The Archive

IN THIS EDITION

Why Ukraine aid may be dead — and what can save it

McConnell’s Ukraine victory and his play for history

Suozzi wins his old seat back

Chaos in California’s 22nd

THE TOP

Why Ukraine aid may be dead — and what can save it

Happy Wednesday morning.

Overnight news: Former Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-N.Y.) handily defeated Republican Mazi Pilip in a special election on Long Island to replace the expelled GOP Rep. George Santos. This is a Democratic pickup, which means the House Republicans’ majority will further shrink to 219-213 with three vacancies. That’s a two-vote edge. Much more on that below.

Also: The House impeached DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas Tuesday night on a party-line vote, 214-213. This is the first time in nearly 150 years that the House has voted to oust a Cabinet official.

The Senate will start the trial for Mayorkas when the chamber returns from the Presidents Day recess. Senate President Pro Tempore Patty Murray will oversee the proceedings. Remember: No other business can happen on the Senate floor during an impeachment trial.

Now back to our regular programming: The Senate’s $95 billion Israel-Ukraine-Taiwan foreign aid bill is as good as dead. We’re going to explain to you why we think this. But if by some miracle it does get through the House — and that’s a big if — it will be in a form unpalatable for the Senate and President Joe Biden.

OK, wait a second. Everyone knows there are legislative maneuvers that the minority can employ to force a House vote on the Senate-passed legislation. We’ll get to those. But we want to lay out to you why we think this will be very tricky here.

1) Majority of majority. The last time the full House voted on Ukraine aid, just 107 Republicans voted to send a paltry $300 million to Kyiv. This vote total is short of the majority of the majority. Of course, the so-called “Hastert Rule” — horrifically named, we know — isn’t binding. But it is a standard that most Republican speakers follow to ensure that they don’t lose control of their conference.

We’ve heard arguments from some House GOP leadership aides that there are in fact more than 107 Republicans who support Ukraine aid but simply won’t vote for it. This isn’t a terribly compelling argument either. If you secretly support something but don’t tell anyone when asked, that doesn’t count.

In addition to having a bunch of GOP lawmakers who doubt the wisdom of sending Ukraine money, there are a whole host of Republicans — 20 or so — who want to offset all foreign aid spending. House Democrats will undoubtedly reject that, as they have before.

Johnson wants — or better yet, needs — at least 111 Republicans who are willing to vote “Yes” for this $95 billion package. Right now he isn’t anywhere close to that.

Johnson doesn’t seem in a rush to deal with this problem either. The speaker told us Tuesday that he is focused on averting a government shutdown on March 1 and March 8. He said the House needs time to “process” the Senate’s package.

2) Border security. There’s already discussion in the House Republican Conference about attaching some border provisions to the Senate package and then sending that back. Several lawmakers and aides told us that the Republican leadership is considering attaching elements of H.R. 2, the House GOP’s hardline border security bill.

If Republicans were smart, they’d take provisions that would jam the Democratic Senate — Remain in Mexico, for example — and insert it into the Senate-passed package.

But the House Republican Conference is never interested in incremental progress. So any border proposal that somehow gets through the House will be loaded to the brim with conservative policies, rendering it dead in the Senate. Former President Donald Trump is also hugely influential here.

3) Floor jam. The House is in for just three more days this week. Members then leave until Feb. 28, giving them only three days to avoid a government shutdown when they return. There is precious little time, will or desire to consider foreign aid funding given those constraints.

4) An inexperienced speaker. Johnson has now been speaker for 112 days. He’s learning on the fly. One of Johnson’s weaknesses is that he seems to think that his members don’t want to be led. They do. They want clear guidance on what the speaker thinks should be done on legislation. Johnson hasn’t provided that and doesn’t seem interested in doing so.

What can save it: There are two procedural longshots that could help save aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan.

The discharge petition: The discharge petition allows 218 members of the House to bring a bill to the floor around the leadership’s back. There’s already one discharge petition that’s ready for prime time and it has 213 signatures — all Democrats. The petition was filed May 17, 2023, so it’s ripe. And it’s written to allow the minority to drop in any bill they want.

However, a bunch of House Democrats will drop off of this petition because of opposition to funding Israel. So they’ll need Republicans, potentially dozens, to reach 218.

There’s a lot of waiting with a discharge petition. The petition can only be brought to the floor on certain days, for example. It works — rarely — and is also very inefficient. We don’t think it will work here.

