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      Biden calls for compromise while Trump goes full red meat at US-Mexico border

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      It might be seen as the first US presidential debate of 2024. Two candidates and two lecterns but 300 miles – and a political universe – apart.Joe Biden and Donald Trump spent Thursday at the US-Mexico border, a vivid display of how central the immigration issue has become to the election campaign. Since it is far from certain whether official presidential debates will happen this year, the duelling visits might be as close as it gets.And it was as clarifying about the choice facing voters as any verbal clash on the debate stage. Biden came to push legislation and appeal to the head. Trump came to push fear and appeal to the gut. It is sure to be a close-run thing.That they were at the border at all represented a win for Republicans, who have forced Democrats to play on their territory as the debate over immigration in Washington shifts further to the right.Border crossings have been at or close to record highs since Biden took office in January 2021, though they have dropped so far this year, a trend that officials attribute to increased Mexican enforcement and seasonal trends. Democrats have become increasingly eager to embrace restrictions as they are confronted by migrants sleeping in police stations and airplane hangars.Where the presidents went on Thursday, and who went with them, told its own story. Biden headed to the Rio Grande Valley city of Brownsville which, for nine years, was the busiest corridor for illegal crossings. He was accompanied by the homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, whom Republicans earlier this month narrowly voted to impeach over his handling of the border.Trump, who has echoed Adolf Hitler by arguing that immigrants entering the US illegally are “poisoning the blood of our country”, travelled to Eagle Pass in the corridor currently witnessing the highest number of crossings – though they have fallen in recent months.The former president was joined by Texas governor Greg Abbott, a Republican who deployed thousands of national guard troops and laid concertina wire and river buoys to deter illegal immigration through a programme called Operation Lone Star – sparking legal and political standoffs with the White House.It was also Abbott who vowed to “take the border to President Biden” by busing thousands of migrants to Democratic-led cities, a move of diabolical genius that nationalised an issue which has, polls show, overtaken inflation as voters’ number one concern.In public remarks, Trump went full red meat, appealing to racist instincts in ways that offered a sobering reminder of the stakes of the election. “This is a Joe Biden invasion,” he said, insisting that “men of a certain age” were coming from countries including China, Iran, Yemen, DR Congo and Syria. “They look like warriors to me.”The former president – who favours travel bans and “ideological screening” for migrants – plucked assertions out of the air: “It could be 15 million, it could be 18 million by the time he gets out of office … A very big population coming in from jails in the Congo … We have languages coming into our country that nobody even speaks those languages. They’re truly foreign languages.”View image in fullscreenTrump went on to describe the alleged crimes of illegal immigrants and claimed that Biden has “the blood of countless innocent victims” on his hands. It is safe to assume that, at this summer’s Republican national convention, a series of gratuitous and lurid stories will be told along with a parade of victims’ families.Biden, who has been on the defensive on the issue in recent months, had a very different objective. He wanted to shame congressional Republicans for rejecting a bipartisan effort to toughen immigration policies after Trump told them not to pass it and give Biden a policy victory.“Join me – or I’ll join you – in telling the Congress to pass this bipartisan border security bill,” he said, attempting to turn the tables on Trump. “We can do it together. It’s the toughest most efficient, most effective border security bill the country has ever seen. So instead of playing politics with the issue, why don’t we just get together and get it done?”That’ll be the day. But in truth any president would have struggled with this escalating crisis. Congress has been paralysed on the issue for decades. Trump left vital agencies in disarray. Climate change, war and unrest in other nations, along with cartels that see migration as a cash cow, have conjured a perfect storm for Trump’s nativist-populist message to frame the conversation.Clarissa Martinez De Castro, vice-president of the Latino Vote Initiative at UnidosUS, says: “It seems most people are hearing about the issue of immigration from Republicans rather than from Democrats. That means you are allowing your opponents to define what your position is and that would be political malpractice for any candidate or elected leader.”Last week a Marquette Law School Poll national survey found 53% of voters say Trump is better on immigration and border security, while only 25% favour Biden on the issue. And for the first time a majority (53%) said they support building a wall along the entire southern border – a promise that Trump has been making since he rode down the escalator at Trump Tower in June 2015.The dynamic leaves Biden caught between trying to please the right while not alienating the left. Republicans and Maga media are demanding draconian measures and pushing emotional buttons by highlighting cases such as the arrest of Jose Antonio Ibarra, an illegal immigrant from Venezuela, over the murder of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley.Biden duly embraced immigration policies that he ran against as a candidate in 2020 such as restricting asylum laws and promising to “shut down the border” if given new authority. But such measures were condemned by progressives and could put his own coalition at risk in a crucial election year.De Castro adds: “If you go back to the early 2000s, there was similarly a lack of alignment on this issue. It took work to get there, but then, for many years, Democrats were seen as aligned as the party that believed in legal immigration and a path to legality for immigrants here and smart enforcement. In some ways they have lost their voice on this, and they need to recoup that.”If Biden and Trump do share a debate stage later this year, America can only hope for a substantial debate on immigration policy. But the four-year electoral cycle and soundbite age are the enemy of the long-term reform that is sorely needed. This knottiest of political problems goes way beyond America’s borders.Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez, president of NextGen America, a group focused on young voters, says: “Any immigration plan actually has to address the root causes. People are coming out of deep economic need and also fleeing very violent situations. Until you address that it doesn’t matter what kind of barriers they try and create physically at the border to make it more difficult. If they want real solutions, they have to address that.” More

