Still, the Senate’s support for the nonbinding amendment is one of the latest signs of an intensifying and bipartisan appetite to condemn the president’s foreign policy. In the House, Representatives Tom Malinowski, Democrat of New Jersey, and Mike Gallagher, Republican of Wisconsin, unveiled two bills on Wednesday that seek to bar the Trump administration from abruptly withdrawing troops from Syria and South Korea. The bills prohibit the use of defense funds to reduce the number of active-duty troops serving in Syria below 1,500 and below 22,000 in South Korea, unless the defense secretary, the secretary of state and the director of national intelligence submit assurances to Congress that the withdrawals would not undermine the nation’s security and that allied nations had been consulted, among other stipulations. “This legislation makes a strong bipartisan statement that it would be reckless to pull troops from South Korea while North Korea still threatens our allies with nuclear and conventional weapons, and that if we are going to withdraw from Syria, we should do it with a plan, not a tweet,” said Mr. Malinowski, who was assistant secretary of state for human rights in the Obama administration. “For him to make the statement he did yesterday is cause for concern.”

Source: New York Times January 31, 2019 21:00 UTC