Rashida Tlaib slams Trump’s $5 billion weapons sale to Saudi, demands Senate halt weapons fueling Yemen siege

US Representative Rashida Tlaib has denounced the Trump administration’s latest arms package to Saudi Arabia as a continuation of more than a decade of US-backed bombing, blockade and starvation against the Yemeni people.

In a statement posted Thursday on X, the Michigan Democrat wrote: “With US support, Saudi Arabia has bombed, blockaded, and starved the people of Yemen for over a decade. Now the Trump admin is giving them $5 billion in arms, including 2,000-pound bombs that kill indiscriminately. Enough. Let Yemen live. The Senate must block this sale.”

The proposed sale, notified to Congress earlier this month, includes more than 10,000 Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) guidance kits and matching bomb bodies, among them 5,000 of the 2,000-pound BLU-117 munitions that have repeatedly been used against civilian infrastructure in Yemen. Boeing is listed as the principal contractor.

Tlaib’s statement comes as Yemeni armed forces have scored significant battlefield gains against Saudi-backed militias, exposing the failure of years of US-enabled aerial bombings that never produced a political settlement. Washington has declined to join Riyadh in new direct airstrikes after secret contacts with Yemeni representatives in Oman, yet is simultaneously rushing precision bombs to the same kingdom that has spent years trying to starve Yemen into submission.

Decade of US-enabled aggression

Since 2015, the Saudi-led coalition, armed, refueled and politically shielded by Washington, has conducted tens of thousands of airstrikes, imposed a naval and air blockade, and helped engineer what the United Nations long described as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. Hospitals, schools, markets, water treatment plants and funeral gatherings were repeatedly bombed. Millions of Yemenis, including a generation of children, have faced famine, cholera and preventable disease while Western weapons manufacturers booked record profits.

The 2,000-pound bombs now being offered again are the same class of munitions that rights groups documented flattening entire city blocks and killing indiscriminately. Progressive members of Congress have repeatedly noted that these sales make the United States a co-belligerent in the war of aggression.

America 'complicit' in war against Yemen

Tlaib is far from alone. Representative Ro Khanna of California, who co-sponsored historic War Powers resolutions to end US participation in the Yemen war, has consistently argued that no president, Democrat or Republican, has the constitutional authority to wage or enable such a campaign without Congress. In 2025, he condemned renewed US bombing of Yemen as a betrayal of campaign promises to end endless wars.

Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont has for years described US logistical support, intelligence sharing and spare-parts transfers as making America “complicit in this nightmare.” Sanders, Khanna and others previously forced votes that would have grounded the Saudi air force by cutting off maintenance and munitions; those efforts were vetoed or diluted by successive administrations.

Representatives Pramila Jayapal, Val Hoyle and others have demanded the Trump White House cease unauthorized strikes and come to Congress. Senators Jeff Merkley, Chris Van Hollen, Tim Kaine and others have written letters insisting that any sustained military engagement with Yemeni forces must comply with the Constitution and the War Powers Resolution.

Senator Ed Markey has already introduced a resolution of disapproval targeting the latest bomb sale, giving the Senate a concrete vehicle to follow Tlaib’s call.

Anti-war organizations have been even more blunt. CODEPINK, Veterans for Peace, the ANSWER Coalition and dozens of other groups have spent years documenting how US bombs and the Saudi blockade turned Yemen into a humanitarian catastrophe.

They have organized protests under the slogan “Let Yemen live,” picketed weapons manufacturers, and pressed lawmakers to cut off the flow of munitions that continue to rain down on one of the poorest countries on earth. Activists have long argued that Yemeni resistance to the siege constitutes legitimate self-defense and solidarity.

The Ansarullah movement has repeatedly demonstrated that it answers first to Yemeni sovereignty and popular will. Its recent advances and its ability to down Saudi aircraft underscore that years of high-tech bombing have not broken the will of a people determined to live free of foreign tutelage.

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