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Part of: January 6 & the Trump Relationship

Dispatch

'President Trump has won the war, time to exit': Mace breaks with Trump on Iran and signals she'll vote with Democrats

On March 26, 2026, Rep. Nancy Mace told Axios that 'War with Iran needs to end. President Trump has won the war, time to exit,' and signaled she would 'most likely' vote with House Democrats on the next war powers resolution constraining the Iran war. She told Axios by text she was 'not voting to send South Carolina's sons and daughters into battle to die for the price of oil,' and warned on CNN that continuing the war could cost Republicans in the midterms. Political Wire summed the day up as 'Trump Loses Nancy Mace on the Iran War.'

'President Trump has won the war, time to exit': Mace breaks with Trump on Iran and signals she'll vote with Democrats

A day after she walked out of a classified Iran briefing (see 'Another Iraq'), Rep. Nancy Mace made the break explicit. On March 26, 2026, she told Axios the war should end and that she was prepared to cross the aisle to force the issue, a striking position for a member who had spent the campaign season calling herself "Trump in high heels."

Reporting credit: This was an Axios scoop, Axios, "Scoop: Nancy Mace eyes break with GOP on Iran war powers vote" (March 26, 2026), and corroborated by The Western Journal, Political Wire, and The Independent / inkl.

In her statement to Axios, Mace credited Trump with victory and then called for the exit in the same breath:

"War with Iran needs to end. President Trump has won the war, time to exit.", Nancy Mace, to Axios, March 26, 2026

Axios reported that Mace said she would "most likely" vote for House Democrats' resolution to constrain Trump from continuing the war the next time it came to the floor, a reversal from the March 5 war powers vote, when she had voted with Republicans to defeat such a measure.

She put the stakes in the bluntest possible terms in a text message to Axios:

"I'm not voting to send South Carolina's sons and daughters into battle to die for the price of oil.", Nancy Mace, text message to Axios, March 26, 2026

Mace's "price of oil" line, rendered as a Maceopedia quote card

Mace's text to Axios, March 26, 2026.

The midterm warning

In a CNN segment headlined "Enormous cost," Mace tied the war to her party's prospects in November. As reported by CNN, she argued that continuing the war could cost Republicans in the midterms, and that the minute there is a single U.S. boot on the ground in Iran, Americans who support the war will change their minds. (CNN's video page is the source for this characterization; the network does not make the clip embeddable off-site, so it is linked below.)

Watch: "I haven't seen an exit strategy yet"

The closest verified, embeddable recording from the same stretch is Mace's own CBS News interview, in which she presses the exit-strategy point directly:

Video: CBS News, "Rep. Nancy Mace shares concerns about Iran war: 'I haven't seen an exit strategy yet,'" March 26, 2026 (the network's official upload).

Context

Political Wire headlined the day "Trump Loses Nancy Mace on the Iran War." The break came in the middle of Mace's run for South Carolina governor. Two months later, on May 29, 2026, Trump endorsed her rival Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette, and on June 9 Mace finished fifth in the Republican primary (see On CNN's board, anchors can't find Mace). She had publicly attributed the endorsement snub to her Epstein-files vote; her Iran posture was the other open break with Trump running through the same period.

Sources & related coverage:

'President Trump has won the war, time to exit': Mace breaks with Trump on Iran and signals she'll vote with Democrats: image 1