House votes to override Trump’s defense bill veto

WASHINGTON — In a bipartisan vote on Monday evening, the House took the first step in rebuffing the president’s veto of the defense bill, which had passed overwhelmingly in both chambers earlier this month. The override vote, which required a two-thirds margin, was 322-87.

“The troops, the country, indeed the world is watching to see what we will do, whether we can tune out other differences, and still come together to support the men and women of the military and American national security,” Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-texas, said before the vote. “I would only ask, as members vote, they put the best interests of the country first. There is no other consideration that should matter.”

Only some Republican leaders and his most hardcore right-wing allies backed Trump, who’d vetoed the legislation because it would allow the removal of the names of Confederate leaders from military bases, and because it didn’t advance his unrelated goal of punishing social media companies that he views as unfair to him.

The Senate could vote as soon as Tuesday to follow suit, capping the president’s defeat and making this the first of his nine vetoes to be overridden — just over three weeks before Trump leaves office.

Shortly before the veto vote, the Democratic-led House did give Trump one thing he wanted — approval for a $2,000 payment to assist millions of Americans during the pandemic. But it’s unclear whether the Gop-controlled Senate will even consider the bill given Republican opposition there.

House Republican leaders did not urge members of their caucus to vote either way on the defense-bill veto override, effectively giving them a green light to snub a president that the party almost never crossed in four years.

“It’s a sign that the president’s influence, while still strong in the Republican Party, is beginning to wane,” said Michael Steel, a former top aide to former Rep. John A. Boehner, the

Ohio Republican who was House speaker from 2011 to 2015. Another factor, Steel added, was that Trump’s reasons for vetoing the bill, the latest of the sort Congress has passed annually for six decades, “don’t make a lick of sense.”

The $741 billion legislation, known as the National Defense Authorization Act, includes a 3% pay raise for service members, funds military equipment and base construction, and authorizes spending programs, creating jobs in nearly every congressional district across the country.