Following the Senate’s recent approval of a foreign assistance deal that sets up tens of billions of dollars worth of further assistance for Ukraine alongside help for Israel and others, attention has turned to Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican.
“Gentle note to House Republicans. You work for the American people, not Vladimir Putin. Pass the damn bipartisan national security bill,” a quickly spreading X (Twitter) post from the official account for House Minority Leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said on Wednesday. President Joe Biden has also specifically pushed the House to advance the bill, which also supports Taiwan.
Ukraine continues facing a Russian invasion. Besides the humanitarian concerns reflected by boosting Ukraine’s defenses, some also continue arguing that the U.S. has a strategic interest in seeing a defeat for the Russian military.
Separately, Donald Trump — who remains the front-runner for the GOP’s presidential nomination this year — has been going after the security of members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) from another angle, suggesting at a campaign rally that he’d encourage Russia to advance militarily on members of the alliance in the event they fell short of ostensible spending obligations, the nature of which the ex-president consistently misrepresents.
One-time Trump opponent and longtime public figure Hillary Clinton said Trump’s threats should be “front-page news” nationwide. Trump’s rally remarks — which he essentially re-upped in a later rant on his knock-off social media site Truth Social — quickly drew extensive condemnation from around the world.
The security assistance given by the U.S. for Ukraine so far has most prominently taken the form of weapons deliveries, and some have pointed to money designated for the aid actually going to American companies as those weapons shipments are put together. The Senate passed their recent security package setting up new assistance after Republicans voted down an earlier proposal that lumped foreign aid with border policy changes, including new powers for the federal government to close the southern border between ports of entry. Trump opposed the proposal, and Republicans argued the necessary legal powers for allegedly needed action actually were already established.
