Plus, why Dems are leery to prosecute Trump after he leaves office
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Trump Is Rushing Through His Biggest, Most Dangerous Arms Deal. Congress Could Stop It. |
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President Donald Trump wants to spend the final weeks of his presidency transferring America’s most advanced fighter jet, a set of powerful armed drones and thousands of bombs and missiles to a Middle Eastern dictatorship that is deeply implicated in multiple civil wars and aggressively represses its own population.
A growing group of lawmakers and activists is mobilizing to stop him.
Trump plans to wrap up a $23 billion weapons sale to the United Arab Emirates by the middle of December. It would put an exclamation point on a presidency that has focused more on arms deals than any since President Dwight Eisenhower first warned of the political power of the military-industrial complex.
Before that happens, critics of the deal want both houses of Congress to pass resolutions disapproving of the transfer.
On Wednesday, Republican Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.) joined Democratic foreign policy heavyweights Sen. Bob Menendez (N.J.) and Sen. Chris Murphy (Conn.) in sponsoring four resolutions of disapproval for the arms sales. Now those lawmakers and a coalition of influential activists from humanitarian, anti-war and human rights groups will spend the weeks ahead convincing Congress to support the legislation and pushing leadership in the two chambers to bring it to a vote, starting with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).
Despite the uphill battle members of Congress and activists are faced with, a dozen well-informed observers told HuffPost they are increasingly confident that a rare combination of progressives, hawks and more on Capitol Hill will send a big signal about changing U.S. foreign policy to prioritize human rights and give less credence to bellicose, often unreliable dictators abroad. |
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| WHAT ELSE IS HAPPENING | Women played a critical role in President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris winning the White House, but one group in particular stands out. Approximately nine in 10 Black women who voted cast ballots for Democrats, according to a report from the Center for American Women and Politics, a part of Rutgers University’s Eagleton Institute of Politics. Black women’s support for Democrats ― in both the presidential and down-ballot races ― was greater than among any other group of women voters. | |
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President-elect Joe Biden has vowed to pursue an “aggressive” plan to further women’s equality in the U.S. and around the world ― a sharp reversal from the Trump administration’s moves to roll back reproductive rights, sexual health and family planning. Part of that plan is to rescind the global gag rule, a policy that bars the federal government from offering U.S. aid to any foreign health organization that also offers or provides information on abortion services. But reversing the work of four years of the most extreme anti-woman presidential administration in recent history won’t be easy. | |
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Democratic senators are leery of prosecuting Donald Trump and members of his administration after he leaves office next year, saying the decision whether to probe a former president ought to be left to independent Department of Justice prosecutors under President Joe Biden. The idea ― a hot topic during the Democratic presidential primaries ― gained fresh momentum this week after Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-N.J.) demanded the president and his aides be prosecuted after they leave office for “innumerable crimes” during the last four years, including profiting off the presidency, separating immigrant families, and most recently undermining the Nov. 3 election. | |
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