Trump vetoes $740bn US military bill over clause to rename bases honouring Confederates

Donald Trump has vetoed the massive annual US military bill outlining the Defense Department’s budget.

The lame duck president cited his opposition to a clause in the bill to rechristen 10 military bases named for Confederate figureheads and once again repeated his unrelated demand that Congress reform Section 230, the bylaw that governs freedom of speech on the internet.

Both chambers of Congress have made plans to return to Washington after Christmas to override Wednesday’s veto and make the $740bn bill law.

It breezed to the president’s desk with veto-proof majorities of 335-78 in the House and 84-13 in the Senate.

It will likely be the first time one of Mr Trump’s vetoes has been overridden. He had previously vetoed eight bills.

Mr Trump has been threatening to veto the annual National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) since this summer, calling the provision to rename military bases such as Fort Bragg (North Carolina), Fort Hood (Texas), and Fort Benning (Georgia) the “Elizabeth ‘Pocahantas’ Warren Amendment,” even though the Massachusetts Democrat has been joined by most Republican senators in supporting the renaming clause.

The defence bill, considered a “must-pass” item by Republicans and Democrats, has become law without much drama for 59 consecutive years. It’s one of the most important pieces of annual legislation, guiding military spending levels and troop deployments around the world, as well as setting other policy parameters.

The president also vetoed the bill on Wednesday because it does not contain language repealing or dramatically altering legal liability protections for social media firms he claims — without proof — are censoring conservatives.

Leading Democrats had strong words of reproach for Mr Trump’s manoeuvre on Wednesday, which will achieve none of his actual policy aims. It will, however, force members of Congress back to Washington when they would otherwise be at home for the holidays.

House leaders from both parties have agreed to be in session on Monday, 28 December, to vote on overriding Mr Trump’s veto. The Senate plans to follow suit the following day.

“It’s unconscionable that the president would choose to throw a wrench into the passage of a bill as critical as our nation’s annual defence bill,” Virginia Democratic Senator Mark Warner said in a statement on Wednesday.

“The president’s decision to veto this bipartisan legislation on his way out the door poses a serious threat to US national security. It jeopardises mission readiness and the well-being of our US service members and their families, as well as military construction projects, investments in innovation and technology, and other critical defence priorities,” said Mr Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Mr Trump’s veto of the defence bill on Wednesday has forced Republicans onto a rhetorical tightrope of praising his foreign policy achievements over the last four years while defying him on the matter of hard policy.

The NDAA “cements all the remarkable gains our military has made thanks to @realDonaldTrump’s leadership and sends a strong message of support to our service members and their families,” tweeted Senate Armed Services Chairman Jim Inhofe on Wednesday.

“I hope all of my colleagues in Congress will join me in making sure our troops have the resources and equipment they need to defend this nation,” the Oklahoma Republican said, suggesting a bipartisan supermajority would override the president’s veto.

Mr Trump has contended that social media giants like Twitter, Facebook and others suppressed right-leaning content in the run-up to last month’s presidential election in an attempt to help Joe Biden defeat him.

Most Republicans in Congress agree, and the Senate has held multiple hearings in recent months to grill the respective chief excecutives of Facebook and Twitter, Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey, on such matters.

But they largely see the issue of social media censorship as separate from the defence bill.

“We can and should use another legislative vehicle to repeal Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act — a priority @realDonaldTrump and I share,” Mr Inhofe tweeted on Wednesday.

Mr Trump’s veto Wednesday could be a prelude to an equally momentous veto on a $2.3 trillion piece of legislation carrying the fiscal year 2021 government appropriations package ($1.4 trillion) and the bipartisan Covid relief bill ($900bn) agreed to earlier this week in both chambers.

Bucking Republicans, Mr Trump has threatened to veto the “Coronabus” package because its $600-per-person stimulus check programme was “ridiculously low”.

The president, who ignored negotiations on the Covid relief package for nine months, is now asking lawmakers to go back to the drawing board to include $2,000 checks for individuals, a $1,400 upgrade that would increase the bill’s top-line price by hundreds of billions of dollars.

Democrats have pounced on that proposal, saying they had been trying for months to get Republicans to agree to such an amount, but that the GOP had refused to budge from the $600 figure.

If Mr Trump sits on the legislation over the coming days and then vetoes it, he could force the government to shut down in the middle of a pandemic that has claimed more American lives in recent days than at any point all year.

Deadlines to extend key federal unemployment aid would also lapse as millions of Americans remain jobless due to the pandemic.