The Stack: Trump Gets Senate Green Light as Iran War Escalates
The U.S. Senate voted 53–47 to reject a resolution that would have limited President Trump’s authority in the escalating conflict with Iran. The vote signals that Congress has reviewed the situation and chosen not to restrain the administration’s actions—evidence, Todd argues, that the constitutional system is functioning exactly as designed.
In today’s Toddcast, Todd walks through the unusual political coalition behind the vote, including Senator Rand Paul (R) supporting the limitation effort and Senator John Fetterman (D) opposing it. The episode also explores new military developments in the region, including a rare submarine strike against an Iranian naval vessel.
But the bigger question isn’t simply how the war ends—it’s whether it’s won. Todd explains why negotiations may not be appropriate until a clear outcome is established and why history—from World War II to the present—shows the dangers of unresolved conflicts.
The episode concludes with a deeper look at leadership itself: why intelligence alone isn’t enough and why courage and character ultimately determine whether leaders act when the moment demands it.
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📝 Transcript: Trump Gets Senate Green Light as Iran War Escalates
The Todd Huff Show – March 5 , 2026
Host: Todd Huff
Todd Huff: Well, my friends, our government is functioning at least in regards to how it's handling the war, the conflict in and with Iran. It's working as intended as the Senate voted yesterday, voted yesterday to, well, they basically gave President Trump the green light to do what he's doing. They introduced legislation that was designed to rein in his power in the way that he was reacting to responding to war with Iran, and the Senate voted 53 to 47 to not limit him in that capacity. This is how it's supposed to work. And I know, I know that this is, again, to those who just hate Trump, who refuse to see things for how they are, they're not going to see it this way. They're not. Now, I know that there are some people who think that any action like this requires a declaration of a declaration of war, but Congress has stepped in. Congress has stepped in and said what the president is doing, it does not need to be reined in. This is their vote. Their discretion. This is their desire. And so it's not being stopped, and so it is working the way that it should work.
Todd Huff: By the way, there was one Republican who voted in favor of the resolution which would have limited President Trump and his ability to act. That was Rand Paul from Kentucky, and there was one Democrat who voted against the resolution, and that was John Fetterman, Democrat from Pennsylvania. And listen, I don't hate Rand Paul for his vote and I don't suddenly become a fan of Fetterman, although there's a lot of things. It sounds like Fetterman's the only one with any sense right now in the Senate who's a Democrat. So I want to talk about this today. There's other things I want to get to as well. My friends, thank you for tuning in today and checking in with the program.
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Todd Huff: Okay, so let's talk. Let's talk about this a little bit. Let's talk about where we are with the war, the conflict with Iran and all that is happening and what is trying to be done. Also, I want to say, I want to get to this as well. Every day, every day we have an in-depth email that goes out about the show that gives you links to the things that we've talked about. I call that the Stack of Stuff. The email also gives additional insight about things that sometimes I don't have time to talk about or get into as much as I would like.
Todd Huff: And I actually want to read one of those articles that I wrote yesterday because I think it's relevant to this conversation that we're having about leadership and what really matters, what leadership really is. At least one facet, I think one important facet of leadership, because we're experiencing a type of leadership that we haven't seen and experienced in this country for some time, in a long time really, and Trump is demonstrating and exhibiting that. And for the media and for the left they say, look how untraditional this is when in reality the reason it looks so dramatically different from everything else is it because it's an example of what's wrong and everything else being right? The truth is it's the example of what true leadership looks like when problems are being addressed, problems by the way that have been ignored for decades, in some cases a half century.
Todd Huff: So yesterday the Senate voted to limit Trump's authority against Iran. The resolution failed, as I mentioned here off the top. That means Congress made a choice. Congress made a choice. They had the power. They considered the options of whether or not they were going to limit the president, restrain him or not. They chose not to. Again, as I said off the top, this means the system is functioning. This is not Trump running amok. This is not Trump acting outside his constitutional authority. Congress had the ability to step in and to limit this and they did not.
Todd Huff: I mentioned the coalition was a little bit odd. Rand Paul votes to restrain the president. Democrat John Fetterman votes against restraining the president. Anyway, so that's kind of the facts. The media wants you to believe that we're living inside of a constitutional crisis, but Congress literally voted. Congress could have voted to limit the president's ability to take these actions or to limit the amount of time and begin to draw boundaries and borders as to where Trump could actually take this on his own and what Congress could basically set those limitations. So oversight is happening here as designed.