Defeating the previous question: The quicker option for Ukraine-aid supporters is defeating a previous question, or in Hill parlance, a PQ.

Here’s how that would go: Every time the House Republican leadership brings a bill to the floor under a rule, there’s a vote on “moving the previous question.” If that vote is defeated, the Democrat managing debate can amend the rule and effectively bring up any bill they want.

There could be procedural hurdles here. For example, any bill the minority brings up would have to be germane. But Ukraine supporters can overturn that ruling with 218 votes.

The main thing to understand here is that if there are 218 supporters of Ukraine aid and they stick together, they can get this thing passed.

Republicans are going to give Johnson the benefit of the doubt so he can devise a plan. But that leeway won’t last forever.

— Jake Sherman

THE SENATE

McConnell’s Ukraine victory and his play for history

Nobody emerged from the Senate’s months-long, politically treacherous Ukraine fight more battered — and somehow upbeat — than Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

Yes, significant hurdles remain in getting the Senate-passed foreign aid package, or something resembling it, signed into law. And there’s little McConnell can do to reverse his party’s drift from its Reagan-era foreign policy doctrine.

But the Kentucky Republican can safely say he defied the odds and overcame significant political headwinds in helping push the $95 billion bill. This includes an unrelenting wave of conservative GOP opposition after several failed and seemingly futile attempts to pass new Ukraine aid.

In the end, McConnell brought 21 other Republicans along — just under half the GOP Conference — and touted it as a victory given the circumstances. Former President Donald Trump was whipping against the measure, and McConnell’s GOP critics were only getting louder, fueling further doubts about his influence within the Senate Republican Conference. The window to get something done was, and still is, quickly closing.

“I’m proud of the fact that we got 22 votes. I know it’s a hot political issue — when the likely nominee of your party is opposed to it, that has a lot of sway,” McConnell told us in an interview just hours after the Senate passed the foreign aid bill, 70-29.

Trump has “a bigger megaphone, more sway on public opinion than any of us individually,” McConnell said, referring to the former president multiple times as the party’s “likely nominee.” But McConnell, in the twilight of his Senate career, is turning his attention elsewhere.

A new era: McConnell, the chamber’s longest-serving party leader, was reflective as he looks to cement his own place in the history books.

In many ways, McConnell represents a fading era of Republican foreign-policy orthodoxy, one that’s been further eroded by Trump. For example, nearly all GOP senators elected since 2018 and Republicans under the age of 55 rejected the foreign aid bill. It’s one of many signs the party is changing — “just not fast enough,” in the words of Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.).

McConnell, though, made no apologies for his stance. McConnell likened his opponents to pre-World War II isolationists and said his party tends to act this way under a Democratic president. McConnell added that many of their arguments against the package were “just not accurate.” And he said history would be the ultimate judge.

“I know we have a significant number of critics on our side like we did back during the Roosevelt period,” McConnell said. “But I think it’s the right thing for our country to stand up to this sort of thing. If we don’t, I don’t know who will.”

The border calculation: McConnell vigorously defended his decision to move forward with a foreign aid bill without a border security component that Republicans were once demanding as a precondition, lamenting that “our conference kept changing its view about that.”

“Our members, in the end, I think, just decided it wasn’t good enough or that our likely nominee didn’t want us to do it at all. And that kind of took the steam out of it,” McConnell said. “I was just trying to be kind of an honest broker and point out to our colleagues what was going on.”

McConnell pressed ahead with the foreign-aid-only approach even as his NRSC Chair, Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.), warned it would hamper the party’s efforts to win back the majority.

We asked McConnell about Daines’ warning. McConnell said the underlying effort was “extremely important to our future and to the future of democratic countries.”

— Andrew Desiderio and John Bresnahan

THE CAMPAIGN

Suozzi wins his old seat back

Former Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-N.Y.) is heading back to Congress.

In a closely watched special election on Long Island, Suozzi’s relentless moderate message proved victorious over Republican Mazi Pilip. Suozzi consistently called for stricter immigration policies and distanced himself from national Democrats in an election dominated by the border crisis.

New York’s 3rd District voted for President Joe Biden in 2020 before sending former Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) to D.C. two years later. While former President Donald Trump may be toxic in suburban New York, Republicans found success in 2022 thanks to the coattails of gubernatorial candidate former Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-N.Y.) and soaring crime rates.

