Alaska's senators split on Iran war powers, and Murkowski missed the vote

Alaska's two senators have spent this year on opposite sides of a fight over whether a president can wage war without Congress — and on Thursday, the one who kept siding against Trump wasn't there to vote.

The Senate rejected a motion to force a vote on withdrawing U.S. troops from unauthorized hostilities against Iran, 47-49. Sen. Dan Sullivan voted to keep it bottled up, as he has every time. Sen. Lisa Murkowski was absent — the first of these votes she has missed.

Murkowski has been one of the few Republicans willing to break with the president on Iran. She was the third Republican to help crack the issue open earlier this year, and she was among just four in her party who voted in June to tell Trump he could not restart the war without congressional approval. Trump publicly berated her for it and said she should not be reelected.

Sullivan has been the mirror image — a reliable no on every attempt to rein in the president's war power, arguing that presidents of both parties need latitude to protect U.S. security and that Iran remains a threat. He is up for reelection next year.