Todd Huff: This again is not an executive branch who's out there doing something that Congress is telling him to stop. That's not what's happening. Nothing here is unclear about the outcome of this vote. Sorry. I looked ahead of myself here and saw that I also wanted to mention that militarily what's some of the developments that's happening in Iran. Well not just in Iran. This is an example of something that happened in the Iranian conflict that actually happened off the coast of Sri Lanka in international water.
Todd Huff: So the United States has sunk an Iranian naval vessel. They used a 4.2 million dollar torpedo, shot this torpedo, fired this torpedo from a submarine and sunk this naval vessel in international waters off the coast of Sri Lanka. This is the first of its kind, first submarine sinking of a naval vessel of its kind since World War II, at least from the United States that's what's being claimed.
Todd Huff: This is the first of its kind, first submarine sinking of a naval vessel of its kind since World War II, at least from the United States that's what's being claimed. There's another sinking of a naval vessel that was done by the British in the 80s, but nonetheless it's a rare sort of thing whether it goes back to World War II or not, but that's one of the claims that's out there. So that's happened. We know that Iran is trying to harm Israel in retaliation, harm U.S. interests, U.S. military bases. They killed six U.S. military personnel earlier this week. They are basically trying to make as much trouble as they can in the region and to demonstrate that the United States can't protect everybody, hit U.S. interests, and they're really flailing. They're just trying to create as much problems for as many nations as possible all the while being who they are, which is this radical group of people who've had, metaphorically, the head chopped off of their leadership.
Todd Huff: And now in a lot of ways they know just one thing and that is to wreak havoc, that is to cause death and destruction. And it's escalating in senses, but it's also that they've lost a lot of command and control capabilities and they're in a world of hurt. In fact, as Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said, I think it was yesterday, that the United States and Israel are winning this dramatically. Yesterday Karoline Leavitt was asked about ground troops being sent to Iran. The White House has said that that is not currently under discussion. However, they are not being ruled out. Now this is how Trump does this.
Todd Huff: I remember back when Trump was running for office and I remember talking about these things. You remember Trump talking about he would be asked a question about, I don't remember specifically, but it was how would you handle, I don't know if it was Putin in Russia, I don't know if it was Kim Jong Un in North Korea, I don't know if it was the Iranians, but it was some conflict like one of those conflicts. And Trump says look, why would I tell you that? Respectfully here I'm not going to tell you my strategy, how I would handle this. Because newsflash, that message is going to get to the people that we're trying to strategize against. I'm not going to tell you that.
Todd Huff: Our leaders are stupid for declaring these things and drawing all these lines in the sand and saying we're not going to do this, we're not going to do that, and you give the enemy a heads up. You give the enemy a strategic advantage, an advantage in knowing what you're willing to do. Trump says I'm not going to do that. So that's what this is. This is Trump simply saying nothing's being taken off the table. Because if I start taking things off the table that gives my enemy an advantage. And we have a war to win here. Pete Hegseth by the way said that the United States was winning decisively. I don't know if I used that word decisively, but we're winning bigly in this battle, this war with Iran.
Todd Huff: War is ugly and all that, but again as we talked about yesterday there's a time. There is a time when evil is at the threshold of having nuclear weapons combined with ballistic missiles that have the capability of delivering a nuclear weapon almost anywhere on the planet. At least many places on the planet, eventually anywhere on the planet as we have that capability here in the United States. When you have that combination and you have the people in the country, this evil empire in Iran, the leaders who have expressed the desire to wipe Israel off the face of the planet and of course would love to take the United States out as well, at some point it becomes malpractice. It becomes political malpractice not to do something.
Todd Huff: Now you can argue that it wasn't to that point, but we're certainly moving towards it. And the reason we're here is because there have been numerous examples of presidents, numerous examples of instances where the Iranian government has not been stopped. They've been ignored, they've not been taken seriously. There wasn't a political will to deal with it. I don't know, any number of things, but here we are. Here we are. And it looks extreme now because it was incredibly passive and it has been incredibly passive the way that we've dealt with Iran and threats like this around the world over the decades.
