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      The Guardian view on arming Ukraine: US Congress votes against appeasement | Editorial

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      In chaos theory, the flapping of butterfly wings can cause a hurricane on the other side of the world. This weekend, Ukraine experienced a butterfly moment. Donald Trump’s efforts to conceal the fact that he bought the silence of a porn star before the 2016 election landed him in court, facing charges that preoccupy him enough for congressional Republicans to reject his policy of prematurely ceding territory to Russia in return for peace in Ukraine. Kyiv will now get billions of dollars to buy the weapons crucial for it to defend against, and push back, the Russian advance. It is fitting that Mr Trump’s divisive appeasement has been defeated – for now – by a bipartisan defence of democracy.The presumptive Republican nominee had, in an election year, counted on using his mendacious, inflammatory rhetoric to further convert his party into a truth-denying sect prepared to abandon the rule of law for the rule of revenge. Instead, he is required to attend every day that the Manhattan court is in session, for a trial expected to last at least six weeks. The proceedings will be closely followed around the world. But they will not be televised. It will be a circus, but without its ringmaster. Deprived of the camera’s attention, the former president won’t be able to bully Republican lawmakers or rally his followers so effectively.Mr Trump’s diminished status was not lost on many Republicans in Congress. President Joe Biden had first called on them to back Ukraine with arms and cash last October. However, it was not until Mr Trump’s attention was elsewhere that the House on Saturday passed the $61bn aid bill for Ukraine. The vote was 311 for and 112 against, with all the Democrats and 101 Republicans voting in favour of the bill and 112 Republicans voting against. It can only be good news that there are still Republicans who want America to be governed effectively. It also signals that Ukraine should deal with Russia from a position of strength not weakness.In the last two months, most Democrats and a sizeable number of Republicans have voted to pass bills to avoid government shutdowns and commit to traditional national security priorities. This governing coalition is on the right side of history. But it may not last. Mr Trump faces four separate indictments. The current case is about sex, money, deception and blackmail. It’s more tawdry than the other, weightier trials about alleged election interference and the mishandling of classified documents. However, only the jury in New York is likely to produce a verdict before the election in November.Mr Trump is an unscrupulous demagogue without the slightest qualification to be president. The US, under his presidency, was maintained at the edge of chaos, between too much and too little control. The long-festering problems in the GOP gave rise to a leader only nominally affiliated with it.By being the first president since Herbert Hoover to lose the House, the Senate and the presidency in a single term, Mr Trump has gained a reputation for being a loser. But the billionaire is not interested in restoring Republican dominance, only shaping it into a cult of personality. He will only fail if he faces active, sustained opposition. Mr Biden has done that by highlighting the choices that divide congressional Republicans. But challenging Mr Trump also means challenging the system that produced him. Mr Biden still has work to do on that score.Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. More

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      Marjorie Taylor Greene renews attacks on speaker as House passes Ukraine aid

