World
Bernie Sanders forces US senators into a test vote on military aid as the Israel-Hamas war grinds on
WASHINGTON (AP) — In a notable test Tuesday, Sen. Bernie Sanders is forcing colleagues to vote on record whether to investigate human rights abuses in the Israel-Hamas war, a step toward potentially limiting U.S. military aid to Israel as its devastating attacks on Gaza grind past 100 days.
The Senate vote, a first of its kind tapping into a decades-old law, would require the U.S. State Department to, within 30 days, produce a report on whether the Israeli war effort in Gaza is violating human rights and international accords. If so, U.S. military aid to Israel, long assured without question, could be quickly halted.
While the Senate is unlikely to approve the measure, the vote by senators will begin to reveal the depth of unease among U.S. lawmakers over Israel’s prosecution of the war against Hamas. With no apparent end to the bombardment, Israel’s attacks against Palestinians, an attempt to root out Hamas leaders, are viewed by some as disproportional to the initial terrorist attack on Israel.
The Biden administration, with repeated overtures to Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, including shuttle diplomacy last week by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, is pushing Israel to shift the intensity of the battle. Some 24,000 people in Gaza, the majority of them women and children, have been killed and the bombings have destroyed most of the housing units, displacing most of its 2.3 million people in a humanitarian catastrophe.
“To my mind, Israel has the absolute right to defend itself from Hamas’ barbaric terrorist attack on October 7, no question about that,” Sanders told AP during an interview Monday ahead of the vote.
“But what Israel does not have a right to do — using military assistance from the United States — does not have the right to go to war against the entire Palestinian people,” said Sanders, the independent from Vermont. “And in my view, that’s what has been happening.”
Heading toward the vote, Sanders said senators are nervous because what he’s trying to do is unprecedented in procedure and essentially practice.
“The Congress has always been supportive of Israel in general, and this begins to question the nature of the military campaign,” Sanders said. “And I think that makes some other people quite nervous.”
The White House has rejected approach from Sanders as “unworkable” as it seeks a transition from Israel and works to ensure support at home and abroad against a stirring backlash to the scenes of destruction from Gaza.
“We do not believe that this resolution is the right vehicle to address these issues. And we don’t think now is the right time. It’s unworkable, quite frankly,” said a statement from the White House National Security Council’s John Kirby.
“The Israelis have indicated they are preparing to transition their operations to a much lower intensity. And we believe that transition will be helpful both in terms of reducing civilian casualties, as well as increasing humanitarian assistance,” Kirby said.
The action comes as Biden’s request for $106 billion supplemental national security aid for Israel as well as Ukraine and other military needs is at a standstill. Republicans in Congress are insisting on attaching vast policy changes to stop the flow of immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Of that supplemental aid package, more than $14 billion would go to Israel, including $10 billion in U.S. military assistance, as it retaliates against Hamas for the Oct. 7 surprise attack, among the most deadly assaults ever. Some 1,200 people were killed and 250 taken hostage, many still being held.
Several key Democratic senators have announced their unease with Israel’s war in Gaza, insisting the Biden administration must do more to push the Netanyahu government to reduce civilian casualties and improve living conditions for Palestinians in Gaza.
Going further, Sanders had already announced his refusal to support more military aid to Israel in the package because of the war.
“If I had my druthers, that’s what I would do. That is not what this resolution is about,” Sanders said.
But he did say that the resolution should be seen as “a first step, not a last step.”
The resolution is drawn from the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, which was amended after the Nixon era, enabling Congress to provide oversight of U.S. military assistance abroad. It requires that any arms or military aid must be used in accordance with international human rights accords.
While senators have voted to try to halt foreign arms sales to other countries in the past, this is an untested mechanism.
The question before the Senate will be whether to ask the State Department for a report on whether human rights violations using U.S. equipment may have occurred during Israel’s current campaign against Gaza, according to Sanders’ office.
If the resolution were to be approved, it would force the State Department to produce a report of its findings within 30 days or risk the aid being cut off.
While it’s not at all certain that U.S. aid to Israel would actually be halted, since Congress could take steps to ensure no interruption, it is enough of a threat that many senators, even the Democrats who have raised concerns about the bombardment of Gaza and the humanitarian crisis, will be unwilling to support the measure.
Republican senators are likely to fully reject Sanders’ proposal. Senate Republicans have been almost unanimous in their support for Israel, even as they are blocking Biden’s broader national security package because of divisions within the GOP over helping Ukraine as it battles Russia’s invasion.
Talks on attaching the U.S-Mexico border security provisions to the national security aid package are lumbering along, but no quick breakthrough is expected as Republicans push for tougher restrictions on migrants than Democrats are willing to give, particularly for immigrations seeking asylum in the U.S.
Associated Press writer Ellen Knickmeyer contributed to this report.
Russian officials said Sunday that Moscow is still awaiting official confirmation from Kyiv that a planned exchange of 6,000 bodies of soldiers killed in action will take place, reiterating allegations that Ukraine had postponed the swap.
Russian state media quoted Lt. Gen. Alexander Zorin, a representative of the Russian negotiating group, as saying that Russia delivered the first batch of 1,212 bodies of Ukrainian Armed Forces soldiers to the exchange site at the border and is waiting for confirmation from the Ukrainian side, but that there are “signals” that the process of transferring the bodies will be postponed until next week.
Russia and Ukraine each accused the other on Saturday of endangering plans to swap 6,000 bodies of soldiers killed in action, which was agreed upon during direct talks in Istanbul on Monday that otherwise made no progress toward ending the war.
