As President Donald Trump’s war with Iran continues and the midterms draw closer, political analyst Jennifer Rubin outlined three steps she says Democrats should take to respond to what she called a “Republican disaster” — including actions that could lead to Trump’s impeachment.

Rubin, a veteran political journalist and opinion columnist known for her sharp critiques of the Republican Party, said the GOP could face major losses in the upcoming elections and argued that Trump’s handling of the conflict should be treated as one of the defining failures of his presidency. “As disastrous as Donald Trump’s domestic policies have been — e.g., tariffs, slashing SNAP and healthcare, unleashing rogue shock troops that kill Americans on our streets, corrupting the Justice Department, dismantling life-saving government functions — Iran may be the longest-lasting calamity of his presidency, one that subsequent presidents will be hard-pressed to reverse,” Rubin wrote.

She said it has become clear that “no clear military solution exists,” and argued that the Iranian regime appears likely to emerge from the conflict stronger, while the United States has been weakened and has achieved none of its stated objectives. Her assessment echoes broader concerns raised by foreign policy analysts about the difficulty of achieving regime change or decisive military outcomes against Iran, whose fortified nuclear sites, proxy network across the region, and capacity to disrupt global oil shipping have long made it a uniquely challenging adversary. In Rubin’s view, “Trump, his utterly incompetent secretaries of state and defense, and Republican cheerleaders for the war (plus the cadre of right-wing pundits who celebrated the Iran War and kept insisting progress was possible) must bear the blame for a catastrophic outcome.”

Rubin also broadened responsibility beyond Trump, saying Republicans enabled the war and failed to provide oversight. “Republicans put unfit, unhinged Pete Hegseth in office and refused to exercise oversight. Republicans gave Trump a blank check. Republicans continue to throw money at a mismanaged, dysfunctional Pentagon, which refuses to conduct an after-action investigation on potential war crimes or accurately account for the injured and dead. The Iran war disaster is a Republican disaster, one that should disqualify the party from holding power,” she wrote.

With the midterms approaching, Rubin said Democrats should pursue three responses if they gain control of one or both chambers of Congress. The prospect of a Democratic takeover of at least one chamber is historically common in a president's first midterm cycle, and the war could intensify that tendency if public opposition to the conflict continues to grow.

First, she said Democrats should end funding for what she called the illegal war. “Spending more U.S. taxpayers’ dollars, continuing to divert assets from other parts of the world, risking more lives, and adding to the cost of humanitarian, military, and economic reconstruction would compound the Republican debacle,” Rubin wrote. Congress has historically used its power of the purse to wind down military engagements, most notably in the case of Vietnam, when lawmakers eventually restricted funding for U.S. military operations.

Second, she called for extensive congressional hearings modeled on the Fulbright hearings that exposed lies, duplicity, and blunders tied to the Vietnam War. Those hearings, chaired by Senator J. William Fulbright in the 1960s and early 1970s, were instrumental in turning public opinion against the Vietnam War by publicly airing contradictions between official administration claims and on-the-ground reality. Rubin said those hearings should include testimony from active and retired military personnel under oath and draw on bipartisan expertise from previous administrations, including Trump’s first term. She said Congress should explain how Trump entered the war, misled the country, mismanaged the conflict, and botched post-hostility negotiations. Rubin added that the findings could, in some cases, justify impeachment or criminal referrals for perjury.

Third, Rubin said Trump’s Iran policy should prompt a full rewrite of the War Powers Act. The 1973 law, passed over President Richard Nixon's veto, was designed to check presidential war-making authority by requiring the president to notify Congress within 48 hours of deploying forces and to withdraw them within 60 days without congressional authorization — a timeline critics on both the left and right have long argued is too ambiguous and difficult to enforce. Rubin argued that the Constitution gives Congress the sole power to declare war and said the law should be changed to limit unilateral presidential control over military force. Under her proposal, if Congress fails to authorize ongoing deployment and fund operations after a brief emergency deployment period, the military engagement should end automatically. She said no further vote, joint resolution, or presidential sign-off should be required, and argued that such a system would make it harder for a president to drag the country into war without consultation or public debate.

Rubin concluded by urging voters to “hold those responsible for one of the worst foreign policy blunders in modern American history accountable for the damage they have caused.” She added that if Democrats benefit in the midterms, they should use the opportunity to rebalance power between the executive and legislative branches and stop spending money and resources in the Middle East in ways she said violate America’s deepest values and produce no tangible benefit.