Unless it’s “a majority of House members,” it doesn’t mean much.

Unitary executive power is ascendant. Congress isn’t going to impeach Biden over this, so what’s to stop him? People in the military swore an oath to defend the constitution above their superior officers—up to and including the commander-in-chief—but in practice they almost never do.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

A bipartisan group of more than two dozen House lawmakers plans to send a letter to President Biden on Friday arguing that he must seek authorization from Congress before launching additional strikes against the Houthis in Yemen.

While the signatories comprise a small portion of the House of Representatives, their letter marks some of the strongest opposition to date to Biden’s handling of the widening hostilities in the Middle East.

The House letter — led by Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Rep. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio) — is more strongly worded, arguing that the U.S. strikes in Yemen are unauthorized and violate the Constitution.

Near-daily strikes over the past two weeks on the Houthis, a powerful faction in Yemen’s long-running civil war, have failed to stop the militant group from targeting ships off the Arabian Peninsula.

The Senate letter, sent to the White House on Tuesday, warned Biden that he will need congressional approval to carry the United States deeper into an escalating Middle East war.

“Unless there is a need to repel a sudden attack, the Constitution requires that the United States not engage in military action absent a favorable vote of Congress,” Sens.

The original article contains 834 words, the summary contains 194 words. Saved 77%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

So 20-odd people out of 435 don’t think commercial and government ships being fired upon for several weeks constitutes an emergency or even a need for self-defense.

There are plenty of cases where asking for congressional approval makes sense, but during unprovoked, continuous attacks is not one of them.