The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Biden OKs $95B aid package for Ukraine, Israel and more
Potential TikTok ban, which company vows to fight, also in measure.
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden signed into law Wednesday a $95 billion war aid measure that includes aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan and also has a provision that would force social media site TikTok to be sold or be banned in the U.S.
The announcement marks an end to the long, painful battle with Republicans in Congress over urgently needed assistance for Ukraine.
“We rose to the moment, we came together, and we got it done,” Biden said at White House event to announce the signing. “Now we need to move fast, and we are.”
Biden approved immediately sending Ukraine $1 billion in military assistance and said the shipment would begin arriving in the “next few hours” — the first tranche from about $61 billion allocated for Ukraine. The package includes air defense capabilities, artillery rounds, armored vehicles and other weapons to shore up Ukrainian forces who have seen morale sink as Russian President Vladimir Putin has racked up win after win.
But longer term, it remains uncertain if Ukraine — after months of losses in eastern Ukraine and sustaining massive damage to its infrastructure — can make enough progress to sustain American political support before burning through the latest influx of money.
“It’s not going in the Ukrainians’ favor in the Donbas, certainly not elsewhere in the country,” said White House national security spokesman John Kirby, referring to the eastern industrial heartland where Ukraine has suffered setbacks. “Mr. Putin thinks he can play for time. So we’ve got to try to make up some of that time.”
Tucked into the measure is a provision that gives TikTok’s Beijing-based parent company, ByteDance, nine months to sell it or face a nationwide prohibition in the United States. The president can grant a one-time extension of 90 days, bringing the timeline to sell to one year, if he certifies there’s a path to divestiture and “significant progress” toward executing it.
The administration and a bipartisan group of lawmakers have called the social media site a growing national security concern.
TikTok said it will wage a legal challenge against what it called an “unconstitutional” effort by Congress.
“We believe the facts and the law are clearly on our side, and we will ultimately prevail,” the company said in a statement.
Biden underscored the bill also includes a surge of about $1 billion in humanitarian relief for Palestinians in Gaza suffering as the Israel-Hamas war continues.
Biden said Israel must ensure the humanitarian aid for Palestinians in bill reaches Gaza “without delay.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson delayed a vote on the supplemental aid package for months as members of his party’s far right wing, including Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Rome and Thomas Massie of Kentucky, threatened to move to oust him if he allowed a vote to send more assistance to Ukraine. Those threats persist.
Former President Donald Trump, the presumptive 2024 presidential GOP nominee, has complained European allies have not done enough for Ukraine. While he stopped short of endorsing the supplemental funding package, his tone has shifted in recent days, acknowledging Ukraine’s survival is important to the United States.
Far-right Republicans have also adamantly opposed sending more money for Ukraine, with the war appearing to have no end in sight. Biden in August requested more than $20 billion to keep aid flowing into Ukraine, but the money was stripped out of a must-pass spending bill even as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy traveled to Washington to make a personal plea for continued U.S. backing.
Biden praised Johnson and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., saying in the end they “stepped up and did the right thing.”
“History will remember this moment,” Biden said. “For all the talk about how dysfunctional things are in Washington, when you look over the past three years, we’ve seen it time and again on the critical issues. We’ve actually come together.”
The $61 billion can help triage Ukrainian forces, but Kyiv will need much more for a fight that could last years, military experts say.
“In our microwave culture, we tend to want immediate results,” said Bradley Bowman, a defense strategy and policy analyst at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies in Washington. “And sometimes things are just hard and you can’t get immediate results. I think Ukrainian success is not guaranteed, but Russian success is if we stop supporting Ukraine.”