Todd Huff: Now I am not someone who wants to see war. I'm actually a guy who believes that we shouldn't be in war. But at some point you reach again a threshold. You reach the point where the enemy has decided that there's going to be death. And responsible leaders, once an enemy reaches that point and once they are close to having the capacity, the capability of carrying those things out, they've made the decision that there will be destruction and death. The job of leaders is to say look that's not going to be our people. They're the ones that want this. We have to strike, and that's my assessment of what's happened here.
Todd Huff: Now there's also news out there that Iran, this was reported at CNN. Iran is reportedly trying to seek negotiations, but it appears if the article is accurate, which who knows if that's the case it's coming from CNN, but if the article is accurate the U.S. is basically saying go pound sand. We're not here to negotiate. And that's another important thing to keep in mind here. We have to win this war. I remember Rush talking about these things. You can't negotiate in instances like this until there is a clear winner.
Todd Huff: You don't negotiate with your enemy until you basically, if it's reached this point, you have to say here are the terms. I'm reminded of what happened in World War II as the United States, the Allied forces began to drive the Japanese back in the South Pacific reclaiming those islands the Japanese had taken. And by the way that was brutal. They were dug in there. Their understanding, their cultural view of honor was one that said that they were going to basically die. They weren't going to give up and surrender and it was ugly in the South Pacific. It was bad.
Todd Huff: I mean that's where flamethrowers were used to flush out where they had basically established themselves in trenches and they were fortified in these islands and machine gun posts and so forth. And it was horrible fighting. In fact that's ultimately the reason the United States decided to use the atomic bomb in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They did the calculations. They hadn't surrendered. They refused to surrender. Unconditional surrender.
Todd Huff: They refused to surrender. Unconditional surrender. We're pushing them back to the Japanese mainland. And they refuse to have an unconditional surrender. We did some analysis. We realized the number of casualties that we would take on and our forces as we push them back and basically took over and just beat them into submission basically. And it was a lot of people that were going to be wounded and killed that were American soldiers. And that's when Truman decided there's going to be a lot of death. It's the same thing. There's going to be a lot of deaths. I am trying to tell them to have an unconditional surrender. They refuse to accept it. They want to fight to the death.
Todd Huff: So now I have to choose who. They've already decided people are going to die. Now my choices are those deaths going to primarily be Japanese citizens and soldiers or are they going to be American lives. And Truman opted for the former to make those casualties almost exclusively Japanese by dropping the atomic bomb. A terrible decision. A terrible thing that happened. Awful to think about. But that's how we got there. In a similar fashion here. In a similar fashion they, the Iranian regime, have decided that there will be death. There will be destruction.
Todd Huff: Listen. Gone through this. The establishment of a regional caliphate or a worldwide caliphate. This is the opposite of freedom and liberty. What they want. They cannot be allowed to have power. Especially a nuclear weapon. And so you're going to have unconditional… I don't know what this is going to look like, how far we're going to take it, but I am encouraged in the sense of war against terrible. I don't like this. But this is a war that the Iranians started. This, dare I say, is a war that the Iranians have been fighting for a long time through their proxies that we haven't fought back against or fought back directly and addressed the problem head on.
Todd Huff: So we reportedly told them to go pound sand when it comes to negotiations. We're going to keep killing your people. Your leaders. Not your people. Your leaders. The people that you are trying to pull up to replace the leaders that we've taken out. We're telling the people of Iran this is your opportunity to overthrow your government. We need your help. This is for your benefit. You need to live freely. This is your chance to break the chains of oppression that have been shackled to you by these maniacal ayatollahs and so forth.
Todd Huff: And so that's the direction that this is going. Not going to negotiate. We're hoping to annihilate and to replace. We'll see what happens here. And again this is not, I don't think we're headed to United States directly doing the regime change. They're fighting the regime that's causing the problem and telling the people to create your own regime. Right. Find your new leadership and get your new government in order. That's where this is headed where it is currently.
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Todd Huff: So we know ending a war is not the same thing as winning a war. And that's where I got to stop as I glance down at the clock and realize I'm out of time in our first segment. So time is up for me this segment. Quick time out my friends. You're listening here to Conservative, Not Bitter Talk. I'm your host Todd Huff. Back here in just a minute.
Todd Huff: So war should be avoided at all cost. But once you enter the war there are some who just want to end it. Of course we want to end it but we want to end it in a way so that we prevent the problems that currently exist or that existed at the beginning of this conflict. We want those to be different at the end of the conflict. We can't just have this initial eruption of military violence and all this and then it stops. We allow them to pick up the pieces and quickly rebuild and take us right back to where we were on the eve of the war, the conflict to begin with.