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      Republican infighting over the US House finally approving $61bn in military aid for Ukraine continued to roil the party on Sunday as the far-right representative Marjorie Taylor Greene renewed attacks on the Republican speaker, Mike Johnson.Johnson had betrayed his party and was working for the Democrats, and his speakership was “over”, the Georgia representative said, although it was not clear if and when Greene would file a motion to try to remove him, which she has threatened to do in recent weeks.The fresh criticism from Greene came after Johnson ended months of stalling on the aid package for Ukraine’s desperate defence against Russia – as well as billions for allies including Israel and Taiwan – and finally forced a vote on it in the House of Representatives on Saturday, defying the far right of his party.In a bipartisan vote, 210 Democrats and 101 Republicans joined to support Ukraine, with 112 Republicans – a majority of the GOP members – voting against.“He is absolutely working for the Democrats. He’s passing the Biden administration’s agenda,” Greene said of Johnson on Fox News’ Sunday Morning Futures With Maria Bartiromo. “Mike Johnson’s speakership is over. He needs to do the right thing to resign and allow us to move forward in a controlled process.“If he doesn’t do so, he will be vacated.”Johnson escalated the most recent turmoil among his GOP colleagues last week after agreeing to the floor vote on the $95bn foreign aid package. The package, green-lighted by the Senate in February, includes $61bn for Ukraine, $14bn for Israel, and lesser sums for Taiwan and other allies in the Pacific.The Senate is expected to start weighing this House bill on Tuesday and it is expected to pass this coming week, which would enable Joe Biden to sign it into law.The speaker’s decision heightened the split in his party, with the right insisting any support for foreign aid had to include concessions to their domestic priorities, including border security. The same ultra-conservatives had orchestrated Johnson’s ascent to speaker in October by ousting his predecessor, the Republican Kevin McCarthy.View image in fullscreenThis group of Republicans have increasingly expressed public antipathy toward helping Ukraine, in keeping with their political leader, Donald Trump, who has long shown admiration toward the Russian president, Vladimir Putin.Johnson on Saturday stood by his decision, saying that the provision of military aid was “critically important”, as well as “the right thing”, even in the face of political risks from his party’s far right.“I really believe the intel and the briefings that we’ve gotten,” Johnson stated. “I believe that Xi and Vladimir Putin and Iran really are an axis of evil. I think they are in coordination on this. I think that Vladimir Putin would continue to march through Europe.“I am going to allow an opportunity for every single member of the House to vote their conscience and their will,” Johnson also said. “I’m willing to take a personal risk for that, because we have to do the right thing. And history will judge us.”In order to even get the floor vote, Johnson had to work with Democrats, whom he earlier needed to advance other legislation, such as a significant government funding bill.The fissure in the party widened in March, when Greene revealed a motion to oust Johnson from the role of speaker. She has not yet tried to force a vote on that issue, but the House Republicans Thomas Massie, of Kentucky, and Paul Gosar, of Arizona, are now co-sponsors.Greene has not filed that motion, however, and any next steps seem vague. Immediately after the House vote on Saturday, Greene said that she wouldn’t take any formal steps to boot Johnson from speaker but, like her colleagues, wanted to hear from constituents first, the Washington Post reported. “I’m looking forward to them hearing from the folks back at home,” Greene said, “but this is a sellout of America today.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOn Sunday, Fox News’s Bartiromo pushed Greene on the seeming vagaries, saying on the talkshow: “Well, with respect, you didn’t give me a plan for the speaker’s role and again, does this mean you are going to file that motion at some point?”“It’s coming, regardless of what Mike Johnson decides to do,” Greene said. “We have three more Republicans joining us for a special election coming up very soon, so people need to know this can happen.”Not all Republicans are worried about Johnson’s future as House speaker, however.“He will survive,” Tony Gonzales, a Texas Republican representative, said on Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union. “Look, the House is a rough and rowdy place, but Mike Johnson is going to be just fine.”For Gonzales, Johnson’s ushering of this aid package is positive for Congress overall.“I think Mike Johnson is going to avoid the cannibals in his own party here. He stood up to them this weekend and the adults, we took control of the US Congress,” he said. “I think people got sick and tired – he’s one of them – of Marjorie Taylor Greene being in charge of their life and they just finally said ‘no’.”The GOP division on Ukraine is also playing out in the Senate, with pro-aid Republican senator Linsdey Graham slamming Ohio senator JD Vance’s seeming belief that the country can’t win.In a New York Times op-ed last week, Vance wrote: “Ukraine’s challenge is not the GOP; it’s math. Ukraine needs more soldiers than it can field. And it needs more materiel than the United States can provide.”“That is garbage,” Graham said on Fox News Sunday, in response to Vance’s claim about manpower, per the Hill.“Go … I just got back, I was there two weeks ago. They changed their conscription laws. They have all the manpower they need. They need the weapons,” Graham said. “It’s one thing to talk about Ukraine over here; it’s another thing to go.” More

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      Approval of $61bn aid from US shows Ukraine will not be abandoned, says Zelenskiy

