The Senate voted 49-50 on Thursday to kill a war powers resolution that would have ordered President Trump to pull U.S. forces out of the fight with Iran, leaving the six-month-old conflict without a congressional check just weeks before voters head to the polls. The measure needed a simple majority and missed it by one vote, in what several lawmakers called their last realistic chance to go on record on the war before November.

Four Republicans crossed the aisle to support the resolution: Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky, Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Thom Tillis of North Carolina. Tillis said his vote was triggered by the calendar as much as conscience — CBS News reported he pointed to the 60 days that had elapsed since the administration formally notified Congress in July that it was resuming military action, a deadline built into the 1973 War Powers Resolution. One Democrat, Pennsylvania's John Fetterman, voted with Republicans to sink it. The House had already passed its version, 214-208, back in July.

A Vote With No Teeth, But Plenty of Sting

Because it's a concurrent resolution, the measure never would have reached Trump's desk for a signature or veto — its power was symbolic, not binding. But the symbolism landed anyway. The strikes that started the war in February have since pushed the U.S. military into an open confrontation in the Strait of Hormuz, and the Pentagon has confirmed 19 American service members killed since fighting began, according to figures cited in NBC News's account of the vote. Gas, diesel, fertilizer and grocery prices have all climbed as shipping through the strait has been disrupted, a squeeze Republican leadership acknowledged even as they moved to block the resolution.

"Congress has the constitutional power to declare war, not the president," said Sen. Tim Kaine, the resolution's lead sponsor, urging colleagues to "listen to the 18 families who've lost loved ones."

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, for his part, framed the backlash in economic rather than moral terms, saying the pressure lawmakers are feeling is "an economic frustration" and that he hopes "the administration is laser-focused on trying to get the strait open, get the shipping lanes opened up." The vote came just days after Trump used his United Nations address to vow the U.S. would "annihilate" Iran if it didn't abandon its nuclear ambitions, a line Democrats invoked repeatedly during floor debate.

Public polling cited during the debate found 62% of voters see the war as not worth the cost, with a majority saying they're more likely to back a candidate who opposes it — numbers that explain why, as NPR's reporting on the vote noted, this is likely the last time the full Senate weighs in on the war before Election Day. Democrats have already signaled they'll keep hammering vulnerable Republicans over the vote on the campaign trail, betting that a war with no exit and rising prices at the pump will do more damage at the ballot box than the resolution itself could ever have done at the White House.