Bob,

I very much agree with your points and am presently editing my own Thinking Deeply thoughts on the subject of what happens on and after April 29th, when the 60-day restriction on continued combat operations without an authorization by Congress to continue this war expires. And, make no mistake, it is definitely a war of choice that should have required Congressional deliberations and authorization before it was initiated.

Here are just some of the points to ponder with regard to the issue of standing before legal action can be successfully pursued:

No one has a clearly established, reliable path to standing in federal court to stop a president from continuing hostilities past the 60‑day War Powers Resolution limit; historically, such suits have almost always been dismissed on standing or political‑question grounds.

Formal possibilities vs. practical reality

In theory, several categories of plaintiffs might try to sue:

Individual members of Congress, claiming institutional injury to Congress’s war powers; these suits have repeatedly been dismissed for lack of standing, as in Campbell v. Clinton over the Kosovo air campaign.​

States (e.g., Massachusetts during Vietnam in Massachusetts v. Laird), arguing harm to their residents and institutions; courts have tended to treat such cases as non‑justiciable political questions and/or find insufficient concrete injury.​

Service members ordered into unlawful hostilities, asserting that their deployment violates the Constitution or the War Powers Resolution; courts have generally been reluctant to adjudicate these claims while hostilities are ongoing, often resolving them on justiciability grounds.

In practice, federal courts have used the standing and political‑question doctrines to avoid adjudicating direct challenges to presidential uses of force under the War Powers Resolution, effectively leaving enforcement to Congress (through legislation, funding restrictions, or impeachment) and to politics rather than to litigation.

Emerging proposals for institutional standing

Some scholars and practitioners have argued that Congress could strengthen judicial enforcement by explicitly authorizing institutional suits:

Proposals would allow the House, the Senate, or designated congressional leaders/committees to sue on behalf of Congress when presidential action allegedly injures Congress’s war powers.​

This kind of express authorization is seen as the “most realistic avenue” for any plaintiff to meet modern standing requirements in a War Powers case, but Congress has not yet enacted such a mechanism.​

Until Congress creates a clear statutory cause of action and authorization for institutional lawsuits, the most accurate answer is that no category of plaintiff has a proven, consistently successful claim to standing to stop a president from extending a war beyond the 60‑day limit; enforcement remains primarily a matter of congressional will, not judicial intervention.

Having carefully researched this issue, I conclude that the most powerful tool available is for We the People to force Congressional action. The most likely scenario for that is this year’s midterm elections delivering a Democratic majority in at least one, and even better, both, Houses of Congress. Following that, a House Democratic majority can successfully bring an impeachment indictment against this President once more. While it is true that Republicans in the Senate, even if in a minority, can vote against removing the president. However, if a strong majority of the American people make clear through the midterm election outcomes their opposition to Trump, that may persuade enough of them to return a guilty verdict to preserve their own careers.

Building a winning coalition to achieve such an outcome is admittedly a Herculean task but not impossible. The Constitution is quite clear that the ultimate power of government rests with We the People. Elections are the tool of that power and its expression.

No matter how hard the task and its slow process, we must use the tools available to us. The preservation of our democracy depends upon us taking action and making the required effort to achieve a just outcome.

In the words of Yoda, “War does not make one great.”