just a little while ago the house overwhelmingly passed a bill giving congress the power to block any effort by the white house to weaken sanctions on russia offering a direct challenge to president donald trump s authority. it is unclear when the senate will vote on the measure. and in the russia investigation, cnn has now learned that the senate judiciary committee has dropped the subpoena aimed at forcing the president s former campaign chairman paul manafort to testify publicly. we are told the two sides have agreed to keep talking and manafort is no longer required to appear at an open hearing tomorrow. this hour i ll talk about all those stories, much more with senator chris coons. he s a key democrat on the judiciary committee. and our correspondents and specialists are also standing by. first, let s go to our senior white house correspondent jeff zeleny. jeff, we heard from the president, but the attorney general s future is still very much in question. reporter: wolf,
419-3 vote to impose sanctions on russia, iran, north korea, and includes a provision that the white house fought that essentially would give congress veto power if that bill if the administration moved in any way to loosen sanctions on russia. the white house saying that this was an effort for congress to sort of impose its will on foreign policy in areas that should be dictated by the executive branch. something that the members of congress simply rejected. it was really a rebuke to the administration from both sides of the aisle and overwhelming passage in the house after, wolf, a 98-2 vote of an earlier version that passed the senate. the question is what does the senate do now. bob corcoran, senate foreign relations committee, suggests they want to make minor tweaks. they will pass a bill to land on the president s desk. the white house has not said yet what they will do. if the president vetoes it, there is a chance that veto will
clearly, this was a message that both republicans and democrats wanted to deliver to this president. the message to the president from these democrats and republicans, if you voe toe it and it is unclear what the president is going to do, they have the votes to override that voe tee. we could see this setting up a power struggle between the white house and republicans in congress in particular. you think about, wolf, the white house s relation and president trump s relationships specifically with congress during the first six months of his first term. and it s been really discouraging relationship from him. apart from the sanctions there is no major legislative achievement he could point to that has come out of congress. this is going to rile him up even further. i would be surprised if he doesn t veto it. it s not just new sanctions
bill giving congress the ability to review any final agreement on the iranian deal. gop leaders are using an expedited procedure that prevents members from offering amendments and limits debate time and it passed with a margin of 98-1. british police here and many people going to syria. frightening language coming from the metropolitan police, and he did an interview today, and at the same time some new figures came out. a couple quotes from him. he said there is a massive threat posed by those that returned from syria and iraq. what he is pointing out, there has been a bit of a change here.
it s only ghoulish to those that ignore the crumbling infrastructure that characterized our rail systems. you are forcing the administrators of the rail systems to make very difficult decisions, do you put your limited capital improvements into potentially high consequence events with a low probability of occurring, or do you put them in the more everyday maintenance and capital improvements that keeps the trains running on time? it s a very difficult decision. the congress and the state legislators and the city legislators have not been fully supportive and this is the consequence. so it s not ghoulish at all. thank you, i appreciate that. i ll be right back.