According to a prominent House Republican, House Speaker Mike Johnson is in talks with the White House in anticipation of the difficult challenge of passing legislation to support the wars in Ukraine and Israel.
According to House Republican Leader Steve Scalise, a new package that Johnson had been discussing with White House officials would include a number of Republican requests, including a departure from the Senate’s $95 billion global security plan.
This follows months of delays in supplies that would have provided Kyiv with much-needed ammunition and weapons, while Johnson sought the optimal moment to promote a package that would have been a complex political lift to move.
Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, is caught between a Republican conference that is strongly split on Ukraine and two presidential candidates who cannot agree on how the United States should interact with the rest of the world.
Joe Biden, president of the United States, has slammed Republicans on many occasions for failing to support Ukraine, claiming that Republicans are aiding Vladimir Putin of Russia and endangering American security. At the same time, the likely Republican nominee, Donald Trump, has stated his intention to negotiate a resolution to the crisis to isolate the United States further.
The Republican speaker has been conferring with Trump on the issue of money for Ukraine in recent weeks in an effort to win over Trump on the issue or, at the very least, to keep him from publicly rejecting the package. They will meet at the former president’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida on Friday.
This week, a Republican senator from Oklahoma, Markwayne Mullin, claimed that he and Trump had talked with Johnson “in-depth” over how to promote funding to Ukraine.
(Mullin often collaborates with House Republicans.) Now that Johnson’s position is in jeopardy, Mullin said he hoped to persuade the former president to back the deal, but it is unclear whether Trump would provide any political support.
Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia has warned that approving funds for Ukraine would bolster her argument that GOP legislators should choose a new speaker and has pledged to attempt to remove Johnson as speaker.
