Evizda

Peace advocates and progressives applauded Thursday as the Senate approved resolutions to block the Trump administration from using emergency authority to bypass Congress and allow more than $8 billion in weapons sales to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which are leading a war on Yemen.

“Congress is forcing the president to either stop arming countries that are using U.S. weapons to starve the people of Yemen, or issue more vetoes and defend the indefensible.”
—Paul Kawika Martin, Peace Action

The GOP-controlled Senate considered 22 resolutions of disapproval—one for each weapons contract the administration tried to push through.

A small number of Senate Republicans joined with Democrats to pass the measures: 20 that were voted on collectively passed 51-45, and the other two passed 53-45. See the full roll call votes here. The resolutions now head to the Democrat-held House, where they are expected to pass.

Although President Donald Trump may veto the resolutions if they reach his desk—as he did in April with a War Powers resolution approved by Congress—critics of U.S. complicity in the Saudi and UAE coalition’s war in Yemen still welcomed the Senate votes as, in the words of Peace Action’s Paul Kawika Martin, “yet another rebuke to this administration’s reckless foreign policy in the Middle East.”

By approving these resolutions, Martin said Thursday, “Congress is forcing the president to either stop arming countries that are using U.S. weapons to starve the people of Yemen, or issue more vetoes and defend the indefensible. If Trump does veto these resolutions, Congress should vote to override in order to help bring the terrible war in Yemen to an end.”

A group of lawmakers led by Sens. Bob Menedez (D-N.J.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) started working together to block the weapons sales in late May, when the Trump administration confirmed that it planned to exploit a loophole in the Arms Export Control Act to allow U.S. weapons companies to export arms to members of the Saudi and UAE-led coalition slaughtering and starving Yemeni civilians.