April 11, 2026—Despite enormous and ugly pressure from the Pentagon in the United States, His Holiness Pope Leo XIV has held steadfast for peace. He has called on all people of good will and all faiths, or no faith, to join in a day of prayer for peace on April 11. Dioceses in at least forty nations are answering the call. We in the United States uniquely have the capability to bring this war to an end.
While sadly there are too many wars raging on this planet, the latest war, the war of choice launched by the United States and Israel, has the greatest danger of becoming a nuclear conflagration. This war of aggression, launched on February 28, has already claimed the lives of thousands of Iranian and Lebanese civilians, including nearly 200 young girls at a school in Minab, Iran. Not less than thirteen Americans have also died in this senseless act of unprovoked violence.
As an independent presidential candidate, (and long-time associate of the late American statesman Lyndon LaRouche) who is deeply disturbed by the grip of the Epstein class on the leadership of both parties, including on the current occupant of the White House, I was greatly relieved to be reminded by constitutional law expert Bruce Fein that it is the Congress, (whose members are all up for election this November), that holds the power of the purse. They can end this war by cutting off the funding.
We Americans have a special responsibility for the origin of this war, and we also have the power to stop it. We have been called into action by an American Pope.
Twice within the five weeks of this war, the Congress has shamefully abdicated its responsibility by refusing to pass a War Powers Resolution and cut the funding.
Attorney Bruce Fein reminds us that in 1973 the U.S. Congress voted to end the funding of the Vietnam War. President Nixon vetoed that resolution, and Congress overrode his veto with a two-thirds majority vote, and that is how the Vietnam War was brought to an end, but only after two million Vietnamese and 57,000 Americans had lost their lives. We must not wait so long this time.
Fein wrote, “The Continuing Appropriations Resolution for FY1974 (H.J. Res. 636, P.L. 93-52), signed by President Richard Nixon on July 1, 1973, prohibited expenditures to conduct combat operations ‘in or over or from off the shores of North Vietnam, South Vietnam, Laos or Cambodia’ after August 15, 1973. That funding termination put the nail in the coffin to the gratuitous, trillion-dollar war precipitated by the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which was itself predicated on a lie about a second North Vietnamese torpedo attack on twin United States destroyers.”
Fein has also given us the language of an appropriate resolution to be passed by the Congress immediately now: “No monies of the United States may be expended to conduct combat operations against Iran without a congressional declaration of war or in self-defense in response to an Iranian invasion of the United States. Further, no member of the United States Armed Forces may be deployed to undertake combat against Iran absent a prior congressional declaration of war or in self-defense to an unprovoked actual attack on the United States.”
As we pray for peace, let us also pray for the strength to move the hearts of our representatives. The United States Congress could end this war with an emergency vote tomorrow. It is up to us, the American people, to cause them to do this.
Call your representatives, Visit their offices. Send emails. Let them know that we know that they are responsible for this war.
The United States Capitol switchboard is (202) 224-3121.