Senate seeks to tie Trump’s hands on war powers with vote to end military role in Yemen
The vote to end US support for the Saudi coalition in Yemen deals another blow to Riyadh, but it’s also an effort by liberals to curtail the president’s war-making authority.
The Senate voted 54-46 today to end US support for the Saudi-led coalition fighting Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels, the third time Congress has done so since December.
The resolution is but the latest bipartisan rebuke of Saudi Arabia over the humanitarian crisis in Yemen and the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
It now goes to the Democratic-controlled House, where its expected passage would mark the first time Congress has successfully used the 1973 War Powers Act to try to curtail a foreign military intervention. Liberal Democrats hope to set an expansive precedent that would maximize Congress’ power to curtail US military activity abroad.
“We have the opportunity to cast the historical vote which will end the most horrific war on the planet right now, where 85,000 kids have already starved to death, and stop following the lead of a despotic, murderous regime in Saudi Arabia,” Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., the resolution’s author, told reporters before the vote. “Lastly and not leastly important, the United States Congress is going to reassert its constitutional responsibility over issues of war that has been abdicated to presidents — Democrats and Republicans — for too many years.”
