The main measure approved on Saturday in the United States House of Representatives, the $61 billion in assistance to Ukraine for resistance against the Russian invasion, showed that not everyone in the Republican Party agrees with America First, the foreign policy of the former president Donald Trump. In an unusual legislative initiative, brought to a vote by Republican speaker Mike Johnson, more congressmen from his party voted against than for it, exhibiting internal Republican divisions in the context of a world in conflict.
Trump's influence over his colleagues in the legislature, which served to block the approval of this aid for more than half a year and to leave kyiv's defenses in this war of attrition at a minimum, is now showing signs of weakness. In the last week, the Republican has maintained an unusually low profile on this critical vote, while his allies in Congress voted against the measure.
In addition to assistance to Ukraine, the $95 billion package, approved in four separate initiatives, also includes transfers to Israel (26.4 billion) and allied countries in the Indo-Pacific (8.1 billion), mainly Taiwan. The proposals will be voted on Tuesday in the Senate, with a Democratic majority, where they are expected to obtain the necessary votes, and will become law after the signature of President Joe Biden.
The president of the Lower House, Johnson, changed his position and finally allowed the vote, defying the hardline Trumpist wing. Among them, the ultraconservative congressman Matt Gaetz, who last year led to the dismissal of the previous speaker, Kevin McCarthy, and is once again threatening to force a motion of no confidence against Johnson. "There's nothing I want more than to go after the Democrats," Gaetz told CNN on Saturday, "but if the Republicans dress up as Democrats, I'm going to have to go after them too. In the end, what matters is not how many Republicans we have in Congress, but whether we want to save our country or not.
A message also supported by congresswomen Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert, two of Trump's greatest allies in the Lower House. Boebert booed Democrats waving Ukrainian flags during the vote on Saturday, a gesture she called "A shameful and disgusting spectacle by America Last politicians," in a post on X: "If you love Ukraine so much, put your ass and leave the government of America for those who love this country.
Republicans are the majority in the House of Representatives (219 compared to 213 Democrats), but a minority of moderate Republicans aligned themselves on Saturday with the Democrats, who voted unanimously in favor of aid to Ukraine, with an overwhelming result of 311 votes to favor and 112 against. That is, 107 of the 219 congressmen from the conservative bench moved away from the isolationism that has guided a party led by Trumpist postulates in recent years.
The magnate has never hidden his affinity with Vladimir Putin, the leader of a regime at odds with NATO as a whole, which Joe Biden's administration has proposed to combat, returning Washington to "leadership" in the West. Trump, however, went so far as to claim that, in a meeting with NATO members, he told the leader of an "important country" that he would "encourage" Russia to "do whatever the hell it wants" with allies that do not comply with the agreement. Atlantic commitment to spend 2% of its GDP on Defense.
As he has repeated in numerous speeches since the invasion of Ukraine, it is incompatible to finance the allied resistance with investment to solve the domestic problems of a country that he considers "in decline" and taken over by the "dark forces" of the "deep state", for the "mafias", the "drug traffickers", the "crime" and the "chaos".
The Democratic position, and that of the moderate Republicans, is at the opposite end: the defense of national security involves the defense of US allies. "The measures we took today will be remembered in the future as necessary for our national security "Vladimir Putin is watching, Xi Jinping is watching, and the leaders of Iran and other enemies of the United States are watching," moderate Republican Tom Cole said in defense of foreign assistance in a parliamentary session on Saturday.
During his annual State of the Union address last month to a joint session of Congress, Biden strongly called on Republicans to move away from Trump's claims: "It wasn't that long ago that a Republican president, Ronald Reagan, told Gorbachev : 'tear down this wall.' Now, my predecessor, a former Republican president, tells Putin: 'Do whatever you want,'" he recalled. "If anyone in this room believes that Putin is going to hold back in Ukraine, I assure you that he will not."
Johnson's gesture, bringing aid to Ukraine to a vote, is a clear challenge against the ultra-conservative sector grouped in the Congressional Freedom Caucus group. The president of the Lower House considers himself a "speaker in times of war" and describes the threat to oust him, which will possibly be carried out next week, as "absurd." "I'm not going to resign, we need stable leadership. We need to have firm hands on the wheel."
If conservative Republicans form a majority with enough Democrats, it will be the second time this legislature that the speaker of the House has been expelled since McCarthy. And it will be one more example of the strong division within the Republican Party, which has made this Congress the most ungovernable in decades.