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      House and Senate negotiators reach agreement to prevent shutdown – report

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      With government funding set to partially expire on Friday, House and Senate negotiators have reached an agreement to prevent a shutdown, Politico reported.Funding for some federal departments was previously set to expire after Friday, while the rest faced an 8 March deadline. Democratic and Republican leaders in Congress met with Joe Biden yesterday at the White House, where all sides expressed their desire to avoid a shutdown that the president warned would damage the economy.More details soon … More

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      Mitch McConnell to step down as Republican leader in US Senate

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      Mitch McConnell of Kentucky will step down as Republican leader in the US Senate at the end of this year, a move that will shake up US politics yet more in a tumultuous election cycle.McConnell is 82 and the longest-serving Senate leader in history. He is also a highly divisive figure in a bitterly divided America and the subject of fierce speculation about his health after recent scares in public.Aides said the decision to step aside, which McConnell announced on the Senate floor on Wednesday, was not related to his health.“One of life’s most underappreciated talents is to know when it’s time to move on to life’s next chapter,” McConnell said. “So I stand before you today … to say that this will be my last term as Republican leader of the Senate.”From the White House, Joe Biden, who was a senator alongside McConnell for more than 20 years, said: “I’ve trusted him and we have a great relationship. We fight like hell. But he has never, never, never misrepresented anything. I’m sorry to hear he’s stepping down.”McConnell was concurrently the subject of reporting about when he will endorse Donald Trump for president in his expected rematch with Biden this year.McConnell and Trump have been at odds since 6 January 2021, when Trump incited supporters to attack Congress in an attempt to stop certification of Biden’s win. McConnell voted to acquit the former president in his resulting impeachment trial, reasoning he had already left office, but excoriated him nonetheless. Trump responded with attacks on McConnell and racist invective about his wife, the former transportation secretary Elaine Chao.Nor did Trump leave the scene, as McConnell apparently thought he would. Withstanding 91 criminal charges, assorted civil defeats and attempts to remove him from the ballot for inciting an insurrection, Trump stands on the verge of a third successive nomination.On Wednesday, Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat and House impeachment manager, told reporters: “I have a lot of feelings about Mitch McConnell from the second impeachment trial because I felt that he was appalled by what Donald Trump had done, he knew the truth about what Donald Trump had done, and yet he couldn’t bring himself to vote to convict along with seven other Republican colleagues who joined the Democrats.”“I understand [McConnell has] been in a tough situation with Donald Trump taking over his party and I think he’s tried to do what he can but he didn’t show the ultimate courage, which would have been to vote to convict him, to find enough other senators so that we wouldn’t be back in this nightmare again with Donald Trump.”Amid gathering warnings of the threat Trump poses to American democracy, all bar one of McConnell’s leadership team have endorsed Trump regardless. The holdout, Joni Ernst of Iowa, has indicated that she could still do so.“Believe me,” McConnell said in the Senate chamber, “I know the politics within my party at this particular moment in time. I have many faults. Misunderstanding politics is not one of them. That said, I believe more strongly than ever that America’s global leadership is essential to preserving the shining city on a hill that Ronald Reagan discussed. As long as I am drawing breath on this earth, I will defend American exceptionalism.”McConnell entered the Senate in 1985, when Reagan was in the White House.