Johnson pushes ahead on U.S. aid for Ukraine, allies
WASHINGTON — Defiant and determined, House Speaker Mike Johnson pushed back Tuesday against mounting Republican anger over his proposed U.S. aid package for Ukraine, Israel and other allies, and rejected a call to step aside or risk a vote to oust him from office.
“I am not resigning,” Mr. Johnson said after a testy morning meeting of fellow House Republicans at the Capitol.
Mr. Johnson referred to himself as a “wartime speaker” of the House and indicated in his strongest self-defense yet he would press forward with a U.S. national security aid package, a situation that would force him to rely on Democrats to help pass it, over objections from his weakened majority.
“We are simply here trying to do our jobs,” Mr. Johnson said, calling the motion to oust him “absurd ... not helpful.”
Tuesday brought a definitive shift in tone from both the House Republicans and the speaker himself at a pivotal moment as the embattled leader tries, against the wishes of his majority, to marshal the votes needed to send the stalled national security aid for Israel, Ukraine and other overseas allies to passage.
Mr. Johnson appeared emboldened by his meeting late last week at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida when the Republican former president threw him a political lifeline with a nod of support. At his own news conference Tuesday, Mr. Johnson spoke of the importance of ensuring Mr. Trump, who is now at his criminal trial in New York, is re-elected to the White House.
Mr. Johnson also spoke over the weekend with President Joe Biden as well as other congressional leaders about the emerging U.S. aid package, which the speaker plans to move in separate votes for each section — with bills for Ukraine, Israel, the Indo-Pacific region. He spoke to Mr. Biden about it again late Monday.
After Mr. Johnson briefed the president, White House officials said they were taking a waitand-see approach until the text of the speaker’s plan is released and the procedural pathway becomes more clear.
“It does appear at first blush, that the speaker’s proposal will, in fact, help us get aid to Ukraine, aid to Israel and needed resources to the Indo-Pacific for a wide range of contingencies there,” John Kirby, the White House’s national security spokesman, told reporters on Tuesday.
The speaker is considering a complicated approach that would break apart the Senate’s $ 95 billion aid package for separate votes, and then either stitch it back together or send the components to the Senate for final passage, and potentially onto the White House for the president’s signature.
All told, it would require the speaker to cobble together bipartisan majorities with different factions of House Republicans and Democrats on each measure.
Additionally, Mr. Johnson is preparing a fourth measure that would include various Republican-preferred national security priorities, such as a plan to seize some Russian assets in U.S. banks to help fund Ukraine and another to turn the economic aid for Ukraine into loans. It could also include provisions to sanction Iran over its weekend attack on Israel, among others.
The speaker’s emerging plan is not an automatic deal-breaker for Democrats in the House and Senate, with leaders refraining from comment until details are released. They were due late Tuesday — though as the afternoon dragged on that was uncertain.