U.S. State Department bypassed congressional review of a $700 million fighter-engine sale to Turkey without invoking emergency authority

Late on June 23, 2026, the Trump administration informed Representative Gregory Meeks of New York, the ranking Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, that the State Department would bypass the congressional review process for an arms sale to Turkey worth more than $700 million. The sale covers approximately 80 GE F110 turbofan engines for Turkey's domestically developed KAAN fighter program. Meeks said the department told his office it would immediately proceed with a formal notification of the sale.

In a public statement, Meeks said the State Department "did not even attempt to justify its decision," invoking no emergency authority and presenting no written rationale. He added that the administration had for months refused to make a good-faith effort to brief him on the sale's implications, including Turkey's continued possession of the Russian S-400 air-defense system and related regional-security concerns.

The Arms Export Control Act establishes a statutory review period during which Congress can examine and, if it chooses, move to block major foreign military sales before they take effect. The informal hold placed by the committee's ranking member is a routine part of that consultation process. By declining to invoke emergency authority — the mechanism the executive has used in other contested sales to lawfully shorten review — while still moving to proceed over the committee's objections, the administration advanced the transfer outside the ordinary congressional review Congress wrote into statute.