“When I got here,” McConnell said, “I was just happy if anybody remembered my name. President Reagan called me Mitch O’Donnell. Close enough, I thought.”McConnell was elected to lead Senate Republicans in 2006. He was majority leader from 2015 to 2021, a momentous term in which he not only coped with Trump but secured three supreme court justices, tilting the court decisively right.He did so by upending Senate rules. First, McConnell refused even a hearing for Merrick Garland, Barack Obama’s nominee to replace the conservative Antonin Scalia, saying the switch would come too close to an election and voters should indicate the sort of justice they wanted. After Trump won the White House, McConnell filled the seat with the Catholic, corporately aligned Neil Gorsuch.McConnell next oversaw the appointment of Brett Kavanaugh, an anti-Clinton operative and aide to George W Bush, to replace Anthony Kennedy. A staunch conservative replaced a frequent swing vote, even after a tempestuous confirmation.McConnell was memorably reported to have said he stood “stronger than mule piss” behind Kavanaugh, despite the claim by Christine Blasey Ford, a college professor, that the nominee sexually assaulted her at a high-school party, an allegation Kavanaugh denied.Finally, at the very end of Trump’s term, McConnell abandoned the argument he used to block Garland and rammed the hardline Catholic Amy Coney Barrett on to the court in place of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a hero to progressives.On Wednesday, Adam Parkhomenko, a Democratic strategist, told followers they should “never forget” what McConnell “did to the supreme court and this country”.Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond, Virginia, said McConnell would “enjoy a tremendous legacy”, not only through his supreme court work, which led to epochal decisions including Dobbs v Jackson, which removed the federal right to abortion, and rulings on gun control and affirmative action every bit as divisive.“McConnell also contributed substantially to Trump’s nomination and confirmation of 54 ideologically conservative appeals court judges and the filling of all 179 appeals court judgeships at one point in Trump’s tenure,” Tobias said. “The last time that the courts had all of the active judges was in the mid-1980s.”McConnell said he still had “enough gas in my tank to thoroughly disappoint my critics. And I intend to do so with all the enthusiasm with which they have become accustomed.”His desire to win back the majority – in a chamber skewed in Republicans’ favour – will fuel his final months as leader. A new leader will be elected in November to take over in January, he said.Leading contenders to succeed McConnell – and to attempt to match his ruthless politicking and powerful fundraising – include his No 2, John Thune of South Dakota, and two more leadership figures, John Cornyn of Texas and John Barrasso of Wyoming. Last November, McConnell defeated a challenge from Rick Scott of Florida.Among Republican tributes, Thune said simply: “He leaves really big shoes to fill.”Among Democrats, Chuck Schumer of New York, the Senate majority leader, said he and McConnell “rarely saw eye to eye … but I am very proud that we both came together in the last few years to lead the Senate forward at critical moments when our country needed us, like passing the Cares Act in the early days of the Covid pandemic, finishing our work to certify the election on January 6, and more recently working together to fund the fight for Ukraine”.Americans, it seems sure, will remember Addison Mitchell McConnell III in very different ways.The Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump group founded by former Republican operatives, said McConnell would “go down in history as a spineless follower who cowered to a wannabe dictator clown. He chose the power of a tyrant over protecting democracy.” More

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      Mitch McConnell’s time in the Senate will be remembered as sad and cynical | Moira Donegan

