In December, the Senate successfully passed a War Powers Act resolution
calling for the end to US support for the Saudi War in Yemen. The House
leadership at the time refused to allow a vote, but with the Democrats
now the leadership, such a resolution is expected to be voted on in the next six weeks.
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), one of the authors of the House version, says it
will be identical to the Senate version. The Senate will also have to
re-vote, as a new Senate was seated since the last vote, though 51
senators who voted for the last bill are still seated.
It is widely expected, then, that both houses of Congress will
successfully pass War Powers challenges to the Yemen War, though they
say the exact timing may be unclear because of the government’s
shutdown.
Even then, there is an expectation that President Trump will veto the
measure. This would be a politically difficult veto for the president,
as the War Powers Act is explicitly meant to give Congress oversight of
US wars, and a veto would effectively be the president overriding
Congress on refusing to back a war that was illegally launched in the
first place.
Why would a non-interventionist peace president veto a bill that could end the intervention and lead to peace?
I’m not as sure of Senate passage. It’s not unusual behavior for houses of Congress to provide cover for grandstanding for each other. That is, it passed in the Senate knowing that the House would kill it. Now the Senate can return the favor and vote against it because harrumph harrumph harrumph. The ways of the War Party are mysterious.
Or, just maybe, war weariness and the failure of military adventures will cause a change, trump or no.