US House Blocks Arms Sales to Saudi Arabia and UAE In Rebuke to Trump

The House voted on Wednesday to block President Donald Trump’s emergency weapon sales to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, delivering a rebuke to U.S. strategic allies over their involvement in Yemen’s civil war and alleged human rights abuses.

Trump has already threatened to veto all three resolutions, which passed the Democrat-led House with minimal Republican support.

But with Wednesday’s votes, lawmakers in the House and Senate — which approved the bills last month — again registered their disapproval of the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi and the Trump administration’s perfunctory response to it.

The votes also exposed Democratic and Republican lawmakers’ ongoing clashes with the president over his efforts to subvert congressional authority on foreign policy and national security issues, in addition to bipartisan anger over U.S. support for the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen’s bloody civil war.

“A phony emergency — an emergency designed to make yet another end run around Congress, to undermine the separation of powers, to trample on this body’s constitutional duties,” said Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.), the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. (end of excerpt)

Click here for the full story, on the Politico website.

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