Senate moves one step closer to overriding Trump’s NDAA veto

First of three votes clears two-thirds supermajority needed to turn back president’s attempts to block the legislation

The Senate moved one step closer to handing Donald Trump a major defeat when it overwhelmingly voted to take up a measure to override his veto of an annual military policy bill.

The House already, by a wide bipartisan margin (322-87), approved a measure to undo the outgoing president’s rejection of the $740bn National Defense Authorization Act. The 100-member upper chamber followed suit on Wednesday evening when most Republicans and Democrats approved a procedural motion that sets up a final vote this weekend. The final tally was 80-12; that is two-thirds of the chamber and enough to override the veto this weekend.

In true Senate fashion, the Wednesday vote was merely the first in a series. The chamber is on pace to vote Friday to end debate on the override measure, then take a final override vote late Saturday night or Sunday morning.

The Vermont independent, who caucuses with Democrats, is forcing the Senate to weave through a maze of procedural hurdles before taking a final vote on undoing the president’s National Defense Authorization veto. He is doing so because Mr McConnell is refusing to bring to a vote as a standalone bill a House-passed measure increasing from $600 to $2,000 Covid stimulus checks for some Americans.

The brouhaha has put Mr Sanders allied with Mr Trump over the checks.

“Nobody here will disagree with Trump more times than I have, and yet here is what the leader of the Republican Party says. He says ‘$2000 ASAP,’” Mr Sanders said on the floor a few hours before the procedural vote, referring to a Trump tweet.

"All we're asking for is a vote - what is the problem with that?" Mr Sanders said, practically yelling on the chamber floor.

Mr Sanders’ temporary blockade means the chamber will not be able to vote to end debate on the override measure until Friday. A final vote would then come only after a 30-hour click hits zero – either late Saturday night or early Sunday morning.

But the GOP leader made clear Mr Sanders will run out of procedural maneuvers this weekend.

“The Senate will not let our national security be shoved off course,” Mr McConnell said, before adding this swipe at the progressive Sanders: “Not by members who have spent 30 years trying to gut our military.”

“We will stay on this bull” until is passed, he said, “one way or another.”

Mr McConnell called Mr Sanders’ NDAA moves a “political stunt” because he is not being allowed to force a vote on the standalone checks measure “unless he gets to muscle through” the House-approved measure that the majority leader claimed “would add half a trillion to the national debt.”

As the vote started, House Armed Services Committee Chairman James Inhofe said the NDAA is needed to become law because the United States is in the “most dangerous” era ever – though defense hawks say that every year, during war and peace. Inhofe noted there are US troops deployed in hostile areas around the globe that would be affected by the bill who are “in the trenches.”