More than two-thirds of the US House of Representatives voted on Monday to override President Donald Trump’s veto of a must-pass defense policy bill, The Hill reports.
This marks the first successful override vote of Trump’s presidency. A sufficient number of lawmakers have voted to send the action to the Senate, which also needs to muster two-thirds support in order for Trump’s veto of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) to be overridden.
The NDAA passed both chambers of Congress earlier this month with large bipartisan majorities, but Trump vetoed the bill last week due to the fact that it did not include a provision repealing Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a 1996 law that provides a legal shield to tech companies like Twitter and Facebook.
Trump also opposes the NDAA’s requirement to strip the names of Confederate generals from military bases and provisions seeking to halt US troop withdrawals in Afghanistan and Germany. He has also said the bill is too weak on China.
Indicative of the importance lawmakers place on the bill, Congress returned for a rare post-Christmas session on Monday in order to meet a deadline to override the veto before noon on January 3, when the 117th Congress will be sworn-in.
If the bill does not become law before the new Congress starts, lawmakers must start from scratch.
The Senate is scheduled to convene Tuesday to begin the process of overriding the veto, according to The Hill.