[1] Since its passage in 2001, U.S. presidents have interpreted their authority under the AUMF to extend beyond al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan to apply to numerous other groups as well as other geographic locales, due to the act's omission of any specific area of operations.

[2] In December 2016, the Office of the President published a brief interpreting the AUMF as providing congressional authorization for the use of force against al-Qaeda and other militant groups.

[5] The only representative to vote against the authorization in 2001 was Barbara Lee, who has consistently criticized it since for being a blank check giving the government unlimited powers to wage war without debate.

[6] Business Insider has reported that the AUMF has been used to allow military deployment in Afghanistan, the Philippines, Georgia, Yemen, Djibouti, Kenya, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Iraq, and Somalia.

In 2007, the AUMF was cited by the Department of Justice in ACLU v. NSA as authority for engaging in electronic surveillance without obtaining a warrant of the special court as required by the Constitution.

[12] On June 29, 2017, a group of libertarian Republicans and Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee approved Barbara Lee's amendment to end the 2001 authorization within 240 days.

[15] In November 2019, the AUMF was supposed to be grounds for the occupation of Kurdish-controlled Syrian oilfields, as the Trump administration sought legal authorization to maintain a presence in the area.

[16] General Mark Miley, as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified in June 2021 that "2001 AUMF is the one we need to hang on to…it is the critical one for us to continue operations".

The countries that were mentioned in the report included Afghanistan, Cuba (Guantanamo Bay), Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Georgia, Iraq, Kenya, Libya, the Philippines, Somalia, Syria and Yemen.

[22][23] Both Republican and Democratic senators have led calls to repeal the AUMF, especially after the Biden administration's escalation of military campaigns in Somalia since 2021.