McConnell may have endorsed Trump, for whatever reason, but he still strongly favors military aid for Ukraine. Yesterday, he was on the Senate floor pressuring MAGA Mike to do the right thing— even if the right thing costs him his gavel. “The chilling reality here,” McConnell said, “is abundantly clear: Withholding critical weapons has not helped manage Putin’s escalation. It has only emboldened him. Equipping Ukraine for battlefield success is the surest way to help our friends resolve this war from a position of strength. Investing in our own military and our own defense industrial capacity at the same time just makes common sense. It’s time for the House to take up the Senate-passed national security supplemental and finish the job. I want to encourage the Speaker again to allow a vote, a vote. Let the House speak on the supplemental that we sent over to them several weeks ago. The only way to get relief to the Ukrainians and the Israelis quickly is for the House to figure out how to pass the Senate bill. Anything that’s changed and sent back here… even the simplest thing can take a week in the Senate. We don’t have time for all of this. We got a bill that got 70 votes in the Senate. Give the members of the House of Representatives an opportunity to vote on it. That’s the solution.”
Problem for MAGA Mike: Trump forbade that vote to take place and his House henchman, Marjorie Traitor Greene, has publicly announced, several times, that if MM allows a Ukraine vote, she will push forward with a resolution to vacate the chair. Even if MM survives that, it would be with Democratic votes, making his tenure illegitimate in the eyes of dozens of Republicans and making it impossible for him to govern the House, let alone the country.
Yesterday, Jennifer Scholtes and Connor O’Brien reported that MM is under mounting pressure over Ukrainian aid. “If the speaker doesn’t quickly embrace a plan to approve long-stalled foreign assistance, lawmakers in his own party could force his hand by aligning with Democrats on maneuvers that would steer aid bills around him. But whatever plan Johnson does embrace will almost surely cost him with his deeply fractured GOP conference, whose tenuous two-vote majority is already requiring him to rely on Democratic votes to pass most major legislation… [L]awmakers in both parties warn that Kyiv can’t hold out much longer. ‘Pushing it off past next Friday is reckless, and I’ve made that clear,’ House Armed Services Chair Mike Rogers (R-AL) said, though he wasn’t optimistic about quick action. Military officials warn Ukraine will run out of needed ammunition in a matter of weeks without an emergency aid bill, even as the Pentagon gets ready to send another $300 million worth of ammo, artillery rounds and missiles. As Congress prepares to leave Washington next week for a 17-day recess, the Polish prime minister and other foreign leaders are warning in increasingly bold terms that the speaker’s inaction risks resulting in mass casualties.”
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has also called for clearing the Senate foreign aid bill by the end of next week. He noted that the petition Democrats are circulating to force a vote on it has far more signatures than the bipartisan petition led by Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA) and Jared Golden (Blue Dog-ME) to force a passage vote on an aid plan with border measures.
“It’s a reaffirmation,” Jeffries told reporters, “that the only clear path is to put the bipartisan, comprehensive Senate-passed bill on the House floor for an up or down vote, and it will pass overwhelmingly.”
Either attempt to circumvent GOP leadership will be tricky. Johnson is working to dissuade rank-and-file Republicans from signing either petition. But on the other side of the aisle, progressive Democrats are amplifying their calls for conditions on aid to Israel, and many are unlikely to sign onto a push for more funding to arm Israel without limits.
The longer Johnson waits, the more intense the political pressures will get in the run-up to Election Day. Assistance for Ukraine still enjoys bipartisan support in the House, but opposition to new funding has swelled among Republicans as Trump more vocally criticizes Ukraine aid.
“With the virulence with which the former president is interfering with the process, I worry about the more time that goes by,” said Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE), chair of the panel that funds the State Department.
And even if Congress were to clear a multibillion-dollar aid package next week, the money won’t immediately boost Ukraine in fending off the Russian invasion, warned Rep. Mike Quigley (D-IL), a co-chair of the Congressional Ukraine Caucus.
“Bottom line, the pipeline is nearly empty,” Quigley said. “Let’s just say we resolve this next week. It’s gonna take a while to fill the pipeline and get stuff into the battlefield. We’re losing time.”
