Sen. Bernie Sanders is looking to put his colleagues on the spot over US weapons headed to Israel. The Vermont independent on Thursday is filing a series of resolutions to block roughly $658 million in planned munitions sales, according to his office, with Democratic Sens. Chris Van Hollen, Jeff Merkley, and Peter Welch signing on, Politico reports. Sanders said President Trump's administration notified lawmakers earlier this month that it planned to declare an emergency to bypass Congress and sell more than 20,000 bombs to Israel.
- "Given the horrific destruction that Israel's extremist government has wrought on Gaza, Iran, and Lebanon, the last thing in the world that American taxpayers need to do right now is to provide 22,000 new bombs to the Netanyahu government," Sanders said in a statement. "No more weapons to support an illegal war."
- Van Hollen accused President Trump of launching "an illegal, unjustified war of choice against Iran that is making our nation less, not more, safe and has set the region on fire." The president, he said, "not only disregarded Congressional authority to declare this war, he's now bypassing Congress by invoking an emergency authority to supply additional bombs to this war, a crisis of his own making."
Under Senate rules, the Foreign Relations Committee gets five calendar days to act on the resolutions; after that, Sanders and his allies can trigger a floor vote with a simple majority to pull them out of committee. The move is expected to force a difficult on-the-record decision for Democrats, as divisions over support for Israel sharpen in this year's primary contests, Politico notes.
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