Vladimir Medinsky, a Putin aide who led the Russian delegation, said that Kyiv called a last-minute halt to an imminent swap. In a Telegram post on Saturday, Medinsky said that refrigerated trucks carrying more than 1,200 bodies of Ukrainian troops from Russia had already reached the agreed exchange site at the border when the news came.
In response, Ukraine said Russia was playing “dirty games” and manipulating facts.
According to the main Ukrainian authority dealing with such swaps, no date had been set for repatriating the bodies. In a statement on Saturday, the agency also accused Russia of submitting lists of prisoners of war for repatriation that didn’t correspond to agreements reached on Monday.
It wasn’t immediately possible to reconcile the conflicting claims.
In other developments, one person was killed and another seriously wounded in Russian aerial strikes on the eastern Ukrainian Kharkiv region. These strikes came after Russian attacks targeted the regional capital, also called Kharkiv, on Saturday. Regional police in Kharkiv said on Sunday that the death toll from Saturday’s attacks had increased to six people. More than two dozen others were wounded.
Russia fired a total of 49 exploding drones and decoys and three missiles overnight, Ukraine’s air force said Sunday. Forty drones were shot down or electronically jammed.
Meanwhile, Russia’s defense ministry said that its forces shot down 61 Ukrainian drones overnight, including near the capital.
Two people were wounded when a Ukrainian drone attack sparked a fire at a chemical plant in the Tula region.
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A Colombian senator and presidential candidate was shot on Saturday in Bogotá, the government and his campaign said.
Miguel Uribe, 39, was hosting a campaign event in a public park in the Fontibon neighborhood when “armed subjects shot him in the back.”
His party described the attack as serious but didn’t go into detail about his condition.
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Miguel Uribe, 39, was hosting a campaign event in a public park when he was shot. (Raul Arboleda/AFP via Getty Images)
He is a member of the opposition right-wing Democratic Center party, founded by former Colombian President Álvaro Uribe.
The party called the attack “an unacceptable act of violence.”
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Miguel Uribe Turbay, center in blue tie, celebrates after voting against a labor reform referendum proposed by the government, in Bogota, Colombia, May 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Fernando Vergara, File) (AP Photo/Fernando Vergara, File)
Videos circulating on social media appeared to show Uribe after the attack covered in blood with a possible head wound as people attempt to stem the bleeding.
Police officers guard the area where Colombian Senator Miguel Uribe was shot during a campaign event. (Reuters//Luisa Gonzalez)
A suspect was taken into custody, Bogotá’s mayor said, according to Colombia Reports.
Reuters contributed to this report.
The senator’s wife says he ‘is fighting for his life’ after being shot at a campaign event in Bogota.
Colombian Senator Miguel Uribe, a possible candidate in the country’s presidential election next year, has been shot and wounded in the country’s capital, Bogota, according to authorities.
The 39-year-old senator, who was shot on Saturday during a campaign event as part of his run for the presidency in 2026, is now “fighting for his life”, his wife, Maria Claudia Tarazona, said on X.
Uribe is a member of the opposition conservative Democratic Center party, founded by former Colombian President Alvaro Uribe.
The two men are not related.
The Democratic Center party released a statement calling the shooting “an unacceptable act of violence”.
It said the senator was hosting a campaign event in a public park in the Fontibon neighbourhood in the capital when “armed subjects” shot him from behind.
It described the attack as serious, but did not disclose further details on Uribe’s condition.
A medical report from the Santa Fe Foundation hospital said the senator was admitted in critical condition and is undergoing a “neurosurgical and peripheral vascular procedure”.
Videos on social media showed a man, identified as Uribe, being tended to after the shooting. He appeared to be bleeding from his head.
Colombia’s Attorney General’s Office, which is investigating the shooting, said the senator received two gunshot wounds in the attack, which wounded two others. The statement from the office said a 15-year-old boy was arrested at the scene with a firearm.
The government said it is offering some $730,000 as a reward for information in the case.
Colombia’s presidency issued a statement saying the government “categorically and forcefully” rejected the violent attack, and called for a thorough investigation into the events that took place.
Leftist President Gustavo Petro sympathised with the senator’s family in a message on X, and said: “Respect life, that’s the red line… My solidarity with the Uribe family and the Turbay family. I don’t know how to ease their pain.”
In a speech on Saturday night, Petro said that the investigation would focus on finding who had ordered the attack.
“For now, there is nothing more than hypotheses,” Petro said, adding that failures in security protocols would also be looked into.
United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement that the US “condemns in the strongest possible terms the attempted assassination” of Uribe, blaming Petro’s “inflammatory rhetoric” for the violence.
Reactions poured in from around Latin America. Chilean President Gabriel Boric said that “there is no room or justification for violence in a democracy”. And Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa said, “We condemn all forms of violence and intolerance.”
Both presidents offered solidarity to the senator’s family.
In Colombia, former President Uribe said that “they attacked the hope of the country, a great husband, father, son, brother, a great colleague”.
Uribe, who is not yet an official presidential candidate for his party, is from a prominent family in Colombia.
His father was a businessman and union leader. His mother, journalist Diana Turbay, was kidnapped in 1990 by an armed group under the command of the late cartel leader Pablo Escobar.
She was killed during a rescue operation in 1991.
Colombia has for decades been embroiled in a conflict between leftist rebels, criminal groups descended from right-wing paramilitaries, and the government.
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