Ukraine, Israel aid back on track as House pushes past hardliners toward weekend vote
WASHINGTON — With rare bipartisan momentum, the House of Representatives sidelined far-right conservatives and prepared Friday to push a $95 billion national security aid package for Ukraine, Israel and other U.S. allies over a key procedural hurdle , closer to the passage.
Speaker of the House of Representatives Mike Johnson has spent the past 24 hours making the rounds among the conservative media in favor of saving war funding, especially for Ukraine, as the country faces a critical moment in the fight against Russia, but also for its own lane, now that the restless right flank threatens to drive him out. above the effort.
“There’s a lot of misinformation about what we’re doing here and why,” Johnson told the conservative host of The Mark Levin Show.
“The Ukrainians are in urgent need of lethal assistance right now. … We cannot allow Vladimir Putin to invade another country and take it,” he said of the Russian president’s invasion of Ukraine. “These are very serious matters with global consequences.”
After months of delays, the House was working slowly but deliberately when Johnson decided to proceed this week. President Joe Biden quickly approved the speaker’s plan and in a rare moment, Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee who opposes most foreign aid to Ukraine, did not derail the speaker’s work.
“The world is watching what Congress does,” the White House said in a statement. “Passing this legislation would send a strong message about the strength of American leadership at a crucial time.”
In an extremely rare move, House Rules Committee members joined forces late Thursday in a vote around midnight, with the four Democrats voicing support for a procedural move to get past the three hardline Republican majority holdouts and pass the package to be sent to the House of Representatives. floor for debate on a 9-3 vote. It was a moment not seen in the House’s recent memory.
Johnson will again have to rely on Democrats on Friday to pass the next procedural vote and roll back amendments offered by Republicans that could kill the package. One from hardline Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene would cut spending on Ukraine to zero.
Greene has made the “motion to remove the speaker from office,” and has targeted at least one other Republican, Rep. Thomas Massie from Kentucky, signed as co-sponsor. It could launch an effort to oust Johnson from the speaker’s office if they call it up for a vote, just as Republicans ousted Kevin McCarthy from office last fall.
With one of the smallest majorities in the House of Representatives in modern times, Johnson can only afford to lose a single vote or two from his Republican ranks before he can pass a bill. That dynamic has pushed him into the arms of Democrats as he looks for votes to pass the package.
Without his Republican majority, Johnson cannot shape the package as the ultra-conservatives demand, otherwise he will lose the support of the Democrats. It has forced him to abandon strict security measures to control migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border and other priorities.
At best, Johnson has managed to break a Senate-passed version of the bill into separate parts, as favored by Republicans in the House of Representatives, and the final vote will be on different measures – for Ukraine, Israel and the Indo-Pacific allies.
The package would also include a fourth provision that includes many Republican priorities that Democrats endorse, or at least are willing to accept. These include proposals that would allow the US to seize frozen assets from Russia’s central bank to rebuild Ukraine; impose sanctions on Iran, Russia, China and criminal organizations that traffic fentanyl, and possibly ban the video app TikTok if its China-based owner does not sell its stake within a year.
To bring any bill to a vote, expected on Saturday, Johnson will have to build complicated, bipartisan coalitions on each bill, with Democrats, for example, having to ensure that aid to Ukraine is approved, but some left-wing progressives rejecting military aid to to support Israel over the destruction of Gaza.
The components would then be automatically put back together into one package that would be sent to the Senate, where hardliners there are also planning procedural steps to delay final approval.