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      For a moment, it looked like his face was going to fall off. At a press conference at the Capitol last July, Mitch McConnell, a senator for Kentucky since 1985 and the Senate Republican leader since 2007, abruptly stopped speaking, mid-sentence. He curled his lower lip inward, like a small child about to cry, and his eyes drifted to the side. He gripped the podium tightly and seemed to sway, as if uneasy on his feet. A few seconds later, he recovered, and began answering press questions again, without acknowledging the episode.A few months prior, McConnell, now 82, had suffered a fall, and had been concussed as a result. He’d been away from the Capitol for six weeks. Once, in 2020, he’d appeared with dramatic purple blisters on his hands and around his mouth, which were never explained. There had been rumors of other falls, but that’s all they were – rumors. Maybe, the thinking went, the episode at the press conference was just the after-effects of McConnell’s recent concussion. But then again, maybe not.That was the first time. The second time, McConnell was at another press conference, this one in Kentucky. On 30 August 2023, a reporter asked McConnell for his thoughts on running for re-election; if he were to run again and win an eighth term in 2026, he would be 90 by the end of that term. McConnell at first seemed not to hear the question. When the reporter repeated it, he chuckled, then went quiet. He gaze again veered to the side; his lips curled in.Aides rushed to McConnell and stood closely around him at the lectern, partially obscuring the view of the news cameras. His office later said that he had felt dizzy, and simply paused. A vaguely worded report from a doctor indicated that he was safe to continue working. But neurologists from Yale and UCLA each independently told Slate that they believed that in both incidents McConnell had been having seizures; another, from NYU, also diagnosed seizures in the New York Times.When McConnell announced on Wednesday that he will step down, the move was momentous, historic, a mile marker in the transformation of the Republican party that has played out before our eyes. But no one was probably surprised. It does not seem to have surprised Kentucky Republicans, either: faced with a Democratic governor in Andy Beshear, Republicans in the Kentucky statehouse worked last year to weaken the governor’s customary authority to fill Senate vacancies. It is a move that McConnell would likely have approved of.In one of his first political jobs, when he worked in Gerald Ford’s justice department in the 1970s, McConnell was known as a moderate. He supported abortion rights and labor unions; he had a reputation for a certain compromising pragmatism. As time went on, his pragmatism became less compromising – more hard-nosed and Machiavellian.His party moved steadily rightward, and so did he. By the time he became Senate Republican leader in the 2000s, he was presiding over an upper chamber that was losing its aura of deliberative dignity and becoming rowdier, more partisan, and more acrimonious, like the House. McConnell’s leadership accelerated that trend.He was willing to break legislative norms, alter Senate rules and undermine the spirit of representative democracy in order to get what he wanted. He focused particularly on the federal judiciary: throughout the Obama administration, McConnell organized a blockade of federal judge confirmations. Later, after the 2016 death of Antonin Scalia, he delayed filling the open supreme court seat for months, making a nakedly pretextual claim that Scalia’s death occurred too close to an election.When Donald Trump came into office, McConnell eliminated all remaining filibuster requirements for judicial confirmations in order to cram through Trump’s archconservative judicial nominees, rapidly filling the backlog of vacancies that he had deliberately created during the Obama years. When Ruth Bader Ginsburg died just weeks before the 2020 election, he ensured that Amy Coney Barrett was confirmed, brakes-screechingly-fast, in the final days before voters went to the polls to expel Trump.Before McConnell, judges nominated by Democratic presidents could conceivably be confirmed by a Republican-controlled Senate. After McConnell, Senate Republicans no longer acknowledged presidential appointment power, at least not in the instances when the president in question was a Democrat. The result has been a warped and extremist federal judiciary, one stuffed with rightwing partisans and scandal-courting careerists. It is a federal bench that we will have to live with for decades, and it is one crafted in McConnell’s image.For those of us who have watched people we love be robbed of their dignity by the ravages of old age, the visible sight of McConnell’s decline could give us, even in spite of ourselves, pangs of pity for the man. For those of us who grieve what McConnell has made our country into, his succumbing to mortality even from the heights of malignant power can feel like a certain kind of ironic justice, an Ozymandias-like contrast between how much he was able to hurt people and how weak he has been made.To me, there was something in McConnell’s visible decline that recalls the final years of his fellow conservative stalwarts Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, who in their old age both reportedly descended into dementia so acute that they could no longer remember having been the leaders of their respective countries.What are we to do with these contrasts – between the contemptible evil of McConnell’s career, and the pitiable frailty of his age? Mostly, I think, we can direct our attention to those victimized by the impact of McConnell’s leadership – who do not have the comfort or the money to receive the quality of healthcare he did, or the opportunity to indulge their vanity by staying in power long after it was time to go.
      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

