ARMS-WEAPONS/SAUDI ARABIA/SENATE/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “The Senate voted to block the sale of billions of dollars of munitions to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates on Thursday [6-20-19], in a sharp and bipartisan rebuke of the Trump administration’s attempt to circumvent Congress to allow the exports by declaring an emergency over Iran. In three back-to-back votes, Republicans joined Democrats to register their growing anger with the administration’s use of emergency power to cut lawmakers out of national security decisions, as well as the White House’s unflagging support for the Saudis despite congressional pressure to punish Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman after the killing in October of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi. A United Nations report released Wednesday [6-19-19] made the most authoritative case to date that responsibility for the killing and its cover-up lies at the highest levels of the Saudi royal court. No other foreign policy issue has created as large a rift between President Trump and Congress, and the vote to block the arms sales deepens the divide.”
–Catie Edmondson, “Senate Votes to Block Trump’s Arms Sales to Gulf Nations in Bipartisan Rebuke,” The New York Times online, June 20, 2019