A coalition of more than 40 House Democrats introduced a privileged war powers resolution on Monday morning demanding a floor vote within 15 calendar days to terminate U.S. combat operations against Iran, intensifying the most direct legislative challenge to the Trump administration since strikes began in early March.

The measure, filed shortly after the chamber gaveled in, invokes Section 5(c) of the 1973 War Powers Resolution and would compel the administration to withdraw armed forces “engaged in hostilities” with the Islamic Republic absent a fresh authorization for the use of military force. Sponsors said the introduction was timed to a Pentagon disclosure late Friday that the number of U.S. service members wounded in the conflict had climbed past 300, with a smaller but undisclosed number killed in action.

Representative Marcus DeLuca of California, the resolution’s lead sponsor, told reporters in the Cannon Building rotunda that the administration’s reliance on the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force and Article II commander-in-chief authority had reached “a point of constitutional rupture.”

“We are eight weeks into a shooting war with a regional power, with American casualties rising every week, and Congress has not voted on a single thing,” DeLuca said. “That is not how this is supposed to work. Members on both sides of the aisle know it.”

The filing kicks off a 15-day clock under House rules that forces committee action or a discharge to the floor, a procedural mechanism that bypasses leadership’s usual scheduling discretion. Speaker Mike Johnson’s office acknowledged receipt of the resolution but did not commit to a timeline, with a spokesperson saying only that the chamber would “follow regular order.”

Behind the scenes, the calculus is more complicated. Three senior Democratic aides, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss strategy, said the sponsor bloc had secured tentative support from at least seven House Republicans, most of them from the libertarian-leaning Freedom Caucus and a handful of moderate members from districts with large military populations. If those members vote with a unified Democratic caucus, the resolution could clear the chamber by a narrow margin and head to the Senate, where Majority Leader John Thune has previously signaled he would not bring such a measure to the floor.

Representative Yvette Clarke, who chairs the Congressional Black Caucus, said the CBC would whip its 60 members in favor of the resolution and would push for accompanying hearings on what she called “the intelligence gaps that put our troops in harm’s way.” The Congressional Hispanic Caucus issued a parallel statement of support Monday afternoon, with Chair Adriano Espaillat citing “the disproportionate share of Latino service members in forward-deployed units.”

The Trump administration has dismissed prior congressional efforts to constrain its Iran posture, and senior officials moved quickly Monday to do so again. A White House statement released at 11:18 a.m. called the resolution “reckless political theater that emboldens the Tehran regime in the middle of an active conflict.” Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters at an off-camera briefing that the president “retains full constitutional authority to defend American forces and American interests.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is scheduled to brief the House Armed Services Committee in a closed session Tuesday morning, his second appearance before the panel since strikes began. Committee Ranking Member Adam Smith said he would press Hegseth on the casualty figures, the operational tempo at the al-Udeid and al-Asad airbases, and what Smith described as “the administration’s actual definition of mission success.”

Tuesday’s hearing is expected to dovetail with a separate Senate Intelligence Committee session, where Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard is set to testify in classified session on pre-conflict assessments of Iranian retaliatory capacity. A senior committee staffer said the panel was particularly focused on whether the intelligence community accurately forecast the Houthi escalation that has driven a significant share of U.S. casualties in the Red Sea.

War powers resolutions have rarely succeeded in binding presidential conduct. Versions targeting Saudi involvement in Yemen passed both chambers in 2019 but were vetoed; a 2020 Iran-specific measure cleared the Senate by a narrow margin before stalling. Legal scholars said Monday’s resolution faced similar headwinds even if it cleared both chambers, but argued the political effect was meaningful regardless.

“The point of these resolutions is often not the law, it’s the record,” said Daniel Reinhart, a professor of national security law at Georgetown. “Forcing members to vote, on the record, on an active war is one of the few tools Congress has retained. Whether it survives a veto is almost beside the point.”

The introduction comes one day after Sunday political talk shows were dominated by debate over the conflict’s trajectory, with several centrist Democratic senators expressing public unease about an open-ended deployment, and as a separate piece of legislation — the Sanders-Ocasio-Cortez AI data-center moratorium bill introduced last Thursday — moves toward its first Senate hearing later this week. Aides to both Senator Bernard Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said they would back the House war powers resolution.

Republican leadership has not yet decided whether to allow the privileged motion to proceed to a floor vote or attempt a procedural workaround, two GOP aides said. A senior House Republican strategist, granted anonymity to discuss caucus deliberations, said the leadership team was “war-gaming” whether forcing a vote now — and risking a handful of defections — was preferable to a longer, more public fight closer to the midterm cycle.

DeLuca and his cosponsors said they would press for floor consideration by April 14 at the latest. House Democratic leadership said additional procedural steps would be announced in the coming days.