House votes to override Trump's veto of defense bill, setting up first such rebuke during his presid

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/house-override-trump-veto-defense/2020/12/28/49b50b20-4927-11eb-a9d9-1e3ec4a928b9_story.html

By
Karoun Demirjian
Dec. 28, 2020 at 6:43 p.m. EST

The House voted Monday to reject President Trump’s veto of a $741 billion defense authorization bill, setting up the first congressional override of his presidency just days before he exits office.

The 322-to-87 vote was comfortably more than the two-thirds of the House that was needed to pass the measure and set up the legislation for a similar override vote in the Senate later this week. But the House’s margin of victory was smaller than the support the same bill received earlier this month, before the president’s veto. Some Republicans who supported the measure three weeks ago did not vote to override the president’s veto.

Trump made good on repeated threats to veto the legislation last week, when he sent the bill back to Congress with a laundry list of objections. Among the president’s complaints were that it ordered the Pentagon to change the names of military installations commemorating Confederate generals; restricted his ability to pull U.S. troops out of Germany, South Korea and Afghanistan; and did not repeal an unrelated law giving certain liability protections to technology companies.

His move led some of his stalwart supporters, including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), to announce that they would not cross the president’s veto, even though they had voted for the defense bill. But despite those gestures of solidarity, the president never had the numbers to sustain a veto, according to congressional officials.