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      Ukraine’s president has said the vote by the US House of Representatives to pass a long-delayed $61bn (£49bn) military aid package demonstrated that his country would not be abandoned by the west in its effort to fight the Russian invasion.Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in an interview with US television that Saturday’s vote showed Ukraine would not be “a second Afghanistan”, whose pro-western government collapsed during an US-led pullout in the summer of 2021.The Ukrainian president urged the US Senate to ratify the aid package rapidly and warned that his country was preparing its defences, fearing there could be a large Russian offensive before the fresh supplies reach the frontline.“We really need to get this to the final point. We need to get it approved by the Senate … so that we get some tangible assistance for the soldiers on the frontline as soon as possible, not in another six months,” he said.The Senate is expected to come out of recess on Tuesday to hold its first vote on the package – similar to one it had already voted for in February – with the Joe Biden promising to sign it into law swiftly after it passes Congress.That would end months of wrangling in which House Republicans aligned with Donald Trump had refused to allow Ukraine aid, which was part of a larger package with money for Israel and Taiwan, to be debated in the lower chamber.The US has only been able to commit to $300m of military aid to Ukraine this year, after the budget previously authorised by Congress was spent. This has coincided with a deterioration of the frontline position and the loss of Avdiivka in the eastern Donbas, with a shortage of artillery and other munitions blamed.However, the opposition of Republicans faded after Iran’s drone and missile attack on Israel more than a week ago that used similar tactics to Russian attacks on Ukraine. It also underlined – among some rightwing politicians – the need to provide Israel and Ukraine with further support.US officials have signalled that some weapons were in European warehouses, ready to be moved into Ukraine at short notice once Biden decides exactly what to supply in the first round after the overall funding has been approved.Zelenskiy said his immediate priorities were air-defence systems such as the US-made Patriots and long-range missiles such as Atacms, which can travel up to 186 miles (300km) and which the House has called on the Pentagon to provide promptly.“We need long-range weapons to not lose people on the frontline because we have – we have casualties because we cannot reach that far. Our weapons are not that long-range. We need [that] and air defence. Those are our priorities right now,” Zelenskiy said in an interview with NBC News.Ukraine is thought to have only two Patriot anti-missile systems, one of which it uses to defend Kyiv, while the other has been deployed closer to the frontline, in effect leaving large parts of the country exposed.Russia has knocked out several power stations by targeting them with numerous missiles, causing electricity shortages in some parts of Ukraine, including the second city of Kharkiv, home to 1.3 million people. A power station south of Kyiv was destroyed in one night a little more than a week ago in a similar assault.On Sunday, Moscow accused the US of sacrificing Ukrainian lives by forcing the country into a long war that would end in a defeat for both countries.Maria Zakharova, a spokesperson for the foreign ministry, said the US wanted Ukraine “to fight to the last Ukrainian” as well as making direct attacks into Russian territory. “Washington’s deeper and deeper immersion in the hybrid war against Russia will turn into a loud and humiliating fiasco for United States such as Vietnam and Afghanistan,” she added.Bohdan Krotevych, the chief of staff to Ukraine’s Azov brigade, said he was pleasantly surprised by the result of the House vote and praised the efforts of Zelenskiy in lobbying the US and other countries for military support. But Krotevych warned of a possible response from Moscow in the war. “This doesn’t mean that Russia will not start countermeasures as a reaction,” he said.One expert said he believed the immediate significance of the vote was political, not military. Ben Hodges, a former commanding general of the US army in Europe, said: “The strategic effect will be felt immediately in the Kremlin, where they now realise their plan to wait for us to quit has failed.”Russia might have hoped that Ukraine could be forced to sue for peace, with no US aid forthcoming before November’s presidential election at least. Now the aid should allow Ukraine to “stabilise the front, buy time to grow and rebuild their army and build up their own defence industrial capacity”, Hodges said.Ukrainians out and about on a rainy spring day in Kyiv said they were delighted at the outcome. Pavlo, 44, an IT specialist, said he was very grateful. He said: “The politicians have made the right choice and this shows that the US takes the lead role in world scene; I hope that the aid is already somewhere waiting at the border, ready to be on its way.”Chess-playing Serhii Ivanovich, a retired army colonel, 72, said Ukraine was a peaceful country forced into fighting a war against its larger neighbour. “We have been waiting for this for a very long time. We don’t have enough, we need help. We have the courage, we have the strength but we don’t have the equipment.” More

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      Vote to Resume U.S. Military Aid Is Met With Relief in Ukraine

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      Much-needed munitions like artillery shells could start arriving relatively quickly, but experts say it could take weeks before U.S. assistance has a direct impact on the war.The Ukrainian lieutenant was at a firing position on the eastern front, commanding an artillery unit relying on American-provided M777 howitzers and other big guns, as U.S. lawmakers gathered in Washington to decide if his cannons would be forced to go silent for lack of ammunition.But when the lieutenant returned to his base on Saturday night, he got the news that he and millions of Ukrainians had been praying to hear.“I had just entered the building after a shift change when the guys informed me that the aid package for Ukraine had finally been approved by Congress,” said the lieutenant, who is identified only by his first name, Oleksandr, in line with military protocol. “We hope this aid package will reach us as soon as possible.”The decision by American lawmakers to resume military assistance after months of costly delay was greeted with a collective sigh of relief and an outpouring of gratitude across a battered and bloodied Ukraine. It may have been late in coming, soldiers and civilians said, but American support meant more than bullets and bombs.It offered something equally important: hope.Immediately after the vote passed in Congress, Ukrainian citizens took to social media to offer thanks and express joy, posting American flag memes blending Ukrainian imagery with American symbols like the Statue of Liberty.“I have tears in my eyes,” Anton Gerashchenko, the founder of the Ukrainian Institute for the Future, a research group, said in a message. “So much suffering, so much pain. So many lost friends and wonderful people in these horrible years of war. Now there is hope to save more lives of those who are still alive.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How Mike Johnson Got to ‘Yes’ on Aid to Ukraine

