The Senate yesterday voted to turn a $741bn defence authorisation bill into law over President Donald Trump’s objections, delivering the first successful veto override of his presidency in the waning days of his administration.
The 81 to 13 vote in the Senate came just days after the House also voted in overwhelming numbers to back the legislation, despite Mr Trump’s repeated protests. It takes two-thirds of each chamber to override a presidential veto.
The strong bipartisan majorities supporting the defence bill in both chambers represent a significant rebuke of the president, as it contains several repudiations of his policies as commander in chief.
The bill contains new restrictions on how much of the military’s construction budget the president may move by emergency order – a direct response to Mr Trump’s efforts to divert billions of the Pentagon’s dollars toward the border wall. It also limits the president’s ability to draw down troop levels in Germany, South Korea and Afghanistan – a move Mr Trump had planned over the objections of members of his own party.
In his veto statement last month, Mr Trump included the measure’s restrictions on troop deployments high on his list of grievances with the legislation.
He also objected to the bill’s mandate to the Pentagon to change the names of installations honouring members of the Confederacy. And he complained that the legislation did not include a repeal of a completely unrelated law – Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act – that gives technology companies certain liability protections from content third parties post to their websites.
Mr Trump has taken aim at Section 230 as part of a larger campaign against social media companies like Facebook, Twitter and Google, which he has accused of harbouring anti-conservative bias.
The president didn’t immediately comment on yesterday’s override of his veto, tweeting instead to remind his supporters about an upcoming rally in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, to coincide with Congress’s planned certification of the 2020 electoral college results.
Supporters of the president in the House and Senate have pledged to object to the results, ensuring a drawn-out process that will ultimately have no effect on the outcome.