After months of inaction, House Speaker Mike Johnson unveiled on Monday evening an outline of his plan to address the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, defying Republicans who threatened to oust him from the speakership if he moved forward with funding for Ukraine.
But Johnson (R-La.) risks angering many of his members with a convoluted plan aiming to placate his critics on the right, while also giving national security hawks a chance to advance billions of dollars in aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan.
Johnson plans to put four different bills on the floor, essentially decoupling aid for Israel – which faced a barrage of missiles and drone threats from Iran over the weekend in retaliation for a deadly airstrike on its consulate in Syria – from help for Ukraine, which is more controversial inside his conference. The speaker will then advance separate votes for aid to Taiwan and a measure to satisfy Republican foreign policy demands, including the seizure of Russian assets and a House-approved bill that could ban TikTok from the United States, among other measures.
A draft of Johnson’s plan mirrors the Senate bill, according to five people familiar with the numbers, but may not include humanitarian assistance mainly directed toward Gaza.
Neither Johnson nor his office immediately commented on the draft. According to a person familiar with the plan, Johnson gave Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) a heads-up about the new strategy. The speaker told reporters that he would talk with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) about the path forward.
Nowhere in the bills are border security measures demanded by some House Republicans as a condition of approving aid to foreign countries. The omission was glaring in the eyes of some far-right lawmakers.
“Every member ultimately will be able to vote their own conscience on all of these matters and everybody have the opportunity to weigh in,” Johnson said after a GOP conference meeting Monday. “I think the final product will be something that everybody can take confidence in because they got to vote their district.”
It’s a major gamble by the embattled Johnson, who was elevated to lead the fractious GOP conference after the unprecedented ouster of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.). The formerly low-profile lawmaker has had trouble rallying a majority of his conference on almost anything and has had to rely on Democrats on substantive issues, including keeping the government open.
Nonetheless, Johnson intends to try to pass the measures through regular order to appease his conference, requiring a simple majority for approval – a difficult feat that will need the support of almost every Republican given the slim two-vote GOP majority.
“I think the speaker’s doing the right thing. The speaker is saying, ‘regardless of who calls for my motion to vacate … I need to do the right thing by my conference,’ and he’s doing that,” said Rep. Kevin Hern (R-Okla.), who chairs the largest faction of conservatives in the House.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) has been threatening to introduce a measure intended to oust Johnson from the speakership – known as a motion to vacate – if he puts Ukraine aid on the floor.
Greene labeled Johnson’s plan a “scam” and said she is “firmly” against it, but hasn’t said yet whether she will move to try to depose him.
“I support the majority and I want it next time. So I’m being careful,” she said. “He’s definitely not going to be speaker next Congress if we’re lucky enough to have the majority.”
In response, Johnson said: “I don’t spend my time worrying about motions to vacate. We’re having to govern here, and we’re going to do our job. I don’t know how that shakes out.”
It remains to be seen whether a group of far-right members will balk, potentially sinking a procedural hurdle allowing for the passage of the four bills by a simple majority. These members want to read the bill text and secure guarantees that their amendments will be allowed a vote.
Johnson did not say when the bill text would be ready. But once it’s unveiled to members, they will follow House rules that provide 72 hours for members to read a bill before voting on it. The House is scheduled to start a week-long break on Thursday from Washington. But Johnson said the earliest the House could consider these bills is Friday if legislative text is released by Tuesday.
Lawmakers left Monday’s meeting still processing the plan, expressing caution rather than outright praising the effort. Many remained skeptical the four bills would be able to pass such a divided conference.
Johnson has yet to say whether he would tie together any provisions that pass into one bill to send to the Senate, which has already approved a national security package containing all four elements.
Senators approved that bill in February, which allots $95.3 billion in supplemental spending, including $60 billion in new funds toward Ukraine, $14 billion for Israel, $9 billion in humanitarian assistance to Gaza, and $5 billion to aid Indo-Pacific allies against Chinese threats.
Johnson had adamantly said for months that the Senate supplemental was a non-starter in the House because it did not include any border security measures. That exclusion greatly irked Republicans across the conference, many of whom had declared that aiding foreign countries requires also defending America’s border.
A usually verbose Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), who had been championing the call for border security, was mostly speechless leaving the meeting, saying, “It’s just what it is.”
At Monday’s meeting, talk turned to border security. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) suggested passing a rule to instruct the Senate to take up a partisan measure that House Republicans approved last year known as H.R. 2 that severely restricted migrant entry into the United States before bringing up any House-passed national security package, according to two lawmakers in the room. Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) said Johnson was “in listening mode” and said “nothing” to those suggestions.
“I hate this, that [Johnson’s] saying it and not following through with it, that the hill to die on was the border, and he would not put Ukraine up without the border. Looks like that’s going down the tubes,” he said.
It is possible that border security measures get included into the fourth bill, which is shaping up as a GOP wish list, or through the amendment process, according to a person familiar with the ongoing conversations.
Johnson tried to encourage the conference to remember that “this is a very important moment for America not to shirk from its responsibility,” said Rep. Marcus J. Molinaro (R-N.Y.). But the speaker didn’t encourage people to vote for his plan, Molinaro said, instead urging them to “vote your conscience.”
But an upset far-right flank could upend Johnson’s plans to pass these bills through a simple majority, changing the calculus of how he moves ahead. But Democrats are open to helping Johnson overcome a blocked procedural hurdle, known as a rule, to allow for floor debate on the measures. They would do so if the three foreign aid provisions mirror the pieces of the Senate bill, including providing billions for humanitarian aid for Gaza, senior Democratic aides say, which at the current moment it does not.
If Republicans allow floor debate, but still can’t agree to pass the bills, then Johnson will have few options. Several pragmatic Republicans have begun to express publicly they would sign onto discharge petitions, measures that supersede leadership and force a floor vote on a bill once 218 signatures, a simple majority, are collected.
House Democrats are collecting signatures for a petition that would trigger a vote on the Senate bill, which currently has the backing of 194 Democrats and one Republican. Another petition includes a bipartisan proposal to fund Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan, border security and humanitarian aid for Gaza for one year, but has only 16 signatures total.
Asked whether addressing Ukraine funding through a discharge petition would cause her to blame Johnson and move to oust him, Greene said, “I wouldn’t blame him for that.”
Ellen Nakashima contributed to this report.
