agreed on a three-year authorisation instead.

The final bill has received widespread support in the housing community, both from organizations representing landlords and large property owners as well as groups that advocate for tenants and low-income renters.

“There is no magic wand that will fix this crisis overnight, and no single piece of legislation is perfect,” David Dworkin, chief executive of the National Housing Conference, the nation’s oldest housing coalition, said.

“Compromise demands that. But this bill is a significant down payment on a long-term effort to make housing more affordable for all Americans.”

Published – June 23, 2026 06:04 am IST

Construction on the new White House ballroom is seen from the Washington Monument, Tuesday, May 5, 2026, in Washington.
| Photo Credit: AP

The Senate has passed $95 billion in war aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, sending the legislation to President Joe Biden after months of delays and contentious debate over how involved the United States should be in foreign wars.

The bill passed the Senate on an overwhelming 79-18 vote late on April 23 after the House had approved the package on April 20. Mr. Biden, who worked with congressional leaders to win support, is expected to quickly sign the legislation and start the process of sending weapons to Ukraine, which has been struggling to hold its front lines against Russia. The legislation would also send $26 billion in wartime assistance to Israel humanitarian relief to citizens of Gaza, and $8 billion to counter Chinese threats in Taiwan and the Indo-Pacific.

U.S. officials said about $1 billion of the aid could be on its way shortly, with the bulk following in coming weeks.

In an interview with The Associated Press shortly before the vote, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said that if Congress hadn’t passed the aid, “America would have paid a price economically, politically, militarily.”

“Very few things we have done have risen to this level of historic importance,” he said.

On the Senate floor, Mr. Schumer said the Senate was sending a message to U.S. allies: “We will stand with you.”

Mr. Schumer and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell made passage of the legislation a top priority, agreeing to tie Ukraine and Israel aid to help ensure passage and arguing there could be dire consequences for the United States and many of its global allies if Russian President Vladimir Putin’s aggression is left unchecked. They worked with House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican, to overcome seemingly intractable Republican opposition to the Ukraine aid, in particular — eventually winning large majorities in both chambers.

Mr. McConnell said in a separate interview before the vote that it “is one of the biggest days in the time that I’ve been here.”

“At least on this episode, I think we turned the tables on the isolationists,” Mr. McConnell said.

The House approved the package in a series of four votes on April 20, with the Ukraine portion passing 311-112.

The $61 billion for Ukraine comes as the war-torn country desperately needs new firepower and as Russian President Vladimir Putin has stepped up his attacks. Ukrainian soldiers have struggled as Russia has seized the momentum on the battlefield and gained significant territory.

Mr. Biden told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on April 22 the U.S. will send badly needed air defense weaponry as soon as the legislation is passed.

“The President has assured me that the package will be approved quickly and that it will be powerful, strengthening our air defence as well as long-range and artillery capabilities,” Mr. Zelenskyy said in a post on X on Monday.

To gain more votes, Republicans in the House majority also added a bill to the foreign aid package that could ban the social media app TikTok in the U.S. if its Chinese owners do not sell their stake within a year. That legislation had wide bipartisan support in both chambers.

The TikTok bill was one of several tweaks Johnson to the package the Senate passed in February as he tried to move the bill through the House despite significant opposition within his conference. Other additions include a stipulation that $9 billion of the economic assistance to Ukraine is in the form of “forgivable loans”; provisions that allow the U.S. to seize frozen Russian central bank assets to rebuild Ukraine; and bills to impose sanctions on Iran, Russia, China and criminal organizations that traffic fentanyl.

South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, a longtime hawk who voted against the foreign aid package in February because it wasn’t paired with legislation to stem migration at the border, was one of the Republicans who switched their votes. “If we don’t help Ukraine now, this war will spread, and Americans who are not involved will be involved,” Ms. Graham said.

The package has had broad congressional support since Biden first requested the money last summer. But congressional leaders had to navigate strong opposition from a growing number of conservatives who question U.S. involvement in foreign wars and argue that Congress should be focused instead on the surge of migration at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, a Republican who is a close ally to Donald Trump, said that despite the strong showing of support for funding Ukraine’s defense, opposition is growing among Republicans.

“The United States is spread too thin,” Mr. Vance said, “And that that argument I think, is winning the American people and it’s slowly winning the Senate, but it’s not going to happen overnight.”

The growing fault line in the GOP between those conservatives who are skeptical of the aid and the more traditional, “Reagan Republicans” who strongly support it may prove to be career-defining for the two top Republican leaders.

Mr. McConnell, who has made the Ukraine aid a top priority, said last month that he would step down from leadership after becoming increasingly distanced from many in his conference on the Ukraine aid and other issues. Mr. Johnson, who said he put the bills on the floor after praying for guidance, faces threats of an ouster after a majority of Republicans voted against the aid to Ukraine.

Mr. Johnson said after House passage that “we did our work here, and I think history will judge it well.”

Opponents in the Senate, like the House, included some left-wing senators who are opposed to aiding Israel as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has bombarded Gaza and killed thousands of civilians. Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Jeff Merkley, D-Oregon, voted against the package.

“We must end our complicity in this terrible war,” Mr. Sanders said.

Staring down a likely government shutdown, the White House wants to make sure any blame falls at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue — specifically on House Republicans.

