The main measure passed Saturday in the US House of Representatives, the $61 billion in assistance to Ukraine to resist the Russian invasion, showed that not everyone in the Republican Party is on board with the “America First” foreign policy of former president Donald Trump.
In an unusual legislative initiative, brought to a vote by Republican President Mike Johnson, more members of Congress from his party voted against it than in favor and exposed internal Republican divisions in the context of a world in conflict.
Trump’s influence over his colleagues in the legislature, which served to block for more than half a year the approval of this aid and to reduce Kyiv’s defenses to a minimum in this war of attrition, is now showing signs of emaciation Over the past week, the Republican has kept 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 Democratic-majority Senate, where they are expected to get the necessary votes, and will become law after President Joe Biden’s signature.
The Speaker of the Lower House, Johnson, changed his mind and finally allowed the vote in defiance of the Trumpist hardline. Among them, the ultra-conservative congressman Matt Gaetz, who last year brought about the impeachment of the previous president, Kevin McCarthy, and is again threatening to force a motion of no confidence against Johnson. “There’s nothing I want more than to go against the Democrats,” Gaetz said Saturday on CNN, “but if the Republicans dress up as Democrats, I’m going to have to go against them too. In the end, what matters is not the Republicans we have in Congress, but whether we want to save our country or not.”
A message that also has the support of Congresswomen Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert, two of Trump’s most important allies in the Lower House. Boebert on Saturday booed Democrats who waved Ukrainian flags during the vote, a gesture he defined as “A shameful and disgusting show of America last politicians,” in a post on X: “If you love Ukraine so much, put your ass there and leave the Government of America for those who love this country”.
Republicans hold a majority in the House of Representatives (219 to 213 Democrats), but a minority of moderate Republicans aligned themselves with Democrats on Saturday, who voted unanimously for aid to Ukraine by an overwhelming 311 votes in favor and 112 against. In other words, 107 of the 219 congressmen from the conservative group moved away from the isolationism that has guided a party led by Trumpist postulates in recent years.
The tycoon has never hidden his affinity with Vladimir Putin, the leader of a regime at odds with the whole of NATO, whom the Joe Biden Administration has set out to fight, to return 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 its allies. do not fulfill the Atlantic commitment of spending 2% of their GDP on defense.
Johnson’s gesture by bringing aid to Ukraine to a vote is a clear challenge against the ultra-conservative sector gathered in the Freedom Caucus congressional group. The president of the Lower House considers himself a “speaker in times of war” and describes the threat to dismiss him, which will possibly be consummated next week, as “absurd”. “I will not resign, we need a stable leadership. We need to keep our hands firmly on the wheel.”
If the conservative republicans form a majority with enough democrats, it will be the second time this term in which the president of the Lower House is expelled. And it will be another sign of the strong division within the Republican Party, which has turned this Congress into the most ungovernable in decades.