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      Senate Democrats to force vote on protecting IVF access across the US

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      Senate Democrats are moving to push through a bill that would protect Americans’ access to in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatment, after an Alabama supreme court ruling that frozen embryos are children led to the closure of a number of infertility clinics in the state.The Democratic Illinois senator Tammy Duckworth said she would try to force a vote on the legislation on Wednesday which would establish a federal right to IVF and other fertility treatments that are at risk in the post-Roe era. Duckworth’s two children were conceived through IVF.“I’m headed to the Senate floor to call on my colleagues to pass via unanimous consent my Access to Family Building Act, which would ensure that every American’s right to become a parent via treatments like IVF is fully protected, regardless of what state they live in – guaranteeing that no hopeful parent or doctor is punished,” Duckworth said at a news conference on Tuesday.Duckworth’s move comes as Democrats vow to make IVF a campaign issue as they look to squeeze Republicans and highlight the continuing fallout of the overturning of Roe v Wade.“I warned that red states would come for IVF. Now they have. But they aren’t going to stop in Alabama. Mark my words: if we don’t act now, it will only get worse,” Duckworth added.The bill would require unanimous consent in order for it to pass, meaning that any one senator can block its passage. Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat, said it was unlikely to receive unanimous consent from the chamber to rush the bill through.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWhile many Republican lawmakers registered disappointment over the Alabama ruling, at least one conservative senator was expected to object.Blumenthal said Democrats would not be deterred. He would not say what the next legislative steps would be, but he said Democrats, who control the Senate, would look for other ways to protect IVF and reproductive healthcare.“The IVF dilemma for Republicans is they are down a path that is not only unpopular, it’s untenable as a matter of constitutional law and basic moral imperative, and we’re going to pursue it vigorously,” Blumenthal said.“Today’s vote, the effort to seek a unanimous consent, we know is unlikely to be successful. Failing today is only the prelude to a fight ahead on women’s reproductive care centered on IVF and other steps that have to be taken to protect basic rights.” More

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      Senior Republican who called Trump ‘inexcusable’ endorses him for president