After all, it’s House Republicans who have been paralysed by their inability to pass a funding package, and Republicans who don’t want to uphold a bipartisan spending agreement from earlier this year.

President Joe Biden is hoping the rest of the country will see things the same way. It’s a murky proposition at a time of extreme political polarisation, with many Americans dug into their partisan corners regardless of the facts of the matter.

A shutdown would arrive at a tenuous moment for Mr. Biden, who already faces low poll numbers and concerns about the economy as he seeks a second term in office, partially on the pitch that he offers steady stewardship in Washington.

If no spending bill passes Congress by the end of Saturday, federal workers stop getting paid, air travel could be ensnarled by staffing shortages and food benefits will pause for some of the country’s most vulnerable families.

Asked on Friday if Mr. Biden should bear any responsibility for the shutdown, White House budget director Shalanda Young said “absolutely not” and accused Republicans of being cavalier with people’s lives.

“The guy who picks up the trash in my office won’t get a paycheck,” she said. “That’s real. And that’s what makes me angry.”

Anita Dunn, Mr. Biden’s senior adviser, blamed the looming shutdown on “the most extreme fringe” of House Republicans in a presentation to allies on Thursday. She said “we have to hold them accountable” and “make sure they pay the political price.”

Speaking from the White House, she criticised adherents of former President Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” coalition — but she stopped just short of using the MAGA acronym.

“We’re not allowed to actually use the M-word here in the White House right now,” said Ms. Dunn, referring to legal guidance intended to ensure compliance with the Hatch Act, which prevents political activity while administration officials are on the job. “But everyone here knows what I mean. It’s a four-letter word. It begins with M. It ends with A. It’s got an AG in the middle.”

Ms. Dunn added, “So those people are the ones who are refusing to do their job and shutting the government down for no reason.”

The current crisis is a sequel to the standoff over raising the debt limit earlier this year. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., refused to authorize the federal government to issue debt unless Biden negotiated over spending cuts.

After resisting, Mr. Biden agreed to budget talks, reaching a bipartisan deal that averted a first-ever default. But now a group of House Republicans want even deeper spending cuts and they’ve threatened to oust Mr. McCarthy from the speaker’s job if they don’t get what they want.

So far, the White House has refused to negotiate, stressing that an agreement was already in place and House Republicans are refusing to honor its terms. Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Friday that Republicans were “solely to blame” for any shutdown, calling that “a basic fact.”

Administration officials have also been highlighting that a shutdown would cause lapses in paychecks for military service members and delays in assistance for victims of natural disasters.

The White House messaging effort has received no shortage of unintended help from Republicans themselves, with moderates criticizing their hard-right colleagues.

Rep. Mike Lawler, R-New York, said “just throwing a temper tantrum and stomping your feet — frankly, not only is it wrong — it’s just pathetic.”

Even Mr. McCarthy acknowledged recently that some members of his caucus “just want to burn the whole place down.”

At a Wednesday fundraiser outside San Francisco, Mr. Biden said Mr. McCarthy cares more about protecting his job as speaker than keeping the government open.

“The fact is that I think that the speaker is making a choice between his speakership and American interests,” Mr. Biden said.

While Washington endured partial shutdowns as long as 35 days during Mr. Trump’s presidency, Biden warned his donors that Republicans could shutter the government for weeks, if not months.

“It would be disastrous for us, especially if it became long-term,” he said.

Romina Boccia, a veteran of Washington fiscal debates and the director of budget and entitlement policy at the Cato Institute, said this situation is much different than the government shutdown in 2013.

At that time, Republicans were united around trying to block implementation of the Affordable Care Act. And even then, it didn’t work. Once the shutdown happened, Boccia recalled, “it didn’t provide any more leverage,” and “Republicans caved and reopened the government when they learned the hard way that they weren’t going to get their way.”

This time, she said, “it’s not clear what they’re trying to get out of a government shutdown. It just seems dysfunctional all around.”

Some polls conducted ahead of the expected shutdown suggest Biden and Democrats in Congress could bear a substantial portion of the blame if a closure occurs. But U.S. adults generally have two conflicting priorities regarding the federal budget.

About 60% of them say the government spends too much money, but majorities also back more money for Social Security, health care and infrastructure, according to a survey by the Associated Press and NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. This enables some Republicans to say the public backs them on cuts, but it also justifies spending on programs that are projected to contribute to higher deficits in the years to come.

The likely shutdown overlaps with Biden ramping up next year’s reelection campaign. For the past few months, the president has taken full ownership of the economy’s performance as inflation has dropped while unemployment has stayed low.

But an emerging set of risks are on the horizon and most U.S. adults still feel pessimistic about the country’s direction.

Mortgage rates are at a 22-year high. Oil prices are nearly $91 a barrel, pushing up the cost of gasoline. Unionized autoworkers are likely entering a third week of strikes. Student loan repayments are restarting. Pandemic-related money for child care centers is set to end, potentially triggering a set of closures that could hit working parents.

A government shutdown would be another dose of chaos that could cause pain for millions of households. White House officials who are ready to blame Republicans say they’d rather see a shutdown avoided.

“I’m still hoping,” Young said Friday. “I’m still remaining an optimist.”