Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., on Thursday filed three joint resolutions to block a pending sale of nearly $659 million worth of weapons — including 22,000 bombs — to Israel after the Trump administration this month told lawmakers it would use emergency measures to bypass congressional review of the sale.
The sale and subsequent opposition to it come amid the ongoing U.S.-Israeli war with Iran, which has spread across the Middle East and tested the abilities of countries in the region to contend with missile and drone strikes by Tehran.
It also marks at least the fourth time in President Donald Trump’s second term that the State Department advanced a weapons sale to Israel over congressional objections, a defiance that critics have said bucks nearly half a century of tradition and reduces lawmakers’ oversight of U.S. arms exports.
