{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.paul.senate.gov/news-dr-rand-paul-we-can-end-saudi-blockade-and-bring-relief-long-suffering-yemeni-people/", "Dr. Rand Paul: \u201cWe can end the Saudi blockade and bring relief to the long-suffering Yemeni people\u201d", "2021-12-07", "2021", "2021-12", "Republican", "Senate", "KY", "Rand Paul", "P000603", "www.paul.senate.gov", "paul", "https://www.paul.senate.gov/news/", "scraper", "FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:\n\nDecember 7, 2021\n\nContact: Press_Paul@paul.senate.gov, 202-224-4343\n\nWASHINGTON, D.C. \u2013 Today, U.S. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) penned an op-ed published in the American Conservative on his joint resolution of disapproval to block proposed U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia. The joint resolution will be voted on in the Senate today.\n\nYou can read Dr. Paul\u2019s full op-ed HERE or below, and learn more about his joint resolution HERE.\n\nSaudi Arabia\u2019s air and naval blockade of Yemen is an abomination. For years now, ships that would otherwise carry food, fuel, and medicine are turned away by the Saudi-led coalition, depriving the Yemeni people of the necessities to sustain civilization. Saudi Arabia\u2019s intervention in the Yemeni civil war is a chilling example of the cruelty of warfare by starvation. According to the United Nations, five million people are one step away from succumbing to famine and disease, and ten million more are right behind them. But, this week, the Senate can start the process of ending this crisis by passing my legislation to cancel an American arms sale to Saudi Arabia that aids and abets the subjugation of the Yemeni people.\n\nThe children of Yemen who survive Saudi Arabia\u2019s barbaric blockade will inevitably tell their sons and daughters of the horrors of their youth. And those sons and daughters will tell their sons and daughters. Through oral tradition, a thousand generations of Yemenis will know of the Crown Prince\u2019s ruthlessness. And they will also know that it was the Americans that sold him the weapons to wage his murderous campaign.\n\nThe reports from Yemen describe a nightmare. The Washington Post reported of a three-year-old boy, who could not walk or speak, described his face as \u201cskeletal\u201d and arms and legs as \u201cthin as twigs.\u201d He weighed ten pounds, and his father said that he sometimes goes two days without eating because Saudi import restrictions have made food prohibitively expensive, as if mere sustenance was a luxury. The New York Times told the story of a mother who, after three days of failing to find a ride, carried her 8-month-old son while walking two hours to reach medics to treat acute malnutrition. Even after a week of treatment with enriched formula, the boy still lay motionless on his hospital bed.\n\nTens of thousands of children have already died from disease, malnutrition, or starvation. International aid agencies, who also have to fight the Saudi blockade to provide humanitarian assistance, put it succinctly: \u201cthe people of Yemen are not starving. They are being starved.\u201d\n\nThe Saudi siege of Yemen is made possible because of American weaponry. The arsenal provided by the United States includes billions of dollars\u2019 worth of military aircraft and thousands of air-to-ground munitions. Only weeks ago, the Biden Administration approved a new $650 million sale of 280 advanced medium range air-to-air missiles and 596 missile launchers to the Saudis. As painful as it is to admit, the United States is an accessory Saudi savagery.\n\nPresident Biden says the latest sale is merely to help defend Saudi territorial integrity, but the commander in chief\u2019s words do not match Saudi actions. According to William Hartung, the Director of the Arms and Security Program at the Center for International Policy, \u201cthe air blockade is enforced by a threat to shoot down any aircraft, military or civilian, that enters Yemeni air space with the goal of landing at Sana\u2019a airport. The provision of air-to-air missiles gives further credibility to this threat, dissuading any government or aid group from bringing in crucial medicines or flying patients in and out of Yemen.\u201d In other words, no weapon is exclusively defensive and continued American arm sales means continued death and starvation in Yemen.\n\nI am leading a bipartisan effort to end America\u2019s complicity in Saudi Arabia\u2019s war on the Yemeni people. This week, I will force a vote on a bipartisan disapproval resolution that proposes to cancel the arms sale. To overcome an almost certain veto, this effort will require the support of two-thirds of both chambers of Congress. If Members of Congress believe in humanitarianism, if they believe America is a force for good that serves as a model for other nations to emulate, if they believe that the crushing of the Yemeni people must be stopped, then they must vote for the resolution of disapproval.\n\nWe have a chance to tell the Crown Prince that American arms sales will end until he gives up his starvation campaign. We can end the Saudi blockade and bring relief to the long-suffering Yemeni people. Should we fail to seize this opportunity, history will never let us forget that America, the last best hope for humanity, failed to protect defenseless civilians from the cruelty of a criminal regime.\n\n###", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-06T20:37:48Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.paul.senate.gov/news-dr-rand-paul-we-can-end-saudi-blockade-and-bring-relief-long-suffering-yemeni-people/"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.6909041441977024, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}