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Thank you Senator @Chris Murphy for your persistence:

"Thursday's 56-41 vote in the Senate to pull the U.S. military out of the immoral, disastrous Yemen war was historic – it's the first time since the War Powers Act was passed in 1973 that Congress has voted to end military action overseas. I was the first senator to raise concerns about U.S. support for Saudi Arabia's bombing campaign in Yemen three years ago, and I was proud to introduce the resolution with Senators Bernie Sanders and Mike Lee.

"Occasionally, I try to give a behind the scenes account of major events in the Senate in an attempt to pull back the curtain on what we do in Congress. So here are a few highlights of the lead up to Thursday's landmark vote.

"Lots of failure first

"In September 2016, near the end of the Obama presidency, my friend Senator Rand Paul and I hatched a plan to force the Senate to take a vote on U.S. participation in the Yemen civil war. Back in 2016, virtually no one in Washington knew anything about Saudi Arabia's military campaign to take Yemen back from a group of Houthi rebels that had toppled a Saudi-aligned government in 2015. Rand and I had been closely following the Saudi bombing campaign, which was being supported by the United States, and it looked to us like the Saudis were intentionally hitting civilians and civilian infrastructure. We introduced a resolution to halt a pending arms sale to Saudi Arabia that was arguably connected to the Yemen campaign.

When I got up in the closed-door weekly Democratic caucus meeting to explain the resolution, I got a lot of blank stares. I knew I was likely to lose the resolution, but I also knew that by forcing each of my colleagues to vote, it would force them to study what was happening in Yemen for the first time. When the time came for debate, there were few senators willing to join us and stand up to Saudi Arabia. Lindsey Graham led the opposition to our resolution and we only got 27 votes. A big defeat. But the war in Yemen was now on Congress's radar for the first time.

A year later, Rand and I tried it again, this time on a proposed sale of missiles to be used by the Saudis in an increasingly brutal bombing campaign. By that point, Yemen had been hit with a cholera epidemic and the country was on the brink of famine. The bombing campaign continued to target civilians and millions of people had been displaced from their homes. This time, I prepared better. In caucus, I presented a PowerPoint, complete with photos of the malnourished children who were suffering through what had become the worst humanitarian crisis in the world inside Yemen. I worked the vote really hard, and this time Rand and I got 47 votes – just shy of the 50 necessary to pass a privileged resolution like this.

Once again, Graham, leading the opposition, was able to convince just enough senators to stick with the Saudis. But I was beginning to get to Lindsey. One day at an Appropriations Committee meeting, I threatened to force a vote on my amendment to withhold all funding for the Yemen war, and Lindsey called me over. He asked me to withdraw my amendment, and in turn, he promised to work with me to try to find other ways to deliver a message to the Saudis that they had to change course on their disastrous military campaign. He went so far as to organize a private dinner with the two of us, a few other key senators, and the brother of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Over dinner at a posh DC restaurant, Lindsey let the Saudi delegation know they it was just a matter of time before one of my resolutions or amendments passed, and the Saudis better clean up their act.

Sanders joins the fight

In early 2017, Bernie Sanders approached me on the floor of the Senate and suggested he and I start working together on foreign policy.

Quietly, Bernie and I began to pull together private meetings with foreign policy experts and other like-minded senators, and Bernie became interested in the work I had been doing on Yemen. And then in late 2017, he and his staff made a discovery – an overlooked amendment to the War Powers Act that allowed any senator to bring a privileged resolution before the body objecting to a military action that had not been properly authorized by Congress. It was a novel strategy. The first time we brought it before the Senate in March of this year, it failed by about ten votes, partly because many Democratic senators were simply unfamiliar and uncomfortable with the procedure we were using. We lost again, 54-45.

A school bus and Khashoggi

In August, the Saudis intentionally bombed a school bus (claiming that there were Houthi leaders on board) and killed 40 children on their way to a field trip. I stood up in the Democratic caucus and delivered the news, and I could tell that the few remaining Democratic holdouts were finally coming around. Then, in October, news broke that the Saudis had likely executed Jamal Khashoggi, an American resident and Saudi critic. Lindsey, who had vouched for the Saudis over and over, was at his breaking point. He found me one afternoon on the Senate floor and told me he was finally ready to work with me on holding Saudi Arabia accountable. I knew that my strategy of forcing vote after vote, pushing him and others out on the record defending Saudi Arabia's behavior, had worked. Lindsey felt burned and abandoned by the Saudis, and he was ready to end U.S. support for the Yemen war. This was huge.

Under the Senate rules, we were able to call up our earlier War Powers resolution for another vote (called a motion to reconsider) , and this time we had the solid backing of every Democrat along with a handful of Republicans. We were confident we would win this time. The first hurdle was a procedural vote to bring the resolution up for debate. I kept my foot in two camps. I met and talked regularly with the other primary sponsors of the bill – Sanders, Lee, and Paul. But I also kept a dialogue with Graham and Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker, trying to temper their opposition to the resolution.

Last week, on the day of the first procedural vote, Corker announced he would vote to move forward. This was important, and it meant that a bunch of Republicans would follow his lead. As the vote opened, we hoped for a big margin. I watched Lindsey come down to the clerk's desk, and to my surprise, he voted no. I marched right over to him, and he motioned for us to sit down and chat. He told me that he was still committed to pushing back on the Saudis, but he just didn't think the War Powers resolution was the right way to do it. He got up and walked back to the clerk's desk to check the vote. I followed. I wouldn't let it go. I told him that it would look strange, after all the criticism he had leveled at the Saudis since the Khashoggi murder, for him to vote against us. At the last minute, he relented. He got the attention of the clerk and changed his vote. A reporter in the Senate gallery tweeted, "Sen. Lindsey Graham just switched his vote on the motion to discharge the Yemen resolution to "yes". Then gave @chrismurphyct a big handshake."

On the day of the final vote, the last obstacle was to fend off any amendments that would undercut or weaken the resolution. Senator Tom Cotton was offered two amendments that worried us, both allowing for certain types of U.S. military activities to continue. Bernie and I huddled on the floor to divvy up the Democratic and Republican senators we needed to talk to in order to firm up our vote count. Bernie headed off to find Republican Senator Jerry Moran of Kansas. He was working the resolution hard, on both sides of the aisle, to great effect.

I spoke against the two Cotton amendments, and we defeated them handily. The final vote arrived late Thursday afternoon as senators were scurrying to catch flights back to their states. As the final vote was announced, Bernie, Mike Lee, and I stood shoulder to shoulder in front of the dais, virtually alone in a mostly emptied out chamber. "On this vote, the 'yeas' are 56, the 'no's' are 41. The resolution passes," announced the presiding officer.

History made.

Thanks for reading,

Chris Murphy

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