Todd Huff: So there's a difference between just ending a war and winning a war. And we have to win the war. Regimes, when a war is just ended, a regime can survive and rebuild. Iran has a pattern of delay rebuilding. Dragging their feet. Just not complying with rules, crossing lines just enough like with the IAEA inspections and so forth. Crossing the line enough to where it causes delays and aggravation with the international community but not enough to really hold them accountable at least the way that the international community works and so forth.
Todd Huff: And so they know how to play the game. They know how to evade detection. They know how to keep themselves from being held accountable. It is clear that this regime cannot be allowed to continue. Now we again don't want to be the ones who are involved in directly picking a new team of leadership or a new government. What we want is for people to uprise in the nation of Iran and establish their own government outside of something being forced upon them which is what happened with the Iranian revolution back in 1979.
Todd Huff: A lot of people however wanted that. Of course they jumped from the frying pan directly into the fire back in those days. So it's a complicated thing. This is a war that has to be won though. Infrastructure has to be obliterated to the point that it cannot return quickly. And ideally we would have different people running the show not just the same structure of government where the ayatollahs and a new face, a new name, has the role of supreme leader instead. A new government that we can at least work with or have some degree of faith in that they're not going to pursue this nuclear weapons capability and so forth.
Todd Huff: And we ultimately don't want this to be repeated in six months. Right. That's the way to look at this. So some people might wonder if they want negotiations why wouldn't we talk. Well I would say we have talked. I would say that we have talked until we are blue in the face about Iran. We had the Iranian nuclear deal that Obama negotiated back in 2016. This has been a long… I remember talking about that.
Todd Huff: I remember talking about that comparing that to the pinky promise that Bill Clinton got. Pinky promise and a signed sheet of paper by the North Koreans promising to not develop nuclear weapons. And lo and behold they ended up having nuclear weapons. And you can see how that changed. For those of you that have followed history and that part of the world you can see how North Korea acquiring a nuclear weapon changed the geopolitical landscape of Southeast Asia whenever they got that.
Todd Huff: I mean provocative. They raise their head up every once in a while to cause problems as well. And having a nuclear weapon is a major destabilizing factor when it comes to parts of the world that are trying to live at peace with one another at least most of them are. And you have a madman with a nuclear weapon or in the case of Iran mad men with a nuclear weapon.
Todd Huff: We've talked and talked and talked. They've lied and lied and lied. They've chanted death to America, death to Israel. They've promised that Israel would be wiped off the face of the planet if only they could acquire nuclear weapons. There's nothing left to talk about. They have exposed themselves for who they are. They are an evil empire. They cannot be trusted. No matter how many times we tell them no nuclear weapons they're constantly working in pursuit of that.
Todd Huff: They have proxy wars that they've been fighting against the United States and against our allies in the region through multiple places whether that be Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis. You name it. Iran is right there front and center. They're a state sponsor of terrorism basically. Just think of that as a major contributor to terrorist organizations. That's an approved method for how to handle the international community in the eyes of the ayatollahs in Iran.
Todd Huff: They tried to assassinate the President of the United States. What do you mean what is there left to talk about. Listen again I don't like war but they are the ones who started this. We have to face the reality of what we're dealing with and we have to win this war.
Todd Huff: Now when we think about the Iranian people there's a difference. There's the regime, the ayatollahs, the people who are causing this problem, and then there's the population. These people have been repressed and oppressed and harmed and had their freedoms trampled upon and denied by the ayatollahs. They've been forced under the heavy hand of the Islamic regime, Sharia law forced upon these people. They don't have freedom. They have a very heavy-handed government that tells them how to live their lives and if they don't there will be consequences to bear.
Todd Huff: They have dealt with this for a long, long time. Protest movements have popped up over cycles. We talked about that yesterday. The cycles. There's protests that pop up. The Iranian government drops the hammer. They shut down the internet. They go after folks who are trying to oppose the regime, who are trying to protest in the streets and garner support to overthrow the government or challenge it or whatever.
Todd Huff: And these people are repeatedly crushed. And there's again estimates that as many as 36,000 people have been killed by the government in Iran since December when the latest uprising took place. Now this is a massive moment of vulnerability for the ayatollahs, for the regime. They are scrambling. They are hiding now.