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      The No2 Republican in the US Senate, John Thune of South Dakota, endorsed for president Donald Trump – the man he previously called “inexcusable” for seeking to overturn the 2020 election and inciting the deadly January 6 attack on Congress.Multiple media outlets reported Thune’s endorsement. They also swiftly pointed out statements made by Thune after the 2021 US Capitol attack, now linked to nine deaths, more than 1,200 arrests and hundreds of convictions, some for seditious conspiracy.“The impeachment trial is over and former President Trump has been acquitted,” Thune said on 13 February 2021, after only seven Republicans voted to convict Trump of inciting an insurrection and thereby bar him from office.“My vote to acquit should not be viewed as exoneration for his conduct on January 6 … or in the days and weeks leading up to it. What former President Trump did to undermine faith in our election system and disrupt the peaceful transfer of power is inexcusable.”Saying he voted to acquit because Trump had left office, and following his Senate leader, Mitch McConnell, who excoriated Trump after voting to acquit, Thune added: “I have faith in the American people and the strength of our democracy.”Many observers now hold democracy to be under serious threat as Trump homes in on the Republican nomination to face Joe Biden in November.Trump has won each primary vote, most recently in South Carolina on Saturday where he easily beat Nikki Haley, a former governor of the southern state and his only remaining opponent.Haley suffered a further blow on Sunday when the influential Koch network withdrew financial support, saying it would focus on Congress instead.“We don’t believe any outside group can make a material difference to widen her path to victory,” Emily Seidel, chief executive of Americans for Prosperity, a Koch-backed advocacy group, told staff in a note reported by Politico.Trump’s dominance persists despite his facing 91 criminal charges (17 for election subversion, 40 for retention of classified information and 34 for hush-money payments to an adult film star) and civil judgments including multimillion-dollar penalties in suits over his business affairs and a defamation claim arising from a rape accusation a judge called substantially true.Such legal troubles have fueled doubts about Trump’s electability, shared by senior Republicans.Thune first endorsed Tim Scott, the South Carolina senator now pursuing selection as Trump’s nominee for vice-president. Trump often attacked Thune in return.Fox News first reported Thune’s Trump endorsement.Thune said: “The primary results in South Carolina make clear that Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee for president in this year’s pivotal presidential election. The choice before the American people is crystal clear: it’s Donald Trump or Joe Biden.“I support former President Trump’s campaign to win the presidency, and I intend to do everything I can to see that he has a Republican majority in the Senate working with him to restore American strength at home and abroad.”Of three senior Republicans thought to be possible successors to McConnell as leader in the Senate, Thune was the last to back Trump. John Barrasso of Wyoming and John Cornyn of Texas had already bent the knee.McConnell has not endorsed Trump, who has regularly attacked him – including calling him a “piece of shit” – and made racist remarks about his wife, Elaine Chao, who was US transportation secretary in the Trump administration until January 6, after which she resigned.Despite it all, the New York Times reported on Monday that aides to McConnell and Trump were pursuing “back channel” talks aimed at producing an endorsement. More

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      Senate aide investigated over supplying Ukraine forces with sniper gear – report

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      A senior staffer who advises the US Senate on Russia policy is under investigation for making trips to Ukraine in military uniform and supplying the country’s armed forces with privately donated sniper equipment, it was reported on Monday.The actions of Kyle Parker, chief of staff to the Helsinki commission that informs senators on issues of European security, might have crossed legal and ethical grounds that could make him an unregistered foreign agent, according to the New York Times, which reviewed a confidential report by the commission’s director and general counsel.Parker “traveled Ukraine’s frontlines wearing camouflage and Ukrainian military insignia and had hired a Ukrainian official for a US government fellowship over the objections of congressional ethics and security officials”, the newspaper said.An independent law firm is investigating the allegations, and undertaking what the Times said was a broad investigation into conduct by staff of the commission, which has taken a strongly pro-Ukrainian stance as the country defends itself against the invasion by Russia.The report, written by Helsinki commission executive director, Steven Schrage, and counsel Michael Geffroy, said Parker was “wittingly or unwittingly being targeted and exploited by a foreign intelligence service”, raising unidentified “counterintelligence issues” that needed to be reported to the FBI.The Times said it was not known if federal law enforcement had been made aware. But it said Parker’s representatives insisted he had done nothing wrong and was instead the victim of retaliation by the report’s authors for making allegations of misconduct against them.The Helsinki commission’s chairperson, South Carolina Republican congressman Joe Wilson, wanted Parker fired after he read the report, the Times said. “I urgently recommend you secure his immediate resignation or termination,” Wilson wrote to his co-chairperson, the Maryland Democrat Benjamin Cardin, citing “serious alleged improper acts involving Ukrainian and other foreign individuals”.Parker is a longtime adviser to the commission and has traveled to Ukraine at least seven times since Russia invaded in February 2022, the Times said. He has delivered numerous pro-Ukraine lectures, podcasts and social media posts, and he describes himself as “the most well-traveled US official in Ukraine since” the war began, according to his online biography.On one such visit, the report said, he handed over to Ukraine’s military about $30,000 of sniper’s range finders and ballistic wind gauges he had bought on Amazon in the US using money raised by a relative in Ukraine.In a written response to the newspaper’s questions, a representative for Parker said none of his trips were official visits – even though the commission posted a photograph of him in Kherson – and that he never wore military insignia while dressed in army-style camouflage.A video seen by the Times of Parker cutting up and urinating on a Russian hat was “a personal expression of rage and grief” at Russia’s brutality in Ukraine, the representative said. More

