Murkowski and Sullivan split on a motion to discharge an Iran War Powers Resolution

A motion to discharge S.J.Res. 172, a joint resolution directing the removal of U.S. Armed Forces from unauthorized hostilities against Iran, failed in the U.S. Senate on June 16 by a 47-48 vote. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) voted in favor of discharge; Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) voted against. The result tracks a recurring split between the two Alaska senators on war powers measures.

A discharge motion is a procedural vote to bring a resolution out of committee for floor consideration. Voting yes means a senator wants the chamber to take up the underlying resolution; voting no means keeping it bottled up. The 47-48 result means S.J.Res. 172 will not get a floor vote unless reintroduced through a different procedural path.

S.J.Res. 172 invokes the War Powers Resolution of 1973 (50 U.S.C. §§1541-1548), the post-Vietnam-era statute requiring presidential notification to Congress within 48 hours of committing armed forces and limiting engagements to 60 days without congressional authorization. The resolution asserts congressional Article I war-declaration prerogatives against executive military action that has not received specific congressional authorization.

The Murkowski-Sullivan split is not new. In 2020, S.J.Res. 68 — also an Iran-focused War Powers Resolution — passed the Senate 55-45 with Murkowski among the Republicans voting in favor and Sullivan voting against. Murkowski has been part of a small group of Republican senators (including Sens. Mike Lee and Rand Paul) who have periodically broken with party leadership to support war powers resolutions, citing congressional war-declaration authority under Article I. Sullivan, a colonel in the Marine Corps Reserve and a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has generally voted to preserve executive flexibility on military deployments and has opposed similar discharge motions in past sessions.