But the Democrats succeeded on Tuesday, thanks to a massive spending advantage and a disciplined Suozzi campaign. Suozzi held a plethora of public events, played up his image as a centrist member of the Problem Solvers Caucus and refused to nationalize the race. In contrast, Pilip mostly hid from the media, raised little money and was largely unknown by the electorate.

House Democrats will now increase their margin in Washington, further narrowing Speaker Mike Johnson’s tenuous GOP majority to two votes. With massive government spending deadlines looming, this presents another concern for the embattled speaker.

Republicans will say it’s an impressive feat that they were even competitive in this Democratic-leaning seat. But the political atmosphere was almost perfect for the party given the intense focus on immigration, an issue on which voters favor Republicans. Yet in the end, Republicans weren’t that competitive. Suozzi won 53-46.

“House Republicans have shown how out of touch they are with Americans across the country, and their deeply unpopular extremist policies will ensure their losses at the ballot box,” House Majority PAC President Mike Smith said.

— Max Cohen

GOLDEN STATE DISPATCH

Chaos in California’s 22nd

In a critical battleground California House race, both Democrats and Republicans are scrambling to make sure their preferred candidate makes it through the primary.

In 2022, Rep. David Valadao (R-Calif.) beat Democrat Rudy Salas by three points in California’s 22nd District — a seat that voted for President Joe Biden by 13 points in 2020.

But a rematch is no sure thing. There’s a real fear among members of both parties that they may not get their favored candidate through California’s top-two primary next month.

Republican worries: The top House GOP super PAC, the Congressional Leadership Fund, is pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into ads protecting Valadao from a MAGA challenger. That GOP opponent, Chris Mathys, came within 1,200 votes of beating Valadao and advancing to the general election.

“We’re taking no chances. We will do whatever it takes to ensure Rep. Valadao is successful in his primary,” CLF President Dan Conston told us in a statement. The CLF ad accuses Mathys of being “soft on crime.”

Mathys started running ads in the district recently that sharply criticize Valadao for voting to impeach former President Donald Trump following the Jan. 6 Capitol attack. Valadao, one of the more moderate members of the House GOP Conference, is seen as the only Republican who can win in the Democratic-leaning district.

Democratic headaches: The DCCC took the unusual step of running joint ads with the Salas campaign in the primary in a sign of how highly Democrats rate the former California state legislator. Democrats view flipping the district blue as critical for winning back the majority.

This week, Salas’ campaign started running negative ads dinging Democratic California state Sen. Melissa Hurtado on abortion rights. The spot claims Hurtado — who has high name identification levels in the district — skipped key votes on this issue. Hurtado said Salas should be “ashamed” of the attack ad and touted her Planned Parenthood rating.

House Majority PAC, CLF’s Democratic counterpart, also started airing Spanish-language ads touting Salas this week. HMP is putting $850,000 into ads between now and the March 5 primary.

“With this investment, House Majority PAC is sending a strong and clear message that Democrats are committed to reclaiming the majority this November,” HMP President Mike Smith said in a statement.

— Max Cohen

THE CAMPAIGN

Scalise returns to DC with a massive fundraising night

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise returned to Washington Tuesday night following two months of stem-cell treatment for cancer. He helped provide House Republicans with the margin to impeach DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

Also on his first night back, Scalise raised more than $750,000 at Ruth’s Chris. He had a dinner hosted by Fierce Government Relations and Scalise alum Eric Zulkosky. Other hosts of the event included Paul Cancienne of Charter Communications, Brett Layson of The Home Depot and Hollyn Schuemann of General Motors.

Also: Lobbyists from Kountoupes Denham Carr & Reid hosted a Monday evening fundraiser for Speaker Mike Johnson that raised more than $100,000 for Johnson’s leadership committee.

News: The DSCC is running a new digital ad that claims Senate Republicans “won’t keep us safe” because the GOP Conference killed the bipartisan Senate border security bill earlier this month.

The ad, which will target voters in Florida and Texas on Meta platforms, features clips of newscasters bashing Republicans for sinking the compromise package negotiated by Sens. James Lankford (R-Okla.), Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) and Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.).

Of course, Sens. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) and Ted Cruz (R-Texas) are the top GOP targets for the DSCC this cycle. Both opposed the border deal.

This is part of a wider Democratic strategy aiming at Republicans for walking away from the package. The Ohio Democratic Party recently hit leading GOP Senate candidate Bernie Moreno on the same issue.

— Jake Sherman and Max Cohen

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