WASHINGTON — The House on Thursday gave final passage to a bipartisan resolution forcing an end to United States military involvement in Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen, sending President Trump a pointed rebuke over his continued defense of the kingdom after the killing of a dissident journalist, Jamal Khashoggi.
The 247-176 vote, with 16 Republicans joining united Democrats, invoked the rarely used War Powers Act to curb the president’s executive power to wage war without congressional approval. It likely sets up the second veto of his presidency, this time to publicly defend a four-year conflict that has killed thousands of civilians and inflicted a devastating famine.
The Senate passed a parallel resolution in March, 54 to 46.
“The president will have to face the reality that Congress is no longer going to ignore its constitutional obligations when it comes to foreign policy, when it comes to determining when and where our military is engaged in hostilities,” said Representative Eliot L. Engel of New York, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
Supporters of the Yemen resolution have faced a grueling road in recent months to get the legislation onto the president’s desk. The Senate — led by the resolution’s authors, Senators Mike Lee, Republican of Utah; Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont; and Christopher S. Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut — first passed the measure 56 to 41 in December, but Paul D. Ryan, the House speaker at the time, refused to take up the resolution.
His successor, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, did, and the House easily passed it in February. But House Democrats inadvertently derailed the process by supporting a surprise procedural motion offered by Republicans to declare the chamber’s opposition to anti-Semitism. By attaching an unrelated amendment to the Yemen resolution, the House ended its “privileged” status, which would have forced the Senate to quickly take it up and send it to Mr. Trump.
The Senate then had to start from scratch.
The vote on Thursday amounted to a do-over. Republicans again tried to derail the resolution with a last-minute procedural maneuver to attach an amendment to condemn the movement to boycott, divest from and sanction Israel, a provision that put Democrats in a difficult position.
“This is about politics,” he said. “This is about trying to drive a wedge into this caucus where it does not belong.”
Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the No. 2 Democrat, called it a “cynical political ploy.”