Todd Huff: They met, I referenced this yesterday, there's a term, the meeting of the experts or something like that to pick their next leaders because 49 of them had been killed. They had met to convene to begin to pick leadership and the United States and Israel targeted that building as well. I don't know if we got some of those folks there or not. But we're watching them. This is not going away.
Todd Huff: We are committed here at least to take out a certain number of the highly dangerous leadership of this regime and that is different from the people. They have an opportunity. The people of Iran, we the international community, specifically the United States and Israel here, there's a window of opportunity for the calculus to change in Iran.
Todd Huff: There's external pressure. They've had massive military losses. Internally there's chaos. They don't have leadership. The people are uprising. And so the Iranian people ultimately have to be successful here in removing the regime.
Todd Huff: We're not going to go in and institute regime change. I think the United States learned its lesson from that kind of talk earlier in the 2000s. But the recipe is there. The recipe is there.
Todd Huff: So that's where I need to pause and I want to tie this to something I mentioned earlier. I said I was going to spend the last segment talking about something we wrote yesterday in the Inner Circle about leadership and how we got to this point.
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Todd Huff: Welcome back my friends. Third and final segment of this Todd Huff Show today on this Thursday. Ever wish you had a whole team to help manage your financial life. Boy that sounds nice doesn't it.
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Todd Huff: All right friends we've made some improvements, adjustments here technologically speaking here at the program. We have a new number that you can text anytime. Text with your thoughts. I used to say thoughts, questions, feedback. Always of course sprinkle in the appropriate amounts of adoration and praise. I'm kidding. But not exactly.
Todd Huff: We've got a new number that you can text with those questions and that number my friends is 317-785-1030. You can send messages anytime to that even if we're not asking. You can ask questions. You can whatever. This is going to be our central hub.
Todd Huff: If you want to sign up for the Inner Circle, which is totally free, it's an email that goes out about five o'clock Eastern every day with information, background about the program, source articles, things that I've written and additional content that I couldn't get to on the program.
Todd Huff: You can subscribe simply by texting the word TRUTH to that number. Again text TRUTH to 317-785-1030.
Todd Huff: Here's what I want to read from yesterday's Inner Circle. Headline here, title I should say, Smart Isn't Enough.
Todd Huff: Leadership is often framed as an intellectual exercise, a matter of strategy, analysis and intelligence. And to be clear intelligence matters. It always has. But intelligence alone has never been enough to lead. Leadership is less about how smart someone is and more about whether they possess the strength of character required to follow through on what they already know needs to be done.
Todd Huff: Over the years we've seen plenty of intelligent people in positions of authority who lacked that second piece. They could analyze problems endlessly. They could talk through scenarios, risks and probabilities. But when the moment arrived that required decisive action they hesitated. They balked. They stopped short of what needed to be done.
Todd Huff: In many ways it's why we find ourselves facing many of the geopolitical challenges we see today including the long-running situation with Iran. Problems that should have been confronted decisively years ago lingered, compounded and became more difficult with time.
Todd Huff: I remember when I was in college hearing classmates argue that Hillary Clinton was the smartest woman in the world and that this alone made her the most qualified person to be president. Leaving aside the obvious question how would anyone even measure something like that and how could they possibly conclude Hillary held that title.
Todd Huff: It misses a much more important point. Is intelligence really the defining trait of leadership. Think about your own experience. How many times did leadership require some complex sophisticated strategy. It happens occasionally. But how many times did it simply require the resolve to do what everyone already knew needed to be done.
Todd Huff: In my experience the latter is true the vast majority of the time. Leith Anderson said leadership is figuring out what needs done and doing it.
Todd Huff: We tend to assume the magic lies in the first half of that equation. The figuring it out part. It appeals to our ego. It makes leadership feel like a puzzle only the brilliant can solve.
Todd Huff: But the truth is that the real test of leadership lies in the second half. As Nike says just do it. That's the part that requires courage, resolve, character. And those qualities far more than raw intelligence are what determine whether someone actually leads or simply occupies the position.
Todd Huff: So firmly believe in that my friends. That's actually a core principle, a core belief that I have. Leadership is more about character and having the resolve to do what we know needs to be done and having the strength to see it through than it is about figuring it out in some sophisticated fashion.
Todd Huff: So if you want to get the newsletter for free text TRUTH to 317-785-1030. I gotta go. SDG.
