President Donald Trump stood at a White House lectern shortly after 11 a.m. Wednesday and told the country that the United States had “won the peace as decisively as it won the fight,” using a hastily arranged East Room address to claim credit for the Iran-Israel ceasefire that had taken effect at midnight Greenwich Mean Time, even as House Democrats filed a privileged resolution demanding an independent commission to investigate the war’s origins and conduct.

The 14-minute address, the president’s most formal remarks on the conflict since hostilities began in early March, opened a day of choreographed political messaging from the West Wing and a near-simultaneous Capitol Hill counterprogramming by Democrats. Inside the East Room, Trump was flanked by Vice President JD Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Margaret Whitfield, National Security Adviser Greg Halpern and a small delegation of bereaved military families invited overnight.

“At twelve o’clock this morning, Greenwich Mean Time, the guns went silent in a war that this administration ended on American terms,” Trump said, reading from a teleprompter. “We did not start it. We finished it.” He thanked Pakistani, Saudi and Egyptian mediators by name, praised the late-week diplomacy from Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi as “tough but serious,” and described the framework’s enrichment-ceiling clause as “the strongest verification language ever signed by Tehran.”

The president did not specify the clause’s text and took no questions. Press Secretary Karoline Renfro, in a gaggle that followed the address, said the full Islamabad document would be transmitted to congressional leadership later in the day and that a classified annex would be available to cleared members in the Capitol’s Secure Compartmented Information Facility beginning Thursday. Renfro declined to say whether the annex contained side agreements with Israel or the Gulf monarchies on sanctions relief or weapons transfers.

On Capitol Hill, House Democrats were already moving. Within an hour of the East Room address, Representatives Marisol Vega and Ro Khanna, both of California, filed a privileged resolution calling for a 10-member independent commission, modeled on the 9/11 Commission, to investigate intelligence and policy decisions in the run-up to the war and the conduct of operations through the ceasefire. The resolution specifies a 14-month reporting timeline, subpoena power, and a mandate to publish unclassified findings.

“We have lost 352 American service members in six weeks. We have spent close to $70 billion. And we still do not know with any precision how we got into this,” Vega told reporters at a brief news conference outside the House chamber. “The country that claims this victory today is owed an explanation of how the war began, what the intelligence said, what the warnings were, who was told and when. The families of the fallen are owed that explanation first.”

Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana, asked about the resolution as he left a Republican Conference meeting, said only that “the speaker’s office will handle any privileged resolution according to the rules of the House.” Under House precedent, a privileged resolution of this character must be considered within two legislative days unless tabled by a majority.

Senate response was more fractured. Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota issued a brief written statement calling the ceasefire “a moment to honor the fallen and to demand answers.” Senator Walter Briggs of Tennessee, the chamber’s most prominent in-party critic of the war’s conduct, told reporters in the Senate subway that he would support “an inquiry by the proper committees” but stopped short of endorsing an independent commission. “I want answers from the executive branch under oath, not press releases from a commission staff,” Briggs said. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York went further, saying he would “stand with my House colleagues” on a commission and that he expected the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to begin its own oversight hearings before Memorial Day.

The war powers fight that consumed Capitol Hill last week receded only partially on Wednesday. The Kaine-Lee-Murphy resolution, which cleared the Senate 56-43 on April 10, remains technically alive in the House under expedited consideration rules. Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia told reporters Wednesday that he would “not withdraw the resolution while one American service member remains in harm’s way in the region,” but said the question of forcing a House floor vote was now “in the speaker’s hands and the country’s hands.”

War costs are also now front and center. Senate Appropriations Chair Patty Murray of Washington said the $67.4 billion war supplemental, which cleared committee on April 6, would proceed to floor consideration next week largely intact, though she said she would offer a manager’s amendment adding a $1.8 billion provision for long-term care for wounded service members and survivor benefits for the families of the dead.

Senior White House officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the East Room remarks were the opening of a planned three-week “peace dividend” rollout that includes a Thursday presidential visit to Dover Air Force Base, a Friday Oval Office signing of a memorandum directing a 90-day review of post-war force posture in the Gulf, and a presidential address to a joint session of Congress tentatively scheduled for the last week of April.

“The president has a story to tell, and he will tell it,” said White House Chief of Staff Brendan Cole, asked outside the West Wing about the commission resolution. The administration would “engage with appropriate oversight,” Cole said, but added that “a partisan commission designed to relitigate decisions the American people will judge in November is not appropriate oversight.”

Reema Khoury, a senior fellow at the Stimson Center and a former Senate Foreign Relations Committee aide, said in an interview that the politics of the ceasefire would harden quickly along two axes. “There is the question of who won the war, which the White House will press as long as the framework holds,” Khoury said. “And there is the question of how the war began, which the House Democrats will press regardless. Those are not the same question.”

Senior Senate aides on both sides of the aisle said floor action on the war supplemental and on a possible alternative authorization measure would begin Tuesday. The White House said additional details on the Dover trip and the joint-session address would be announced later this week.