With lit­tle pub­lic atten­tion, Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump used his August 13 sign­ing state­ment for the $716 bil­lion Nation­al Defense Autho­riza­tion Act (NDAA) to over­ride restric­tions aimed at min­i­miz­ing civil­ian deaths in the U.S.-Saudi war on Yemen. The move came just days after the Sau­di-led coali­tion struck a school bus in Yemen’s north­ern Saa­da province with a U.S.-supplied and man­u­fac­tured bomb, killing 54 peo­ple, 44 of them chil­dren. The sign­ing state­ment is the lat­est evi­dence that, after three years and tens of thou­sands killed, the Trump admin­is­tra­tion has no inten­tion of curb­ing its role in the bloody war it inher­it­ed from Oba­ma. The Unit­ed States sup­plies arms, intel­li­gence and aer­i­al refu­el­ing of Sau­di and Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates (UAE) war­planes — and gives polit­i­cal cov­er to the war.

Meanwhile, there is no question that the U.S.-backed coalition is exacerbating the humanitarian crisis with its new attack on the port city of Hodeidah, a conduit for as much as 80 percent of Yemen’s food and medicine imports, despite warnings that such an offensive would be catastrophic.

As In These Times pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed , the 2019 NDAA’s restric­tions on the war were already insuf­fi­cient when it reached Trump’s desk, mere­ly requir­ing increased trans­paren­cy and vague­ly defined ver­i­fi­ca­tion that the coali­tion is attempt­ing to min­i­mize harm to civil­ians — rather than end­ing the U.S. role in the Sau­di-led war alto­geth­er. Yet the mea­sures were bet­ter than noth­ing, giv­en the fail­ure of Con­gress to end three years of U.S. par­tic­i­pa­tion in the war.

But in one fell swoop, Trump dis­missed rough­ly 50 statutes includ­ed in the NDAA, claim­ing that the pro­vi­sions uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly tread on his exec­u­tive author­i­ty. Sign­ing state­ments out­line pres­i­dents’ inter­pre­ta­tions of laws, often with heavy input from White House and Depart­ment of Jus­tice legal teams. For­mer Pres­i­dent George W. Bush infa­mous­ly used a sign­ing state­ment to over­ride a 2005 ban on torture.

Among Trump’s tar­gets is sec­tion 1290, which stip­u­lates that, before green­light­ing the refu­el­ing of war­planes, the Sec­re­tary of State must cer­ti­fy that Sau­di Ara­bia and the UAE are min­i­miz­ing harm to civil­ians, mit­i­gat­ing Yemen’s human­i­tar­i­an cri­sis and try­ing to end the civ­il war. That pro­vi­sion was already weak, offer­ing a waiv­er in cas­es of U.S. ​“nation­al secu­ri­ty inter­ests,” which are are often invoked by U.S. offi­cials who mis­lead­ing­ly over­state Iran’s influ­ence in Yemen to jus­ti­fy inter­ven­tion. Fur­ther­more, the mea­sure relied on Mike Pom­peo to tell the truth, when the U.S.-backed coali­tion already claims to be mit­i­gat­ing the human­i­tar­i­an cri­sis and try­ing to end the war, despite over­whelm­ing evi­dence otherwise.

As lim­it­ed as this pro­vi­sion is, Trump claims he doesn’t have to com­ply. In his sign­ing state­ment he cites the president’s ​“exclu­sive con­sti­tu­tion­al author­i­ties as com­man­der in chief and as the sole rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the nation in for­eign affairs.”

Mean­while, there is no ques­tion that the U.S.-backed coali­tion is exac­er­bat­ing the human­i­tar­i­an cri­sis with its new attack on the port city of Hodei­dah, a con­duit for as much as 80 per­cent of Yemen’s food and med­i­cine imports, despite warn­ings that such an offen­sive would be cat­a­stroph­ic. Since it began on June 13, the U.S.-Saudi coalition’s assault on Hodei­dah has dis­placed more than 300,000 peo­ple, and has killed res­i­dents with airstrikes such as an August 2 attack on a fish mar­ket and hos­pi­tal that took at least 40 civil­ian lives.

Trump also side­steps sec­tion 1274, which requires the Defense Depart­ment to review the actions of the Unit­ed States and Sau­di-led coali­tion in Yemen for ille­gal con­duct. But Trump declares in his sign­ing state­ment that he reserves the right to with­hold infor­ma­tion that he deter­mines could ​“impair nation­al secu­ri­ty, for­eign rela­tions, law enforce­ment, or the per­for­mance of the president’s con­sti­tu­tion­al duties.”

In issu­ing these carve-outs, Trump effec­tive­ly asserts the right to dis­re­gard all sec­tions in the NDAA aimed at restrict­ing the war on Yemen. These restric­tions, how­ev­er lim­it­ed, were the work of a hand­ful of sen­a­tors and rep­re­sen­ta­tives — includ­ing Sens. Todd Young (R‑Ind.) and Jeanne Sha­heen (D‑N.H.), and Reps. Adam Smith (D‑Wash.), Ro Khan­na (D‑Calif.), Bar­bara Lee (D‑Calif.), Beto O’Rourke (D‑Texas) and Mark Pocan (D‑Wis.) — who oppose U.S. involve­ment in the war. Trump’s sign­ing state­ment fol­lows the nar­row fail­ure in March of a bill that would have forced the Sen­ate to vote on with­draw­ing the Unit­ed States from par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Sau­di-led war.

The Yemen pro­vi­sions are not the only NDAA mea­sures Trump claims he can over­ride: In his sign­ing state­ment, he also retains the right to ignore mea­sures aimed at improv­ing report­ing on ​“civil­ian casu­al­ties in con­nec­tion with Unit­ed States mil­i­tary oper­a­tions.” And he says he has pow­ers to ignore mea­sures to trans­fer peo­ple out of the infa­mous Guan­tanamo Bay mil­i­tary prison, stat­ing, ​“I ful­ly intend to keep open that deten­tion facil­i­ty and to use it, as nec­es­sary or appro­pri­ate, for deten­tion operations.”

Even before it reached Trump’s desk, the NDAA was a give­away to the pres­i­dent, hand­ing him a his­tor­i­cal­ly high mil­i­tary bud­get, which ear­marks $21.9 bil­lion for nuclear weapons, despite the president’s proven will­ing­ness to threat­en nuclear anni­hi­la­tion on a whim. The bill sailed through Con­gress with over­whelm­ing bipar­ti­san sup­port, backed by key Democ­rats pur­port­ed­ly lead­ing the #Resis­tance — even as they claim the pres­i­dent is unhinged and dan­ger­ous, and pub­licly crit­i­cize the war in Yemen. Among the yes votes was Ted Lieu, a vocal Trump crit­ic who — when news of the school bus bomb­ing hit— expressed con­cern that the U.S. role in Yemen ​“could qual­i­fy as aid­ing and abet­ting these poten­tial war crimes.”