Above banner this a.m. from the Washington Post
Let the follies begin (Washington Post):
The Senate passed a $95 billion national security package to aid Israel, Ukraine and other U.S. allies early Tuesday morning after a monthslong debate that has deeply divided congressional Republicans.
The bill passed 70 to 29, after 22 Republicans joined Democrats in approving the aid.
God immediately told House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) to reject the Israel aid because the package wasn’t harsh enough on strangers in the land. Johnson dismissed it premptively Monday night.
“In the absence of having received any single border policy change from the Senate, the House will have to continue to work its own will o these important matters,” Johnson said in a statement. “America deserves better than the Senate’s status quo.”
Johnson’s statement comes after he and other House leaders helped torpedo an earlier version of the legislation that includes sweeping border security measures and other reforms.
The whiny voice of God Johnson is hearing is Donald Trump’s, if not Russian President Vladimir Putin’s speaking through Donald Trump.
“These past few months have been a great test for the US Senate, to see if we could escape the centrifugal pull of partisanship and summon the will to defend Western Democracy when it mattered most,” Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said after the bill passed. “Today, the Senate has resoundingly passed the test.”
That’s a test MAGA Republicans in the House mean to fail. Deliberately.
Ukraine funding has become unpopular among GOP base voters, and Trump said at a recent rally he would encourage Russia to do “whatever the hell they want” to NATO nations that he views are not spending enough money on defense. Trump also explicitly opposed the foreign aid package, saying in a recent social media post that he believes aid should be given as a loan.
That’s because profit and loss, winners and losers, are the only lenses through which Trump the Shallow views the world: What’s in it for me?
House Democrats are exploring using a discharge petition to go around Johnson’s announced blockade, the Post reports. They would need “at least four signatures from Republicans supportive of Ukraine funding” to introduce the petition before the end of the month.
Any Republican who signs would draw a primary challenge this time around or next. Still, Democrats have about 14 Republicans not seeking reelection they might persuade to take a principled stand before leaving. But signing would end whatever future political plans they might have in the Republican Party, not to mention attract death threats against them and their families from an unforgiving MAGA cult.
Democrats’ dishcarge efforts, the Post explains, could also face reservations from their own caucus.
Its path would still be tricky in the House, given that some Democrats have objected to the Israeli government’s handling of the war in Gaza, where most homes have been destroyed or damaged, more than 12,300 children have been killed and a quarter of the population is starving, according to the United Nations. Enough Republicans would need to support the bill to make up for those Democrats who would not vote for the bill over the aid to Israel.
Bringing the legislation to the floor through a discharge petition — which requires 218 members to support it — would avoid Johnson having his fingerprints on the proposal amid calls by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and others to remove him as speaker if he puts a Ukraine funding bill on the House floor for a vote.
Greg Sargent points to a new ABC News-Ipsos survey in which Donald Trump “gets substantially less blame for killing the bipartisan border security deal” Republicans killed last week “than any other major actor in that drama” (The New Republic):
Biden strongly supported the deal, while Trump explicitly and repeatedly called on Republicans to kill it. He expressly asked for the blame for its death to be directed at him. As the measure appeared to be dying, numerous Republicans said openly that Trump was the reason for it, even suggesting that he demanded its demise to give himself an issue against President Biden. Trump himself didn’t bother trying to hide this motive.
Unreconstructed royalists
Yet as president Biden will get the blame, Trump knows. He wants his weapon for the fall campaign. A booming economy and falling inflation no longer work for him. But fear of the Other? It’s as reliable as a knife when your pistol runs out of bullets.
That same Ipsos poll finds Americans trust Trump over Biden to handle immigration by 44 percent to 26 percent: Here Biden gets blame for what’s happening at the border and also for the failure of Congress to improve the situation after Trump commanded Republicans not to.
[…]
No matter how many times Republicans insist the executive can “shut down the border” by himself, the Great and Glorious Donald J. Trump also presided over numerous border crises and even released huge numbers of migrants. Congress largely created this situation. It could make all this better, but as last week showed, it won’t.
Johnson and his caucus of unreconstructed royalists are not serious either about the border or aid to Ukraine and Israel. Fealty to their liege-lord is everything for the power they believe Trump will bring them in a second term. His subjects will need new red hats with ’47’ on them. Trump himself seeks a crown and the immunity from prosecution he believes comes with it.
Update: See Ryan Grim’s account of the Senate vote, of Chris Van Hollen’s speech (he voted yes), and the dire conditions in Gaza created by the far-right extremists in the Netanyahu government. Whatever pressure Washington is applying to Israel to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza is not working. Children are already starving to death.
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