Republican-led House votes to stop Iran war, rebuking Trump

Erik Wasson and Roxana Tiron, Bloomberg News on Jun 3, 2026

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WASHINGTON — The Republican-led House voted to halt the U.S. war with Iran, breaking with President Donald Trump on an unpopular foreign conflict that is taking an escalating economic toll on Americans.

The 215-208 vote Wednesday showed worries over the war spreading in the president’s own party five months before congressional elections. Last month, a Senate resolution to end the war also advanced past a procedural hurdle for the first time, though that legislation hasn’t yet come to a formal vote.

The House vote won’t end U.S. military attacks on Iran. The Senate would still have to pass the resolution and provisions in the 1973 War Powers Act that the House invoked are legally controversial anyway.

Still, the House’s new stance trumpets to a global audience the president’s increasing isolation on the war as talks on an interim peace deal drag on and tensions flare across the Middle East. The United States and Iran clashed again overnight, with Kuwait and Bahrain caught in the crossfire of the most serious strikes since a ceasefire went into effect in early April.

Four Republicans joined all Democrats present to pass the resolution: Thomas Massie of Kentucky, Tom Barrett of Michigan, Warren Davidson of Ohio and Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania. It was the fourth time this year Democrats forced a vote on the war and the first time they attracted enough Republican support to prevail.

Fitzpatrick said after the vote that the war was making it harder for Americans struggling with the rising cost of living.

“This certainly isn’t helping on inflation,” said Fitzpatrick, who represents a politically competitive district in the Philadelphia suburbs.

House Republican leaders tried to delay the vote, abruptly canceling one in May when it became clear opponents of the conflict would prevail.

“It is a very dangerous prospect to take away from the administration and the commander in chief right now, the ability to negotiate,” House Speaker Mike Johnson said Wednesday before the vote.

The vote against the war is the latest in a series of setbacks for a president who has bent Congress to his will for most of his second term. After objections from Republican lawmakers, he was forced Tuesday to scrap a $1.8 billion account to pay political allies who claim they were unfairly targeted by the government. Earlier Wednesday, Senate Republicans stripped funding for his new White House ballroom from a spending package.

The military conflict and the closing of the Strait of Hormuz have sent global energy prices soaring, pushing the U.S. average price for regular gasoline up to $4.26 as of Wednesday, according to the American Automobile Association.

A surge in inflation since the war started is eating away at Americans’ paychecks, straining consumers who were already frustrated by the high cost of living. After accounting for rising prices, wages declined in April from a year earlier — the first such drop since 2023. U.S. consumer sentiment slid in May to a record low.

Sixty-four percent of Americans say going to war with Iran was the wrong decision, according to a New York Times/Siena poll taken in May.

Lawmakers in both the House and Senate also have expressed concern about the cost of the Iran operation and not having complete knowledge of what munitions and equipment have to be replenished and repaired. The Trump administration has yet to send a supplemental funding request to Congress.

The Pentagon’s acting comptroller, Jules Hurst, told lawmakers May 12 that the estimated cost of the Iran war to date was now closer to $29 billion. Outside experts have cast that figure as too low given the huge cost of munitions, operations, and deployments in the Middle East.

Barrett, a politically vulnerable Republican congressman, said he voted to stop military activity because the conflict had dragged on beyond a 60-day limit in the War Powers Act on combat operations without congressional authorization.

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(With assistance from Maeve Sheehey and John Harney.)