Senate Democrats on Thursday demanded an up-or-down vote on a war powers resolution covering the six-week Iran conflict, arguing the ceasefire that took effect Wednesday should not foreclose congressional review of how the war was waged and the costs it imposed.

The resolution, drafted by Sens. Tim Kaine of Virginia and Chris Murphy of Connecticut, would require the administration to seek explicit congressional authorization for any renewed offensive operations against Iran or Iran-aligned forces, including the Houthi movement in Yemen. Backers said the measure was not intended to second-guess the ceasefire announced from Islamabad on April 12 but to lock in a clearer chain of accountability before the next crisis.

“The job of Congress did not end at 00:00 Greenwich Mean Time yesterday,” Kaine said on the Senate floor. “We sent more than three hundred and fifty Americans home in flag-draped coffins. We owe their families a record vote on what authority this White House actually had.”

President Donald Trump’s senior advisers have argued for weeks that operations against Iranian missile sites and against Houthi launch crews fell within the 2001 authorization for the use of military force and the president’s Article II powers as commander in chief. Pentagon spokeswoman Maj. Gen. Caroline Reese told reporters Thursday that the administration “welcomes oversight” but considers a fresh authorization “unnecessary and, frankly, untimely while the ceasefire is in its first hours.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt struck a sharper tone at the afternoon briefing, calling the Kaine-Murphy effort “an attempt to relitigate a war the president just ended.” She said the administration would oppose the resolution but would not invoke executive privilege over a series of classified strike-authorization memos that Democrats have requested from the National Security Council.

That concession appeared to satisfy at least one Senate Republican. Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, a longtime war powers hawk, told reporters he would vote for the resolution “without apology.” Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska said she was “leaning yes,” citing the precedent set when three Republicans crossed the aisle on the AI moratorium bill last week. Aides to Sen. Susan Collins of Maine said the senator was reviewing the language.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune said procedural maneuvers could delay a floor vote until the week of April 27 but acknowledged the resolution would receive consideration. “Senators have a right to be heard on this,” Thune told reporters outside his office. “I expect a full debate, and I expect it to be a close vote.”

The push comes as the Capitol absorbs a second policy battle the White House would rather see closed. The AI moratorium legislation co-sponsored by Sens. Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, which cleared the Senate on April 7 by a 52-48 margin, has stalled in the House Ways and Means Committee, where a markup is scheduled for next week. Democratic leadership has signaled it will move the war powers debate even if the AI bill consumes House attention.

Costs of the Iran conflict have surfaced quickly. A preliminary tally circulated by the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday put direct U.S. military expenditures since March 1 at roughly $74 billion, with replenishment of Patriot and THAAD interceptors alone projected to add another $9 billion over two budget cycles. Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the committee’s chairman, said the figures did not include longer-term obligations to wounded service members or to allies that drew down their own munitions stocks.

“The bills are going to keep arriving for years,” Reed told reporters. “Members ought to see them before they’re asked to authorize the next round.”

Republican leadership pushed back on what House Speaker Mike Johnson called “Monday-morning quarterbacking from the same caucus that wanted the carriers withdrawn in March.” Speaking to reporters in the Capitol rotunda, Johnson said the House would not take up any war powers resolution that reached it from the Senate, and accused Democrats of using the ceasefire to “score points the voters already settled.”

In the Senate cloakroom, however, the politics looked less settled. Polling released Thursday morning by Marist showed that 58 percent of registered voters supported a congressional vote authorizing or limiting any future strikes on Iran, including 49 percent of self-identified Republicans. Trump’s approval rating on his handling of the war ticked up four points to 47 percent in the same survey, the highest reading since the conflict began, complicating Democratic efforts to frame the debate as a referendum on the president.

Rep. Adam Smith of Washington, the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, said the war powers fight should not be conflated with criticism of the ceasefire itself. “The ceasefire is good news, and the president deserves credit for letting the Islamabad track run,” Smith said in a statement. “What we are arguing about is the next president, and the one after that, and whether we are still a country where Congress declares war.”

Administration officials said Thursday they expected the ceasefire to hold through the weekend despite a Houthi rocket launch from Yemen that was intercepted Wednesday evening and a separate rocket fired from an Iran-aligned militia in Iraq that fell harmlessly in open desert. National Security Adviser Mike Waltz briefed congressional leaders in a closed session Thursday afternoon and is scheduled to brief the full Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Friday.

Senate aides said a procedural vote on the Kaine-Murphy resolution could come as early as next Tuesday, with floor debate expected to stretch into the following week. Officials in both parties said additional hearings on the conduct of the war, including the loss of a Navy F/A-18 over the Gulf in late March, would be scheduled before the Memorial Day recess.