Congress swats back Trump’s defense bill veto threat

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump is closing out his relationship with Congress with one more power jab, threatening to veto a hugely popular defense bill unless lawmakers clamp down on big tech companies he claims were biased against him during the election.

Trump is demanding that Congress repeal so-called Section 230, a part of the communications code that shields Twitter, Facebook and others from content liability. His complaint is a battle cry of conservatives — and some Democrats — who say the social media giants treat them unfairly.

But interjecting the complicated tech issue threatens to upend the massive defense bill, which Congress takes pride in having passed unfailingly for half a century. Trump almost sabotaged the package with an earlier veto threat over plans to stop allowing military bases to be named for Confederate leaders.

It’s another example of the president’s brazen willingness to undercut Congress, even his allies, to impose his will in his final months in office.

On Wednesday, a bipartisan coalition of leaders on the House and Senate Armed Services committees said enough is enough.

“We have toiled through almost 2,200 provisions to reach compromise on important issues affecting our national security and our military,” Reps. Adam Smith of Washington and Mac Thornberry of Texas, the chairman and top Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, said in a joint statement.

In a rare joint rebuke, they said that “for 59 straight years,” the National Defense Authorization Act has passed because lawmakers and presidents agreed to set aside their own preferences “and put the needs of our military personnel and America’s security first.”

The powerful Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma, said he personally spoke with Trump, explaining that the defense bill is not the place for the big tech fight.

While cooler heads are expected to prevail, Trump’s veto threat in the final months of his administration is his latest attempt to bend the norms. From taking money from military bases to build the border wall with Mexico to installing his nominees in administrative position without Senate confirmation, Trump has chipped away at the legislative branch like few other executives in recent times.