A Yemeni child stands amidst debris of a building destroyed in Saudi-led air strikes in Yemen's capital Sanaa on Feb. 1. | Mohammed Huwais/AFP/Getty Images Congress ‘This wasn’t on people’s radar’: Khanna set for victory in Yemen vote

In 2004, a little-known 27-year-old lawyer ran one of the first campaigns centered on opposition to military intervention at the height of the Iraq war. He lost by 54 points.

Fifteen years later, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) is preparing to claim success on a historic legislative effort to cut off U.S. involvement in Yemen’s civil war.


“No one was willing to do it because they don’t want to be Dennis Kucinich, introducing these things that are not going anywhere,” Khanna quipped in an interview with POLITICO in his Capitol Hill office, referring to the former Ohio congressman known for his anti-war views.

The Democrat-led House is voting Wednesday on Khanna’s bill to end U.S. support for the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen. And it’s expected to pass overwhelmingly with near-unanimous support from Democrats, plus a handful of conservative, non-interventionist Republicans.

Proponents expect it to clear both chambers with bipartisan support. And even though President Donald Trump is expected to veto the measure, it will mark the first time in history that the House and Senate adopted a War Powers resolution, and it will represent a major rebuke of the Trump administration’s foreign policy, particularly its posture toward Saudi Arabia.

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Khanna has sometimes been a source of tension within the House Democratic Caucus. He endorsed incumbent Rep. Joe Crowley last year before backtracking and signaling support for Crowley’s liberal challenger in the primary, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who is now an ally of Khanna’s in Congress. But his work on Yemen may also position him as a rare consensus builder within a progressive movement that has tried to pull Democrats to the left.

Shortly after Khanna came into office in 2017, anti-war groups pinpointed him as a likely ally in their efforts to spotlight the humanitarian crisis in Yemen and end U.S. support for the bombing campaigns that have claimed thousands of lives and have led to famine and cholera outbreaks. Khanna, one of the most progressive members of Congress, said he was surprised to learn that lawmakers weren’t already pushing a Yemen anti-war effort.

“I said why not get someone more senior, why not get someone on the foreign policy committees,” said Khanna, who serves on the Armed Services panel. “So I was willing to do it, and we were persistent.”

Khanna found willing partners in Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah), all of whom criticized the Obama administration’s use of military force without congressional authorization. Lee, who has long allied himself with Democrats on military interventions, told POLITICO that the War Powers efforts did not materialize until Khanna arrived.

Khanna’s unsuccessful 2004 campaign centered on his opposition to U.S. military involvement in Iraq at a time when the war was popular. He won just 19 percent of the vote against then-Rep. Tom Lantos (D-Calif.), an ardent supporter of the war who helped then-President George W. Bush secure the votes for a war authorization bill but later soured on the effort.

Shortly after Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) came into office in 2017, anti-war groups pinpointed him as a likely ally in their efforts to spotlight the humanitarian crisis in Yemen. | Andrew Harnik/AP Photo

Khanna ran for Congress several more times, finally beating eight-term incumbent Mike Honda in 2016.

And despite his progressive pedigree, Khanna has earned praise from his Republican colleagues for highlighting issues that aren’t often raised by lawmakers.

“It is rare. It’s a niche issue that most people don’t talk about at the dining room table,” said Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), a top House conservative who voted alongside Khanna and Democrats last year in opposition to a GOP leaders’ successful effort to block a vote on the Yemen issue.

“He has a strong opinion and that opinion is shared by some on both sides of the aisle,” Meadows said. “He’s picked up on an area that is ripe for debate.”

Khanna arrived on Capitol Hill as public opinion began turning against military adventurism, especially amid the protracted wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It’s an issue Trump has also seized upon, even though he’s drawn scorn from his own party for his decision to withdraw U.S. forces from Syria while counter-ISIS operations are ongoing.

“This wasn’t on people’s radar,” Khanna said of Yemen’s bloody civil war. “Candidly, the war had started in the Obama administration, so there was a reluctance to question the foreign-policy establishment.”

Having served as a deputy assistant secretary in the Commerce Department under former President Barack Obama, Khanna said he spoke regularly with senior officials who regretted the then-president’s decision to support the Saudi-led coalition.

“I felt more confident on my policy because I had done that due diligence with senior Obama administration officials,” he added.

With Trump in office, it was easier to secure uniform Democratic support for a War Powers resolution that the current president and his top officials vehemently oppose. But the measure requires Republican support to clear the Senate. Aides and lawmakers say they expect enough GOP senators to defect and vote in favor of the resolution, which previously passed the chamber with 56 votes. Under the Senate’s rules, supporters of the measure are able to sidestep Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and bring it directly to the floor.

Khanna said he was determined to find even more GOP allies wherever he could find them. He asked his chief of staff to reach out to Sen. Lindsey Graham after reading that the South Carolina Republican seemed open to the idea of using the Yemen vote to rebuke Saudi Arabia.

“Many Republicans are going to say, ‘this is one way we can send a message that we disapprove of what the Saudis are doing,’” Khanna said.

Last week, the Trump administration gave Republicans — who have become increasingly critical of the president’s foreign policy — a potential reason to join forces with Khanna.

A senior administration official said Trump was declining to issue Congress a report determining who is responsible for the brutal killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. GOP senators blasted the president for ignoring the law, expanding the rift between Congress and the White House over U.S. policy toward Saudi Arabia.

Despite growing GOP support for ending U.S. involvement in Yemen, lawmakers are still unlikely to override a veto, which would be the first of Trump’s presidency. But the vote could represent more than a symbolic rebuke of Trump. Advocates say Congress’ united voice on the issue could help convince the parties involved in Yemen’s civil war to restart talks to negotiate a ceasefire that could improve the conditions on the ground.

“Whether you agree with his position or not, I applaud his efforts to make sure that he gets some kind of resolution on it,” said Meadows. “It’s not as if he threw something out there and he hadn’t thought it through. He’s thought it through. People can differ. But he’s been very thoughtful.”