U.S. military assistance to the Saudi Arabian war against Yemen. In July 2019, he voted against legislation to block U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. In October 2019, he voted against a measure opposing Trump's decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria. In January 2020, he voted against a bill to restrict Trump from initiating military action against Iran without approval by Congress. Rutherford's district includes two major U.S. Navy bases (Naval Air Station Jacksonville and Naval Station Mayport), and he has pressed issues important to the bases. Like other members of Florida's delegation, he pressed for two squadrons of the F-35 Lightning II to be based in Jacksonville. Donald Trump Rutherford defended some of Trump's most controversial statements and actions as president, including his pardon of ex-sheriff Joe Arpaio and his comments after a deadly far-right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Rutherford voted against both Trump's first impeachment (in 2019, on articles of obstruction of Congress and abuse of power) and his second impeachment (in 2021, on an article of incitement of insurrection). Effort to overturn 2020 election result Rutherford initially refused to accept the results of the 2020 presidential election, in which Trump lost to Joe Biden. He echoed Trump's false claims of election fraud and suggested that Republican-controlled state legislatures in swing states Biden won could hold a "decertification vote" that would lead to the U.S. House selecting the next president, though he acknowledged that this was unlikely to succeed. On January 7, 2021, after the Capitol was attacked by a pro-Trump mob in an attempted insurrection, Rutherford was one of 138 House Republicans who voted not to count the electoral votes from Arizona and Pennsylvania, despite a number of audits and recounts confirming the election outcome in those states. In December 2020, Rutherford was one of 126 Republican members of the House of Representatives to sign an amicus brief in support of Texas v. Pennsylvania, a lawsuit filed at the U.S. Supreme Court that sought to overturn the election results. The Supreme Court declined to hear the case on the basis that Texas lacked standing under Article III of the Constitution to challenge the results of an election held by another state. After Trump was impeached for his role in inciting a pro-Trump mob to storm the Capitol over false claims of election fraud, Rutherford condemned Representative Liz Cheney for voting to