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      Intelligence, politics and personal considerations converted the Republican speaker, who had largely opposed aid to Ukraine as a rank-and-file member, into the key figure pushing it through Congress.Speaker Mike Johnson successfully defied the anti-interventionalist wing of the Republican Party and got the House to approve a $95 billion foreign aid package for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan.Haiyun Jiang for The New York TimesFor weeks after the Senate passed a sprawling aid package for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, Speaker Mike Johnson agonized over whether and how the House would take up funding legislation that would almost certainly infuriate the right wing of his party and could cost him his job.He huddled with top national security officials, including William J. Burns, the C.I.A. director, in the Oval Office to discuss classified intelligence. He met repeatedly with broad factions of Republicans in both swing and deep red districts, and considered their voters’ attitudes toward funding Ukraine. He thought about his son, who is set to attend the U.S. Naval Academy in the fall.And finally, when his plan to work with Democrats to clear the way for aiding Ukraine met with an outpouring of venom from ultraconservatives already threatening to depose him, Mr. Johnson, an evangelical Christian, knelt and prayed for guidance.“I want to be on the right side of history,” Representative Michael McCaul of Texas, the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, recalled the speaker telling him.Mr. Johnson’s decision to risk his speakership to push the $95 billion foreign aid bill through the House on Saturday was the culmination of a remarkable personal and political arc for the Louisiana Republican. It was also an improbable outcome for a man plucked from relative obscurity last fall by the hard right — which had just deposed a speaker they deemed a traitor to their agenda — to be the speaker of a deeply dysfunctional House.As a rank-and-file hard-liner, Mr. Johnson had largely opposed efforts to fund Kyiv’s war effort. And early in his speakership, he declared he would never allow the matter to come to a vote until his party’s border demands were met.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      House approves $61bn aid for Ukraine – what we know so far, and what happens next

