On April 24, President Joe Biden signed into law a foreign aid package, which includes $60.8 billion for Ukraine, $26.4 billion for Israel and Gaza, and $8.1 billion for Taiwan. The deal was in the works for a long time, but far right Republicans, especially in the House of Representatives, were blocking it from going forward. The Senate had passed a similar bill two months ago, but it was held up in the House.
The House finally voted on the bill on April 20 in a rare Saturday session, after Speaker Mike Johnson staked his entire political capital and put his career and his future in jeopardy to move it forward. Prior to that, he had received a briefing from CIA director William J. Burns and other national security officials, who perhaps warned him that without the aid, Russians would be at the Polish border by this time next year. He has been speaking privately with Biden, as well, on the issue. Johnson’s decision was also influenced by the fact that his son would be joining the Naval Academy in Annapolis later this year. “To put it bluntly, I would rather send bullets to Ukraine than American boys,” he said.
The Senate approved the slightly modified bill two days later. Interestingly, the omnibus package also included a bill asking ByteDance, the Chinese parent company of TikTok, to sell it to an American buyer or else be banned from the United States.
As far as the presidential election is concerned, the passing of the Ukraine bill has an added significance. It has come as a major loss of face for Republican candidate and former president Donald Trump and a victory for President Biden. Earlier this year, Trump killed a deal that would have given a $106 billion Ukraine package, because it would also have tightened immigration rules on the southern border. It was a piece of legislation that Biden and a bipartisan group of senators had negotiated for months. But Trump did not want to give Biden a win on immigration, an Achilles heel for the sitting president. Outgoing Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who worked really hard for the bill, suffered a major loss of face as there were only four Republican senators who finally voted for the bill. Even he had to vote against it. So, for McConnell, his supporters in the Senate, and for the Democrats, the latest Ukraine deal is a major strategic win.
It is true that Trump had signalled that he would not oppose the bill this time and had also praised Johnson after the speaker visited him at his Mar-a-Lago residence two weeks ago. Still, Johnson faced fierce MAGA opposition against the bill. He had to break up the bill into four segments: for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan and the TikTok ban. Even then, he could not manage a majority in the House Republican conference. While 101 Republicans, including Whip Tom Emmer and Majority Leader Steve Scalise, voted for the bill, Conference Chair Elise Stefanik and 111 colleagues opposed it. The bill was ultimately passed with support from the Democrats.
Trump acolyte and MAGA extremist Marjorie Taylor Greene, representative from Georgia, who is leading the campaign against Johnson for passing the bill, has moved a motion to oust the speaker. “Such an embarrassing and disgusting show of America LAST politicians!” she wrote on social media. “You love Ukraine so much, get your ass over there and leave America’s governing to those who love THIS country!” However, her efforts to remove Johnson, whom she called a lame-duck speaker, have not received widespread support among the Republican conference as most members hate having another round of acrimonious and divisive vote for speaker when the country is moving into a crucial election season.
The Ukraine vote and the split it caused have brought to the fore the total rupture in the Republican Party, especially with regard to foreign policy. There seems to be a clear divide between Trump’s ‘America First’ isolationists and the Reagan Republicans who profess a more globalist foreign policy. Johnson and McConnell, who led the Ukraine mission, identified themselves openly as “Reagan Republicans” in a direct challenge to Trump and said the aid to Ukraine was part of the larger battle against Russian President Vladimir Putin and that it was important to display American strength and leadership. “I am a Reagan guy and I think today—at least on this episode—we turned the tables on the isolationists,” said McConnell in an interview. He has earned the right to gloat as the Ukraine bill cleared the Senate with sweeping support from the Republicans this time. The majority leader managed to convince 31 of 50 senators in his conference to vote for the bill.
A significant number of Republican lawmakers have realised that Trump has his own agenda, and obeying his commands blindly could be detrimental to national interests as well as their own political interests. A few days before clearing the Ukraine bill, the House passed yet another key piece of legislation that was vehemently opposed by Trump—the bill to reauthorise section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
The controversial provision allows the collection of massive amounts of internet and mobile phone data without a warrant. It was tolerated because it only targeted non-US citizens abroad, but US citizens were sometimes affected only if they contacted suspicious targets. Strategic experts say such surveillance forms the basis of most of the daily intelligence briefings given to the president every morning. Trump had campaigned vigorously against the bill, saying its provisions were used to spy against his presidential campaign in 2016. But House Republicans overruled his objections and passed the bill, although its validity was extended only to two years, not five, as requested by the agencies.
Trump has another axe to grind with Ukraine. His first impeachment, which happened on December 18, 2019, has an Ukrainian connection. He was impeached over the charge that he solicited help from President Volodymyr Zelensky to help his re-election prospects. In July that year, he called up Zelensky and asked him to launch an investigation against Democratic candidate Biden and his son Hunter. He wanted Zelensky to work with his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani and attorney general William Barr to investigate Biden and Hunter, who served on the board of the Ukrainian gas company Burisma. Trump threatened to withhold military aid to Kyiv until Zelensky ordered a probe against Biden.
Trump also believed that it was Ukraine, not Russia, which was involved in hacking Democratic Party servers during the 2016 elections. During the phone call, he asked Zelensky to look into CrowdStrike, the US company that helped the Democratic Party investigate the server breach. Trump thought CrowdStrike was owned by a Ukrainian and that a server with sensitive details was stored in that country. He wanted Zelensky to return it.
After a whistleblower leaked details about the phone call, Democrats seized the issue and started the impeachment process. While the impeachment was successful, Trump was acquitted by the Senate.
There are a few reasons why Trump chose to back down from his opposition to the Ukraine bill. The first one is, of course, that it was part of a strategic retreat after realising that nearly half of the Republicans in the House and two-thirds in the Senate were opposed to him on this issue. So he offered Speaker Johnson lukewarm support and praised the way he was doing his job. It was classic Trump, retreating when faced with an imminent failure, and crossing over to the winning side.
But he still allowed his core MAGA team to continue its opposition. His son Donald Trump Jr., too, had joined Greene and other MAGA partisans in attacking Johnson. After the bill was passed, Trump also expressed his displeasure, but in an indirect manner. “Why isn’t Europe giving more money to help Ukraine?”, he wrote on Truth Social, the social media platform that he owns. “Why is it that the United States is over $100 billion dollars into the Ukraine war more than Europe, and we have an ocean between us as separation!”
Finally, Trump is distracted and tired these days, and is, perhaps, unwilling to pick up yet another fight. He is stuck in a Manhattan courthouse, attending the hush money trial as the defendant. He has no option but to spend time in court, sitting silently, listening to hours and hours of scathing testimony against him. He looked angry and tired and even appeared to nod off a couple of times. Social media was quick to label him “Sleepy Don”, as he has mocked Biden for years as “Sleepy Joe”. So he may not have had the time, energy and strategy to deal with the Ukraine package.
Trump is clearly having a bad time. His foreign policy credentials are being openly questioned, and he remains stuck in a courtroom, instead of campaigning in the swing states. Besides, he has clearly fallen behind Biden in raising money even as the president has finally caught up with him in opinion polls.