No declaration of war since 1941 is the constitutional point John Kiriakou rested on when asked, on 22 October 2025, whether Congress would ever assert its right to oversee the military action then being prepared against Venezuela.
The question and the answer
The host set out the situation: war powers are assigned exclusively to Congress under the Constitution but have been whittled away for two centuries, and the president was now deploying ten thousand troops and killing Venezuelan nationals at sea without consulting anybody — not the full Congress, and not even the gang of eight.[1][2]
Asked whether Congress would reassert itself once back in session, Kiriakou gave the shortest answer available. “Absolutely not. Absolutely, positively not.” Told that this is dangerous, he agreed: “it’s very dangerous.”[3]
The date
The evidence he offers is a single fact. “Congress, of course, has the constitutional responsibility to declare war. Congress has not declared any war since December the 8th, 1941.”[3]
The number of declarations in American history was put at five in the exchange, and Kiriakou accepted it.[3]
The workaround
He then names the mechanism that replaced the declaration, using the clearest case. “Even before the first Gulf War, they didn’t vote to declare war on Iraq. They voted to authorize the use of force.”[4]
The exchange continues to the post-2001 authorisation, described as the instrument every subsequent president has used to do whatever he wants — a characterisation Kiriakou does not dispute, and which he summarises in his own words: “our country is in shambles right now, policy-wise. It really is.”[4]
Where he places the blame
Crucially, he does not locate the failure in the presidency. “And you know, I don’t blame Donald Trump. Donald Trump is the stressor. I blame all the institutions that are supposed to serve as checks and balances” — the opposition party, the legislature, and increasingly the courts.[5]
That placement is the reason the 1941 date matters to him. A Congress that has not exercised the power in more than eight decades has not lost it to any particular president; it has, on his account, put it down.