Yaroslav Trofimov, a journalist for The Wall Street Journal, has linked advances by the Russian military inside Ukraine to Republicans forcing delays inside Congress to actually setting up additional security assistance from the U.S. for the Eastern European country. (He referred to Congress as a whole, but what’s precisely on the inciting side of the situation is Republican grandstanding.) U.S. aid has most prominently been in the form of weapons deliveries.
Trofimov was discussing specifically the Russian presence around the Ukrainian city called Avdiivka, which is in Ukraine’s Donetsk region. “Russian advances in Avdiivka, which increasingly looks likely to become the first Ukrainian city to fall since the capture of Bakhmut last May, are the direct result of acute ammunition shortage — caused by the U.S. Congress withholding further military aid to Ukraine,” Trofimov said online Sunday.
The idea has persisted of linking further assistance from the U.S. for Ukraine to domestic advancements in border policy, but now with a deal in the Senate formally establishing a (proposed) plan for the two, Republicans are shying away.
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, and other Republicans in party leadership roles in the chamber alleged in a joint, prepared statement that the president “has refused to utilize his broad executive authority to end the border catastrophe that he has created” and demanded action by the Senate on previously House-passed legislation that would, among other provisions, re-establish the remain in Mexico policy from the Trump era that forced asylum-seekers to wait outside the U.S. while their cases were processed. They also characterized new assistance proposed for migrants with actually integrating into society as incentivizing undocumented immigration.
“House Republicans oppose the Senate immigration bill because it fails in every policy area needed to secure our border and would actually incentivize more illegal immigration. Among its many flaws, the bill expands work authorizations for illegal aliens while failing to include critical asylum reforms,” the Republican group said. The party’s House members are running with a standalone bill that would provide assistance for Israel amid its ongoing military response to Hamas attacks last October.
