The Senate votes 50-46 to block debate on the annual defence bill over war funding and defence cooperation with Israel.<\/p>\n
Democrats in the US Senate have blocked debate on an annual defence policy bill, objecting not only to President Donald Trump\u2019s war on Iran but also to provisions that would more closely integrate the United States and Israeli militaries.<\/p>\n
The Senate voted 50-46 on Tuesday, almost entirely along party lines, against opening debate on the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), in a rare setback for one of the legislature\u2019s few must-pass pieces of legislation.<\/p>\n
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The annual defence policy bill sought to authorise much of a $1.15 trillion military budget proposed by Trump. The motion needed 60 votes to advance in the 100-member Senate.<\/p>\n
Democrats argued that Congress should not move ahead with the legislation while Trump escalates the war on Iran. Some members of the party also objected to provisions that would deepen US military and intelligence cooperation with Israel, as well as the record size of the Pentagon budget.<\/p>\n
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer urged Democrats to oppose the bill, calling it \u201ca permission slip\u201d for the Trump administration to continue military operations against Iran without congressional oversight.<\/p>\n
\u201cRepublicans want the Senate to take up the NDAA \u2026 as though Congress can debate the nation\u2019s central national security bill while ignoring the nation\u2019s most urgent national security crisis,\u201d Schumer said before the vote. \u201cWe cannot.\u201d<\/p>\n
Outside Congress, a coalition of 14 civil liberty, foreign policy and antiwar organisations also urged lawmakers to oppose advancing the NDAA unless senators were guaranteed a vote on an amendment barring funding for what they described as Trump\u2019s unauthorised war against Iran.<\/p>\n
The coalition, which includes the American Civil Liberties Union, J Street, CODEPINK and Win Without War, argued Congress should use its constitutional \u201cpower of the purse\u201d to enforce its authority over decisions about war.<\/p>\n
But the war on Iran was only one of multiple reasons the bill has run into opposition.<\/p>\n
The version before the Senate has also triggered backlash over measures that would deepen US military and intelligence ties with Israel.<\/p>\n
One key provision would require the Pentagon to appoint an official to coordinate between the US and Israel on defence technology. That\u00a0would include joint weapons research, production and the integration of each country\u2019s technologies into the other\u2019s military systems.<\/p>\n
The provision also controversially calls for \u201cdata fusion\u201d, which Human Rights Watch defined in June as combining feeds from multiple sensors and intelligence sources into a single targeting picture.<\/p>\n
The group said the arrangement could see the US absorb Israeli intelligence that may have been collected through what it described as problematic mass surveillance programmes.<\/p>\n
A separate measure in the 2027 Intelligence Authorization Act, which is usually considered alongside the NDAA, would expand intelligence sharing with Israel.<\/p>\n
Democratic opposition<\/p>\n
Several Democratic senators, including Chris Van Hollen, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Ed Markey, Jeff Merkley and Peter Welch, urged other senators in a letter last week not to advance the NDAA before the measures could be debated.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs Senate Democrats, we should not be providing votes compelling [Trump] to deepen the US relationship with Netanyahu\u2019s extremist government,\u201d the senators wrote in a \u201cDear Colleague\u201d letter urging colleagues to oppose advancing the bill.<\/p>\n
In a video posted to X ahead of the vote, Van Hollen argued the bill would pave the way for a \u201cbloated budget\u201d for the Pentagon and place \u201cno restraints on Trump\u2019s illegal war against Iran\u201d. He also alluded to the provisions on Israel \u201cthat have gotten very little attention that are kind of crawling through quietly\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy would the United States Congress order the executive branch to share more intelligence, regardless of what the government of Israel is doing?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n
Senate Democrats\u2019 efforts reflect a broader shift within the Democratic Party, where support for Israel has cratered ahead of the November midterm elections.<\/p>\n
Israel\u2019s favourability rating among Democrats dropped from 59 percent in 2018 to 22 percent in May, according to a June Reuters\/Ipsos poll.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Senate votes 50-46 to block debate on the annual defence bill over war funding and defence cooperation…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":763224,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,12,2420,801,803,4379,3,111,21,19,22,20,25,1209,231941,24],"class_list":["post-763223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-donald-trump","tag-government","tag-iran","tag-israel","tag-military","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-us-canada","tag-us-israel-war-on-iran","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/763223","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=763223"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/763223\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/763224"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=763223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=763223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=763223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}