As soon as next week, Democrats in Congress will have another chance to end U.S. participation in the brutal Saudi-led war in Yemen. When lawmakers return from Thanksgiving break, passing the National Defense Authorization Act — a bill known as the NDAA that specifies the annual defense budget — will be high on their list of priorities. Since President Donald Trump vetoed a bipartisan War Powers resolution to halt U.S. activity in Yemen in April, a broad coalition of anti-war groups, advocates, lawmakers, and, notably, a group of former national security officials have called on Congress to use its power over appropriations to bring U.S. involvement in the war to an end. In July, California Democratic Reps. Ro Khanna and Adam Schiff, along with Washington Democratic Reps. Pramila Jayapal and Adam Smith, who is chair of the House Armed Services Committee, co-sponsored an amendment to the NDAA that would defund U.S. military support for activities in Yemen. It passed with bipartisan support. Another amendment to the House bill prohibits war with Iran without congressional authorization. Yet the Senate version of the defense bill contains neither of those measures — and it remains unclear whether they will survive reconciliation, the negotiating process by which bills from each chamber are merged.

The chairs and ranking members of the House and Senate armed services committees — Smith, Rep. Mac Thornberry, D-Texas, and Sens. Jack Reed, D-R.I., and Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., who are collectively known as “the Big Four” — have been negotiating behind closed doors over language for a final bill since September. By the end of last week, those talks had stalled, largely over disagreements about matters unrelated to the Yemen language. A spokesperson for the House Armed Services Committee assured The Intercept that the negotiations were still underway “despite press reports” to the contrary.

“It is time to stand up to this president and block every nickel of taxpayer money from going to this illegal war. Without U.S. support, the Saudi bombings on innocent civilians could not continue.”

If an NDAA comes to the floor without language similar to the Khanna-led amendment, anti-war groups are calling on Democrats to vote against it. “Democrats increasingly purport to support putting an end to the country’s many endless wars,” said David Segal, executive director of the progressive advocacy group Demand Progress, “But anything less than using the NDAA to ensure an end to our involvement in the Yemen war would belie these claims.” Khanna told The Intercept he will refuse to vote for an NDAA which continues to fund the war. “If my Iran and Yemen provisions are not included in the final NDAA, I, and many other progressives, will oppose this large of a price tag,” Khanna said, referring to military spending. “That’s all there is to it.” Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., who with Khanna has been agitating for years against Saudi Arabia’s war, called on his colleagues to seize the moment. “Let me be clear: It is Congress, not the president, that decides whether to go to war,” he told The Intercept, “Now it is time to stand up to this president and block every nickel of taxpayer money from going to this illegal war. Without U.S. support, the Saudi bombings on innocent civilians could not continue.” For their part, Khanna and Sanders are pushing hard on their Democratic Party colleagues. The two members of Congress released a video on Wednesday pressing fellow members to not cave on the demand to revoke funding for the Yemen war.