On October 3, 2026, the Washington Stand—the publishing arm of the Family Research Council (FRC)—published an article titled “The Midterms and the Middle East.” Removing the rhetoric, the core argument is straightforward: the White House has a Middle East policy that requires a Congress willing to fund it and refrain from interference. Voters are expected to provide that Congress in November. Yet the article never examines the policy’s purpose, cost, or endpoint; those inquiries are dismissed as the concern of a less‑patriotic citizenry.
It is striking to see such a claim in a nation whose Constitution grants Congress, not the president, the authority to declare war and appropriate funds. James Madison did not draft Article I as a courtesy; he did so after witnessing monarchs expend lives and treasure without consent. The FRC now urges voters to view that constitutional safeguard as an impediment, pleading that shielding the president from congressional oversight will somehow resolve regional turmoil.
Will it? The last three years provide a test case. U.S. aircraft, munitions, and intelligence have flowed into Israeli operations across Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, and Syria under the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force aimed at Al‑Qaeda and the 2002 authorization targeting Saddam Hussein. The air campaign against the Houthis in Yemen commenced and concluded without a congressional vote. Strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities in June 2025 triggered a War Powers resolution that stalled in the Senate within days. In each instance the executive acted, briefed a handful of lawmakers afterward, and challenged the rest to object—few did. The Washington Stand labels this cohesion; a more candid description is absence.
Scholars across the ideological spectrum have warned for years that Congress has relinquished its war‑powers authority not through a single dramatic vote but via a series of small, seemingly reasonable deferrals accumulated over decades.
Analysts at the Brookings Institution have warned that the Gaza ceasefire agreed in October 2025 left the United States with commitments—including a military coordination center in southern Israel and a stabilization force it helps finance—that no appropriations bill has ever authorized.
Carnegie’s Middle East program has repeatedly noted that military aid divorced from political conditions purchases influence over nothing. Chatham House has observed that Washington’s partners increasingly plan around American inconsistency rather than American intent. Four institutions, four vocabularies, one diagnosis: the legislature has ceased legislating foreign policy and begun merely applauding it.
Consider what a functional Congress would have demanded by now. A clear written statement of what U.S. involvement in the Levant is intended to achieve, expressed in terms a sergeant or taxpayer could understand. A public ledger of transfers to Israel since October 2023, in dollars and tonnage, matched against the end‑use reports the State Department is legally required to produce but routinely withholds. Dated benchmarks indicating when American participation in Gaza’s reconstruction and policing would wind down. Hearings where the planners of these operations explain them under oath. None of this is radical—Britain’s Parliament voted on Syria in 2013 and the government lost. Washington has held no comparable vote on any Middle East issue since 2002.
The FRC’s platform treats support for Israel as an article of faith, which is its prerogative. Faith, however, does not submit budget requests. When a movement asks voters to insulate a foreign policy from scrutiny, one should ask what that policy would look like if it had to defend itself.
Israel heads to its own polls this autumn, and the resulting government may diverge sharply from the one Washington has armed since 2023. An American executive that has promised everything and conditioned nothing will inherit whatever outcome emerges, and a Congress that never asked will have no standing to object.
Thus, the choice in November is not the one framed by the Washington Stand. No one is asking voters whether they admire the president or the Israeli prime minister. The ballot asks whether the 119th Congress’s habit of looking away will become the 120th’s as well. A House that ties purposes to appropriations, insists on reporting with consequences, and sets conditions for ending engagements before they begin would not be sabotaging American policy. It would be giving American policy a spine it currently lacks.
Operational continuity is what executives invoke when they wish to avoid scrutiny. Accountability is the legislature’s mandate. Anyone who wants the United States to wield influence in the Middle East should prefer accountability over mere continuity, because a strategy that cannot explain itself to the people financing it is not a strategy—it is a habit, and midterms exist to break habits.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.