Morning Report — Foreign aid to get weekend vote; Mayorkas charges dismissed

There’s finally an expected date for House votes on aid to Ukraine and Israel.

Bucking conservative criticism, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) on Wednesday rolled out the text for three bills that would combine military assistance to Ukraine, Israel and allies in the Indo-Pacific with humanitarian aid for Gaza and other global hot spots, teeing up a weekend vote. The legislative package roughly mirrors the $95 billion aid bill the Senate passed two months ago, but is broken into three pieces that would be voted on individually. President Biden said he’d sign it. The Senate, which is out of session next week, must approve it next.

The trio of bills are part of Johnson’s plan for moving foreign aid through the House, a process that has been delayed for months amid other pressing priorities and stalled this week as his initial proposal faced intense backlash from the right flank, write The Hill’s Mike Lillis and Mychael Schnell. Additionally, Johnson is proposing a fourth bill that includes other national security provisions, including a TikTok ban and sanctions to confront Russia, China and Iran.

The Hill: Read the text of Johnson’s bills here.

IN A TWIST from the Speaker’s initial plan, Johnson said he will move a border security measure separate from the foreign aid bills — a decision that is meant to appease conservatives who were up in arms that the priority was at first excluded. That legislation will include “core components” from H.R. 2, the border security bill House Republicans approved last year, but it hasn’t stopped conservatives from criticizing the plan. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) has promised to invoke a “motion to vacate” to topple Johnson if he puts Ukraine aid on the floor.

“Listen, my philosophy is you do the right thing and you let the chips fall where they may … If I operated out of fear over a motion to vacate, I would never be able to do my job,” Johnson said at a Wednesday news conference when asked why he had opted to push ahead with the aid package. “This is a critical time right now … I can make a selfish decision and do something that’s different. But I’m doing here what I believe to be the right thing.”

Top House Republicans are privately considering using the debate over package to raise the threshold to oust the Speaker, Punchbowl News reports. Currently, just one member is needed to start the process. 

The conservative outcry was not unexpected, but it means Johnson will need Democratic support to clear the foreign assistance legislation — both on procedural and substantive votes. And while some Democrats are bristling that they’re being called upon to help Republicans, they’re willing to support the plan to ensure aid to Ukraine — and Johnson can only afford to lose two GOP votes.

IRAN’S ATTACK ON ISRAEL over the weekend provided Johnson with an increased sense of urgency to deliver aid for U.S. allies abroad, amounting to an estimated $95 billion. But after months of Israel and Ukraine expending resources in their respective defensive wars absent U.S. assistance it’s unclear if the top-line figure will be enough. 

Republicans matched Biden’s original request for aid to Israel, a little more than $14 billion, but they have shaved off about $10 billion in aid for Ukraine, The Hill’s Laura Kelly reports. The Ukrainian government, its supporters and analysts say there is no time to waste for Congress to approve more aid, as the shortage of U.S. assistance has had major, potentially irreversible consequences for Ukraine on the battlefield against Russia.

“There’s now concern that absent assistance arriving very quickly, Russia may actually be able to break through some of the Ukrainian lines and retake territory,” said Michèle Flournoy, who served as undersecretary for defense policy during the Obama administration.

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👉 Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas will keep his job, as expected, entering the history books Wednesday as the first Cabinet member to be impeached by the House since 1876 while also being rescued by the Senate, which voted along party lines to dismiss charges without a trial. Democrats accused Republicans of staging a months-long political drama about immigration to appeal to their base in an election year. The GOP warned Democrats, who disposed of the matter within hours, that they would regret setting a precedent.

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LEADING THE DAY

POLITICS

Biden, who is campaigning this week through swing-state Pennsylvania, responded to Trump’s legal troubles and the former president’s broadsides about prosecutors and judges with a shrug. “His lack of ethics has nothing to do with me,” the president told Nexstar journalist Reshad Hudson during a Tuesday interview in Scranton, Pa..

