U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson is likely introducing a Ukraine aid bill after Easter, facing potential challenges due to internal party dynamics.
U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson is likely introducing a Ukraine aid bill after Easter, facing potential challenges due to internal party dynamics.
Ugh, what a mess
Edit: how come they faced none of these problems last time? Isn’t it the same Congress?
Trump has decided to weigh in which means that all Republicans now have to do whatever he indicates he might want.
Ehhh.
I think that just saying “Trump” is dramatically oversimplifying the situation.
It’s not like you have some group of moderate Republicans and then Trump.
I haven’t been following closely, but the group that was responsible for a lot of the blockage of bills – not just this one – as I understand it, has been the House Freedom Caucus, which is a small-government group; my understanding is that they wanted to force Ukraine aid to come from cutting domestic spending.
They were also the group, the House Freedom Caucus, that got Kevin McCarthy kicked out after he cut a cross-aisle deal with the Democrats on spending – one of its members, Matt Gaetz (R-FL) initiated the motion to vacate.
The head of that group, Bob Good (R-VA), supported DeSantis against Trump, got in a spat with Trump’s group over that:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/freedom-caucus-chairman-bob-good-on-the-rocks-with-trump-and-his-conference/ar-BB1kH50v
Trump exacerbated things because he’s relying on upset over illegal immigration and opposed a version of the bill going through that had border provisions might have reduced upset over that and weakened his position in the election.
Mike Johnson probably could pass a bill with some Democrat support even if he can’t get everyone on the Republican side onboard, but the fate of Kevin McCarthy is kind of going to discourage that. He isn’t gonna want to be Kevin McCarthy 2.0.
So it’s not simply like the House Republicans consist of a bunch of “pro-Trump” and “anti-Trump” people and that dictates everything that’s going on. There’s a more-complicated interplay between factions going on.
The elephant in the room, as I understand it, is that Kevin McCarthy didn’t get supported by the Democrats after he crossed the aisle earlier. If he had, then he’d still be in place, and could probably have done so again on the Ukraine aid bill months ago and had it pass without any problems.
The US has weak party discipline compared to many countries. Legislators can kinda do what they want regardless of what party leadership wants. That’s generally good in terms of people crossing the aisle on bills, passing centrist stuff even if people on the D or R fringes don’t like it, but that doesn’t apply if the Speaker’s going to get vacated for doing that. It also means that party leadership can’t force the Freedom Caucus or similar to support the Speaker just because he’s Republican.
This is a great callout and commentary. I understand why McCarthy didn’t get Dem support as he screwed over Dems prior to this with other deals but you’re right that this is indeed bigger than Trump. Him and others created this monster. Who controls it is up to debate but it’s about money and power. If Trump is perceived as having the power they fall in line. If Putin is supplying the cash they fall in line. Chances are it’s a combination of foreign interests paying middlemen to wield power.
Possibly because the Democrats offered significant compromises in crossing the aisle, and then a handful of days later, McCarthy was blaming them for the provisions of the bill?
Fuck kind of bite-the-hand-that-feeds-you shit do you expect?
Fucking doubt.
Fixed that for you.
Oh, that makes sense :-/
No.
The 2022 bill was passed by the 117th Congress in May 2022.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/7691
The current one has been banging around since late 2023 and is the 118th Congress:
https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/5692
The 118th is split very closely between the Republicans and Democrats, with R having a very slight majority, which means that a very small number who wants to play hardball with their party leadership on the R side can block bills. And so that’s been happening on various bills.
In theory, a Speaker could pass a bill by relying on at least some Democrat support and ignoring said small number of people playing chicken, but Kevin McCarthy, the previous Speaker, did exactly that and then the Democrats refused to support him when the backlash on his side of the aisle came up, meaning that he lost his seat when one of the people on the R side moved to vacate his seat. That kind of set the stage to kill bipartisanship from the current Speaker, Mike Johnson.
EDIT: Okay, to clarify, the latter bill was an attempt at passing Ukraine aid in the House, months back. It won’t be the one that goes through now; there was subsequently a Senate-initiated bill, and then Johnson may do a House bill.
It sucks that the Democrats could have partially prevented this and kept bipartisanship alive by handing McCarthy a proverbial olive branch, but didn’t. Although I get that watching the Republicans squabble over who will be speaker probably helped their image at the time.