Iran war ceasefire tested as cargo ship catches fire and Kuwait and UAE repel drone attacks

The reason is to skirt checks and balances and build autocracy. The balance of powers was meant to be that Congress orders military action, the president executes that military action. Over time presidents abused this system to start wars without authorization, usually just refusing to call it a war. Then the *War Powers Act* was put in. The president has to tell congress they started military action, and has 60 days before congress gives them approval. If they don't get it, then they have 30 more days to pull out. A lot of presidents managed to get their way using this, but had to be clever. They managed to build a convincing enough case during that window to get their approval. This war is so unnecessary and horribly mismanaged that they don't think they'll get that extension. So what they're trying to do is just the same "we're not at war" bullshit. The old rules said congress gets to declare war. So the president just started a fight and refused to call it war. The new excuse is that they have a ceasefire, which they are trying to claim means their 60 days aren't up yet, it's "paused". The second part of it is to abuse the caveat added to the war powers act. The caveat is that the president doesn't need authorization if the United States or it's military is attacked. Other presidents have also tried to abuse this by playing chicken to give themselves this excuse. TL;DR the president hopes to claim his 60 days aren't up because of the ceasefire. And if they doesn't work, they'll use the most recent Iranian strike to claim they were attacked while at peace, which gives him the right to attack Iran.

to keep from asking congress for money

Typically the end of the war. The Treaty of ___