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      Putin ‘gains every day’ Congress fails to send Ukraine aid, top Biden official says

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      Vladimir Putin “gains every day” the US House does not pass a new aid package for Ukraine, Joe Biden’s national security adviser warned, as its president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, warned of dire outcomes unless Ukraine receives US military aid within one month.Ahead of a crunch week in Washington that could end in a government shutdown – in part made possible by hardline Republican opposition to new support for Kyiv – Jake Sullivan told CNN that “the reality is that Putin gains every day that Ukraine does not get the resources it needs and Ukraine suffers.”Sullivan pointed to “a strong bipartisan majority in the House standing ready to pass” an aid package for Ukraine “if it comes to the floor”.The Democratic-held Senate already passed a $95bn package of aid to Ukraine and other US allies, including Israel, earlier this month. But in the House, the Republican speaker, Mike Johnson, is under pressure from the pro-Trump far right of his party not to bring it to a vote.In striking contrast to the division within the US Congress, European leaders were set to meet in Paris on Monday to discuss Ukraine, seeking to show unity and support. “We are at a critical moment,” Emmanuel Macron, the president of France, said. “Russia cannot win in Ukraine.”Speaking on the second anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion, Zelenskiy on Sunday said “millions will be killed without US aid” and told a conference in Kyiv that a US failure to pass new aid would “leave me wondering what world we are living in”.The US has so far sent billions of dollars of aid and weapons, but with the pro-Russian Trump all but confirmed as the Republican nominee for president, large elements of the congressional GOP have fallen in behind him to block new Ukraine spending.Ukrainian forces report shortages of weapons and ammunition, as a grinding stalemate gives way to Russian gains. On Sunday, Zelenskiy put the overall death toll among Ukrainian troops at 31,000.US officials were previously reported to have put it at 70,000.Congress has been on holiday for two weeks and reconvenes on Wednesday. In order to approve Ukraine aid, rightwing House Republicans are also demanding spending on border and immigration reform – regardless of the fact that Senate Republicans this month sank a bipartisan border deal of their own which included it.“History is watching whether Speaker Johnson will put [the Senate foreign aid] bill on the floor,” Sullivan said. “If he does, it will pass, will get Ukraine what it needs for Ukraine to succeed. If he doesn’t, then we will not be able to give Ukraine the tools required for it to stand up to Russia and Putin will be the major beneficiary of that.”Many Republicans in the House do support Ukraine aid. A senior Republican member of the foreign relations committee called on Johnson to put the aid package on the floor for a vote or risk a party rebellion.“Ukrainians have already died because we didn’t provide this aid eight months ago as we should have,” Brad Sherman of California told CNN. “I think that it’s up to Speaker Johnson to put this bill on the floor. It’ll pass it’ll pass by a strong vote. And he needs to do that so the aid flows in March.“If he doesn’t, eventually Republicans will get tired of that obstructionism and will join Democrats in a discharge petition” – a congressional manoeuvre, rarely used, that can bypass blockages.“But that’s a very bulky way to try to pass a bill. It’s only happened once in my 28 years in Congress. I suspect that we’ll be getting the aid to Ukraine in April, unless Speaker Johnson is willing to relent.”Ukraine, Sherman said, was a “bulwark between Russia and Nato countries that we are obligated to defend, notwithstanding what Trump may have said”.Trump has repeatedly threatened to refuse to defend Nato countries he deems not to have paid enough to maintain the alliance, going so far as to say he would encourage Russia to attack such targets.The defence of Ukraine, Sherman said, “is just critical to us. They can’t do it. They haven’t been able to do it this last month, because we have not provided the artillery shells and other systems.” More