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      The US House of Representatives has approved $95bn in foreign aid for Ukraine, Israel and other US allies in a rare Saturday session as Democrats and Republicans banded together after months of hard-right resistance over renewed American support for repelling Russia’s invasion.With an overwhelming vote, the $61bn in aid for Ukraine passed in a matter of minutes, a strong showing as American lawmakers race to deliver a fresh round of US support to the war-torn ally. Many Democrats cheered on the House floor and waved Ukraine flags.The speaker, Mike Johnson, who helped marshall the package to passage, said after the vote: “We did our work here, and I think history will judge it well.”What does this new aid package include?The $95bn in total funding includes roughly $61bn for Ukraine with some of the funding going towards replenishing American munitions; $26bn for Israel; $8bn for US allies in the Indo-Pacific region, including Taiwan; and $9bn in humanitarian assistance for civilians in war zones, such as Haiti, Sudan and Gaza, though the package also includes a ban until March 2025 on direct US funding for the UN Relief and Works Agency (Unrwa), an agency providing key assistance to Gaza.In the Ukraine bill, of the $60.7bn, a total of about $23bn would be used by the US to replenish its military stockpiles, opening the door to future US military transfers to Ukraine. Another $14bn would go to the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, in which the Pentagon buys advanced new weapon systems for the Ukrainian military directly from US defence contractors.There is also more than $11bn to fund current US military operations in the region, enhancing the capabilities of the Ukrainian military and fostering intelligence collaboration between Kyiv and Washington; and about $8bn in non-military assistance, such as helping Ukraine’s government continue basic operations, including the payment of salaries and pensions.The package includes several Republican priorities that Democrats endorsed, or at least were willing to accept. Those include proposals that allow the US to seize frozen Russian central bank assets to rebuild Ukraine; impose sanctions on Iran, Russia, China and criminal organisations that traffic fentanyl; and legislation to require the China-based owner of the popular video app TikTok to sell its stake within a year or face a ban in the US.What happens next?Passage through the House has cleared away the biggest hurdle to Joe Biden’s funding request, first made in October as Ukraine’s military supplies began to run low.The whole package will now go to the Senate, which could pass it as soon as Tuesday. It is then passed to Biden, the US president, who has promised to sign it immediately.“I urge the Senate to quickly send this package to my desk so that I can sign it into law and we can quickly send weapons and equipment to Ukraine to meet their urgent battlefield needs,” the president said.Chuck Schumer, leader of the Democratic majority in the Senate, announced it would begin procedural votes on the package Tuesday, saying: “Our allies across the world have been waiting for this moment.”The Senate Republican minority leader, Mitch McConnell, as he prepared to overcome objections from his right flank next week, said: “The task before us is urgent. It is once again the Senate’s turn to make history.”What has been the reaction from Ukraine?Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the Ukrainian president, said he was “grateful” to both parties in the House and “personally Speaker Mike Johnson for the decision that keeps history on the right track”.“Democracy and freedom will always have global significance and will never fail as long as America helps to protect it. The vital US aid bill passed today by the House will keep the war from expanding, save thousands and thousands of lives, and help both of our nations to become stronger … Thank you, America!”Sergii Marchenko, the Ukrainian finance minister, pointed to the legislation’s provision for budget support.“This is the extraordinary support we need to maintain financial stability and prevail,” he wrote on X.What has been the reaction from other countries?Taiwan’s defence ministry said on Sunday it will discuss with the US how to use funding for the island.The ministry said it “will coordinate the relevant budget uses with the United States through existing exchange mechanisms, and work hard to strengthen combat readiness capabilities to ensure national security and peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait”.The defence ministry also expressed thanks to the US House for passing the package on Saturday, saying it demonstrated the “rock solid” US support for Taiwan.Taiwan has since 2022 complained of delays in US weapon deliveries, such as Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, as manufacturers focused on supplying Ukraine.How has Russia responded?The Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said the approval of security aid to Ukraine would lead to more damage and deaths in the conflict there.The decision “will make the United States of America richer, further ruin Ukraine and result in the deaths of even more Ukrainians, the fault of the Kyiv regime”, Peskov said, according to Russian news agencies.Peskov also said that provisions in the legislation allowing the US to confiscate seized Russian assets and transfer them to Ukraine to fund reconstruction would tarnish the image of the US, and Russia would enact retaliatory measures.The former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev, writing on the Telegram messaging app, said the approval of US aid for Ukraine was expected and grounded in “Russophobia”.“We will, of course, be victorious regardless of the blood soaked $61 billion, which will mostly be swallowed up by their insatiable military industrial complex,” wrote Medvedev, who acts as deputy chairman of the security council.Russian foreign ministry spokesperson, Maria Zakharova, said the approval of aid in the legislation to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan would “deepen crises throughout the world”.“Military assistance to the Kyiv regime is direct sponsorship of terrorist activity,” Zakharova wrote on Telegram. “To Taiwan, it is interference in China’s internal affairs. To Israel, it is a road straight to escalation and an unprecedented rise in tension in the region.”Russia illegally annexed Crimea in 2014, and launched its similarly unprovoked and illegal invasion of Ukraine in February 2022; while Ukraine, an independent and sovereign country, has acted in self-defence.How will the US get weapons swiftly to Ukraine?The Pentagon could get weapons moving to Ukraine within days once the military aid package clears the Senate and Biden signs it into law. It has a network of storage sites in the US and Europe that already hold the ammunition and air defence components that Kyiv desperately needs.According to a US military official, the US would be able to send certain munitions “almost immediately” to Ukraine. Among the weapons that could go very quickly are the 155 mm rounds and other artillery, along with some air defence munitions. “We would like very much to be able to rush the security assistance in the volumes we think they need to be able to be successful,” said Pentagon press secretary Maj Gen Pat Ryder.“We have a very robust logistics network that enables us to move material very quickly,” Ryder told reporters this past week. “We can move within days.”The Pentagon has had supplies ready to go for months but hasn’t moved them because it is out of money. It has already spent all of the funding Congress had previously provided to support Ukraine, sending more than $44bn worth of weapons, maintenance, training and spare parts since Russia’s February 2022 invasion.Reuters and the Associated Press contributed to this report More

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      Ukraine Aid Divides Republicans, After Trump Tones Down His Resistance

