Democrats’ drive to kill Speaker Johnson’s Ukraine aid blockade nearing critical mass

13 March 2024

Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson is blocking a vote on the bipartisan legislation the Senate passed four weeks ago to provide Ukraine with critical funding to fight Russian President Vladimir Putin’s illegal war against the sovereign nation.

One day after the Senate passed the bill, Speaker Johnson declared to his conference, behind closed doors, the House would not be “rushed” into passing it, according to the Associated Press.

“The Republican-led House will not be jammed or forced into passing a foreign aid bill,” Johnson later said before the cameras, adding that the Senate bill “does noting to secure our own border.” Johnson and Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, at the urging of Donald Trump, had just killed a massive, bipartisan, and long-awaited border bill that included funding for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan.

But reports in the U.S. and even abroad made clear Johnson was opposed to the bill and had “no intention” of allowing it to pass.

“Speaker Mike Johnson, who works closely with Biden’s likely challenger in the November election Donald Trump, told reporters he has no intention even of allowing a vote on the bill. ‘I certainly don’t,’ he said,” France24 reported.

On Tuesday, U.S. Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA) filed a discharge petition, an effort to circumvent Speaker Johnson’s blockade. If it gets 218 signatures, Johnson would have seven days to put the Senate’s bill on the House floor for a vote. General consensus is the Senate bill would pass the House with a strong bipartisan majority – the hurdle is getting signatures on the discharge petition.

Hours after the discharge petition was opened, it had just 86 signatures. By the end of the day, it had 169 signatures.

House Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries on Tuesday voiced support for the motion.

“In a closed-door meeting,” NBC News’ Julie Tsirkin reported, “Dem Leader Jeffries urged ‘all Democrats’ to sign on to a discharge petition filed by Jim McGovern that would force a vote on the Senate-passed Israel, Ukraine & Taiwan bill, per sources.”

“I urge everyone to sign it as a statement of our perspective that the only way forward is the bipartisan, comprehensive national security bill they sent over from the Senate. And that deserves an up-or-down vote,” Leader Jeffries said, Tsirkin added.

As a backbench Republican from Louisiana, Johnson, who has been described as “the embodiment of white Christian nationalism in a tailored suit,” repeatedly voted against funding for Ukraine.

As the Speaker of the House, Johnson has given lip service to supporting Ukraine’s war against Russia, but his actions, critics charge, reveal his intentions.

“There is no Russian battlefield commander nor aide to Putin who is doing more to help Russia defeat Ukraine and put the rest of Europe in peril than Donald Trump or Mike Johnson,” warned foreign policy, national security and political affairs analyst and commentator David Rothkopf Wednesday morning, adding that “every minute they delay” costs lives.

The Prime Minister of Poland, Donald Tusk, who was in the U.S. on Tuesday along with Poland’s President, Andrzej Duda, served “some pretty blunt words” to Johnson, according to Associated Press reporter Seung Min Kim.

Speaker Johnson and Senate Democratic Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on Tuesday met with the President Duda.

Majority Leader Schumer did not hold back in his urging for passage of the Senate’s Ukraine aid bill: “Speaker Johnson must pass it ASAP.”

Alyssa Farah Griffin, who served as Donald Trump’s White House Director of Strategic Communications after having been appointed to several communications roles at the Department of Defense, remarked on the “Weird optics” of Johnson being photographed with President Duda.

U.S. Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA) posted video of Russian President Vladimir Putin saying, in Russian, “It would be ridiculous for us to start negotiating with Ukraine just because it’s running out of ammunition.” That quote was confirmed by The Telegraph.

Meanwhile, U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT), who led the Democrats’ portion of the drafting of the bipartisan border and Ukraine aid bill killed at the urging of Donald Trump, suggests Johnson isn’t moving to pass the Ukraine aid bill out of fear he will face the same fate as his predecessor, Kevin McCarthy.

Murphy wages the far right doesn’t have the “appetite” for yet another change of leadership, and says Johnson should “govern with a little more confidence,” and be brave enough to put the Senate bill on the House floor.

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