Congressional staffers exploded at Trump administration briefers in an expletive-laden phone call on Monday morning after U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo moved to designate Yemen’s Houthi movement as a terrorist organization and moved forward with plans to relist Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism, according to sources briefed on the conversation.
The call, which included the State Department’s top official on Yemen, Timothy Lenderking, sparked protests from both Republican and Democratic staffers angered by the administration’s failure to engage Congress on the designations in advance. Aid groups working on the ground in Yemen said the designation is likely to cause significant disruptions to deliveries in the war-wracked country with dire humanitarian implications.