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      His most vocal allies in the House, however, were loudly against providing assistance as Ukraine fights Russia’s invasion.The House vote on Saturday to provide $61 billion in American aid to Ukraine was the clearest sign yet that at least on foreign policy, the Republican Party is not fully aligned with former President Donald J. Trump and his “America First” movement.But more Republicans voted against the aid than for it, showing just how much Mr. Trump’s broad isolationism — and his movement’s antipathy to Ukraine — has divided the G.O.P. in an election year.Mr. Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for the third time, had actually soft-pedaled his opposition to Ukraine aid in recent days as the dam began to break on the House Republican blockade. He stood by Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana, who assembled the complicated aid packages for Ukraine, Israel and America’s Asian allies, and against threatened efforts to bring down Mr. Johnson’s speakership and plunge the House back into chaos. And he stayed quiet on Saturday, declining to pressure Republicans to vote no.But few issues have been more central to the former president’s creed than his foreign policy isolationism, his call for Europe to raise military spending in its own backyard, and his foreign policy shift toward Vladimir V. Putin’s Russia.House Speaker Mike Johnson after the House passed the foreign aid bills for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan.Haiyun Jiang for The New York TimesThough he has in recent days stayed quiet, his most vociferous allies in the House, such as Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Matt Gaetz of Florida, had led efforts to block the aid. Another pro-Trump firebrand, Representative Lauren Boebert of Colorado, jeered Democrats during the vote as they waived Ukrainian flags on the House floor.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      US House to vote on long-delayed foreign aid bills – including Ukraine support

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      The US House of Representatives will finally vote on Saturday on a series of foreign aid bills, bringing an end to a months-long standoff in Congress led mostly by Republicans who refuse to support funding Ukraine’s ongoing military defense against Russia’s invasion.House members will hold separate votes on four bills that represent $95bn in funding altogether – including roughly $26bn in aid for Israel, $61bn for Ukraine, $8bn for US allies in the Indo-Pacific region and $9bn in humanitarian assistance for civilians in war zones, such as Gaza.The package largely mirrors the foreign aid proposal passed by the Senate in February, although the House legislation designates $10bn of the Ukraine funding as a repayable loan to appease some Republican members who are hesitant to approve additional aid.If passed, the legislation will provide a crucial financial lifetime for Ukraine at a time when the country’s military appears at its most vulnerable since the start of the war, due to dwindling supplies of ammunition and air defense missiles.The bills are expected to pass the House, after they easily cleared a key procedural hurdle on Friday before the final vote. Those that pass will be combined into a single package in order to simplify the voting process for the Senate, which will need to reapprove the proposal before it can go to Joe Biden’s desk for his signature.The procedural vote on the House package was 316 to 94, with 165 Democrats and 151 Republicans supporting the motion. The House speaker, Republican Mike Johnson, needed to rely on Democratic votes to pass the procedural motion, and he will almost certainly need to do so again to get the Ukraine aid bill across the finish line.“It’s long past time that we support our democratic allies in Israel, Ukraine and the Indo-Pacific and provide humanitarian assistance to civilians who are in harm’s way in theaters of conflict like Gaza, Haiti and the Sudan,” Hakeem Jeffries, the House Democratic leader, said on Friday. “House Democrats have once again cleared the way for legislation that is important to the American people.”Much of the House Republican conference remains opposed to sending more money to Kyiv, and Donald Trump once again voiced frustration with approving additional Ukraine aid in a social media post on Thursday. Fifty-five Republicans and 39 Democrats opposed the procedural motion on Friday.Johnson’s reliance on Democratic votes to pass key pieces of legislation, including a major government funding bill that cleared the House last month, has outraged some hard-right Republicans.“What else did Johnson give away while he’s begging Democrats for votes and protection?” Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican representative from Georgia, said on Friday on X. “We do not have a Republican majority anymore, our Republican Speaker is literally controlled by the Democrats and giving them everything they want.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionLast month, Greene unveiled a motion to remove Johnson as speaker, although she has not yet moved to force a vote on the matter. In the past week, two more House Republicans – Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Paul Gosar of Arizona – have signed on as co-sponsors to Greene’s motion, citing their mounting frustration with Johnson’s leadership.“We need a speaker who puts America first rather than bending to the reckless demands of the warmongers, neocons and the military-industrial complex making billions from a costly and endless war half a world away,” Gosar said in a statement on Friday.If Greene moves forward with the motion to vacate, Johnson will once again need to rely on Democratic votes to save him, as Republicans will have just a one-seat majority after Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin resigns in the coming days. Several House Democrats have indicated that they would come to Johnson’s assistance if the motion to vacate is brought up for a vote, and the speaker has appeared undaunted by the threats to his job, which he has held for just six months.“I’m going to do my job, and I’m going to stay dug in,” Johnson told radio host Mark Levin on Thursday. “I’m not changing who I am or what I believe, and I’m going to try to guide this institution.” More