Biden and his campaign are in general election mode, reminding voters of the manufacturing jobs that Trump once promised Pennsylvanians and insisting those jobs never materialized. Biden and his team want to counter Trump’s narrative that Americans would be better off if Trump returned to the White House. They’re wielding examples of Biden’s “Scranton values” along with wonky economic data points about delivering for the middle class.

When asked about high prices for food and consumer goods, Biden told Nexstar Media Group, owner of The Hill, “We’ve brought down inflation considerably by over two-thirds, and it is being stubborn and not going down to 2 percent [the Federal Reserve’s goal]. But it’s significantly different.”

One in seven jobs “in Pennsylvania steel and iron mills” disappeared during the Trump presidency, the incumbent’s campaign said Wednesday in a statement filled with comparative statistics, “while President Biden is bringing steel manufacturing jobs back, with 1,300 jobs added.” 

In Pittsburgh, Biden told union workers at United Steelworkers headquarters Wednesday that China’s subsidized steel companies “are not competing, they’re cheating.” He proposed tripling the tariff rate on steel and aluminum imports from China, a move that echoed Trump’s trade war with Beijing. The powerful union endorsed the president for reelection last month.

Candidate Biden has a theory about how to get under Trump’s skin while trying to appeal to voters who say they’re weary of his predecessor: Mock him, The Hill’s Alex Gangitano reports. A rule in campaigns is to sow doubts about the attributes an opponent holds most dear about themselves. Biden boasts he’s honest; Republicans assert he’s part of a crime family with son Hunter Biden. 

To turn the tables, Trump’s words, deeds and self-regard present an abundance of material, Democratic advisers believe. Belittling an opponent is also a way to assert dominance and present an aura of confidence in a close contest when the candidates are publicly well known and neither is tops with a majority of voters.

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ZOOM IN

INTERNATIONAL

Israel’s closest Western allies have pleaded with the country’s government for days not to risk igniting a wider war with its response to Iran’s missile and drone attacks last weekend. Top diplomats from Germany and Britain delivered that message in person to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday. But Netanyahu remains resolute that his country will not bow to any outside pressure when choosing its response, declaring before a Cabinet meeting that Israel would “do everything necessary to defend itself” and warned the allies that “we will make our own decisions.”

British Foreign Secretary David Cameron acknowledged just before meeting with the prime minister that Israel was unlikely to heed Western pleas, though no details of the planned response have been made public (The New York Times).

“It is clear that the Israelis are making a decision to act,” Cameron told the BBC. “We hope that they do so in a way that does as little to escalate this as possible.”

The New York Times: A miscalculation led to an escalation in the clash between Israel and Iran. Israeli officials said they didn’t see a strike on a high-level Iranian target in Syria as a provocation and did not give Washington a heads-up about it until right before it happened.

TALKS FOR A NEW CEASE-FIRE and hostage release in Gaza are at a “delicate phase,” Qatar said Wednesday, and a senior Arab diplomat told NBC News that the talks are “almost frozen.”

“We are trying as much as possible to address this stumbling block,” said Qatar’s Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani. “We are trying as much as possible to address this stumbling block and to move forward to put an end to this suffering.”

Meanwhile, Qatar is undertaking a “comprehensive evaluation” of its position as a mediator, Al Thani said Wednesday in a statement, reiterating Qatar’s rejection of recent criticism of its role (The Washington Post).

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ELSEWHERE

TRUMP WORLD

Former President Trump will soon come face-to-face with trial witnesses who could include former White House aides, Trump Organization employees and multiple people allegedly compensated to remain silent. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s (D) team is expected to question key players in Trump’s 2016 orbit and those who knew about hush money, alleged falsification of business records and asserted motivations to try to hide potentially damaging information from voters ahead of an election. The Hill’s Zach Schonfeld looks at the potential trial witness list.

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THE CLOSER

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