U.S. Role in Yemen War Will End Unless Trump Issues Second Veto

WASHINGTON — The House on Thursday gave final passage to a bipartisan resolution forcing an end to United States military involvement in Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen, sending President Trump a pointed rebuke over his continued defense of the kingdom after the killing of a dissident journalist, Jamal Khashoggi.

The 247-176 vote, with 16 Republicans joining united Democrats, invoked the rarely used War Powers Act to curb the president’s executive power to wage war without congressional approval. It likely sets up the second veto of his presidency, this time to publicly defend a four-year conflict that has killed thousands of civilians and inflicted a devastating famine.

The Senate passed a parallel resolution in March, 54 to 46.

“The president will have to face the reality that Congress is no longer going to ignore its constitutional obligations when it comes to foreign policy, when it comes to determining when and where our military is engaged in hostilities,” said Representative Eliot L. Engel of New York, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Supporters of the Yemen resolution have faced a grueling road in recent months to get the legislation onto the president’s desk. The Senate — led by the resolution’s authors, Senators Mike Lee, Republican of Utah; Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont; and Christopher S. Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut — first passed the measure 56 to 41 in December, but Paul D. Ryan, the House speaker at the time, refused to take up the resolution.

His successor, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, did, and the House easily passed it in February. But House Democrats inadvertently derailed the process by supporting a surprise procedural motion offered by Republicans to declare the chamber’s opposition to anti-Semitism. By attaching an unrelated amendment to the Yemen resolution, the House ended its “privileged” status, which would have forced the Senate to quickly take it up and send it to Mr. Trump.

The Senate then had to start from scratch.

The vote on Thursday amounted to a do-over. Republicans again tried to derail the resolution with a last-minute procedural maneuver to attach an amendment to condemn the movement to boycott, divest from and sanction Israel, a provision that put Democrats in a difficult position.

But this time, intent on ensuring the legislation would not be knocked off course again, Democratic leaders rallied their rank-and-file to oppose Republican derailing efforts. Representative Ted Deutsch, a Florida Democrat and one of the strongest pro-Israel voices in the House, stood to condemn the Republican maneuver.

“This is about politics,” he said. “This about trying to drive a wedge into this caucus where it does not belong.”

Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the No. 2 Democrat, called it a “cynical political ploy.”

“The Republicans know if they offer an amendment to this bill, it defeats it, 22 million people are at risk. I think it’s unconscionable that they would play games with this,” Mr. Hoyer told reporters.

The House resolution employs the 1973 War Powers Act, which gave Congress the ability to compel the removal of military forces absent a formal declaration of war. Those powers, created in the wake of the Vietnam War, have almost never been used, as lawmakers have demurred from intervening in politically sensitive matters of war, peace and support for the troops.

“When we started talking with folks about doing this, they basically laughed it off,” said Stephen Miles, the director of Win Without War, an advocacy coalition that lobbied for the resolution. “They said it wouldn’t happen, Congress doesn’t ever invoke the War Powers Act — it was a really long arduous process of education.”

In its justification for opposing the resolution, the White House argued that the use of act “is flawed” because the Pentagon has provided “limited support to member countries of the Saudi-led coalition” in Yemen. That argument may have been more resonant years ago — repeated bipartisan attempts in 2016 to rebuke the American role in the Saudi-led intervention stalled in the Senate.

But after the killing of Mr. Khashoggi, a Virginia-based columnist for The Washington Post, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, livid at the administration’s equivocal response, signaled a new willingness to reconsider the relationship with Riyadh.