Morning Report — Foreign aid bill impacts could be felt in days

by Alexis Simendinger and Kristina Karisch - 04/22/24 6:36 AM ET

Ukrainian soldiers are seen near the front line. — Efrem Lukatsky, Associated Press file
Ukrainian soldiers with the 71st Jaeger Brigade fire a M101 howitzer at Russian positions on the front line, near the city of Avdiivka in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, on March 22, 2024.

The House passed its $95 billion foreign aid package over the weekend, allotting funding for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. As the bills await passage in the Senate, their impact is already being felt across the globe.

UKRAINIANS ARE CHEERING the House vote to provide nearly $61 billion in fresh supplies of artillery rounds and air defense missiles and support for the Ukrainian economy, which is badly suffering after more than two years of Russia’s full-scale attacks on the country. But Kyiv’s relief that it can continue its fight is mixed with uneasiness over future U.S. assistance. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Sunday thanked U.S. leaders for approving the aid package on NBC News’s “Meet the Press,” saying the newfound aid will give the country a chance at “victory” as it defends itself from Russia.

“I think this support will really strengthen the armed forces,” Zelensky said, urging the Senate to quickly pass the legislation. “We want to help get things as fast as possible so that we get some tangible assistance for the soldiers on the frontline as soon as possible — not in another six months — so that they would be able to move ahead.”

Ukraine has been struggling against Russian aggression since U.S. military aid essentially dried up at the end of last year. Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Mark Warner (D-Va.) said U.S. shipments of long-range missiles to Ukraine will be in transit next week, pending Senate action and President Biden’s signature. Speaking Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Warner noted the $61 billion package for Kyiv provides long-range, guided missiles with a range of 190 miles.

But experts cautioned that it would take some time before any difference is felt on the frontlines. Ben Hodges, the retired former commanding general of the U.S. Army in Europe, said “it may be weeks before we see significant battlefield effects.”

▪ The Washington Post: It will take the Pentagon less than a week to deliver some weapons to Ukrainian units who have been forced to ration artillery and air defense rounds, officials say.

▪ The Hill: Zelensky emphasized Sunday that his country needs a “crucial” weapons system to help win its war against Russia.

▪ The New York Times: The days of lightning battlefield breakthroughs may be over. With Russia preparing to make a big push, the Ukrainians can do little but dig in.

MEANWHILE, ISRAELI ATTACKS on Rafah in southern Gaza killed 18 people over the weekend, including nine children, just hours after the House passed a measure to provide Israel with $17 billion in defense aid, and $9 billion in humanitarian aid for Gaza and other war-torn regions. Israel has carried out near-daily air raids on Rafah, where more than half of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million has sought refuge. It has also vowed to expand its ground offensive to the city on the border with Egypt despite international calls for restraint, including from the U.S. Local health officials estimate the death toll in the Israel-Hamas war has climbed to more than 34,000.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — who faces increased opposition and calls for new elections at home — said over the weekend that the bill “demonstrates strong bipartisan support for Israel and defends Western civilization. Thank you friends, thank you America!”

▪ The Washington Post: A flotilla of ships bound for Gaza is preparing to sail from Turkey in the coming days, organizers say, on a mission aimed at breaching Israel’s naval blockade and highlighting the lack of aid reaching Palestinians.

▪ The New York Times: Crackdowns, attacks and the threat of war are putting Iranians on edge. Facing deep economic troubles and a restive population, analysts say the government seems to have adopted a policy of declaring victory over Israel and cracking down at home.

▪ Axios: The U.S. is expected to within days announce sanctions against the Israel Defense Forces “Netzah Yehuda” battalion for human rights violations in the occupied West Bank.

WHILE AID FOR UKRAINE failed to win a majority of Republican votes in the House over the weekend, several dozen progressive Democrats voted against the legislation aiding Israel as they demanded an end to the offensive on Gaza. Now, the package moves over to the Senate, where Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) announced the Senate would begin procedural votes Tuesday. As he prepares to convince his conference’s right wing to support the legislation, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) echoed Schumer’s call to action over the weekend.

“The task before us is urgent,” McConnell said. “It is once again the Senate’s turn to make history.”

3 THINGS TO KNOW TODAY

▪ Reversing the real-estate doom loop is possible. Just look at Detroit.

▪ Digital life is cluttered with bogus text messages, spam calls and phishing attempts. You can try to block, encrypt and unsubscribe your way out of it, but you may not succeed.

▪ RIP: Former Associated Press reporter Terry Anderson died Sunday at 76 from complications from recent heart surgery. He was taken hostage by Islamic militants in 1985 in war-torn Lebanon and held for seven years. He was released and returned to the U.S. in 1991.

LEADING THE DAY

POLITICS

Protests against King George III launched the United States and the country has nurtured a colorful history of civil unrest ever since. No president has dodged dissent. And many have complained, even as they champion the right of free speech (at times their own).

During the Vietnam War, former President Lyndon Johnson and his family, living behind the iron gates and the sandstone walls of the White House, could hear the ceaseless protests and chants: “Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids have you killed today?”

Today’s forms of protest, peaceful and otherwise, vary in style, cut across issues, are fueled by social media and sometimes injected with heavy doses of disinformation. They attract masses who crave change and occasionally involve the violence of disturbed loners.

BIDEN IS LEADING A PROTEST of his own this year, trying to mobilize a coalition willing to join him in defeating his predecessor, whom he describes as a danger to democracy. “Trump’s mob wasn’t a peaceful protest, it was a violent assault,” the president says about the Jan. 6 riots at the Capitol and efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

The president these days is never far from demonstrators’ signage outside campaign donor events, criticisms on X and other platforms, in news accounts and the occasional heckler during presidential trips outside Washington.

College campuses, including Columbia University on Friday, have become Ground Zero for protests assailing Israel, supporting Palestinians or simply arguing for peace in Gaza. Demonstrations lately manage to stir more protests. The University of Southern California (USC) is under fire after it revoked the right of its pro-Palestinian valedictorian to speak at graduation, revealing what critics say is a free speech double standard and kicking off what’s expected to be a controversial year for commencement addresses.

Ahead of Passover, which begins this evening, the FBI is on guard for threats to Jews and Jewish communities. “There was already a heightened risk of violence in the United States before Oct. 7,” FBI Director Christopher Wray warned Congress this month, referring to the Hamas attack on Israel.

WORKING THE POLITICAL SYSTEM from the inside, GOP House proponents of America First policies are wielding the chamber’s rules to threaten to oust the Speaker. In a different example, pro-Israel groups are targeting progressive lawmakers in primaries, reports The Hill’s Julia Manchester. Exhibit A: Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.), facing a primary challenge today because of her call for a cease-fire in Gaza. Some pro-Israel groups have raised millions of dollars to challenge candidates they perceive as insufficiently supportive of Israel, but as public opinion has shifted since Oct. 7, they have spent little of what they’ve raised, The New York Times reports.

2024 ROUNDUP

▪ In battleground Pennsylvania, Sen. Bob Casey (D) faces his most serious election challenge in his competition with Republican David McCormick.

▪ ⬆️ Biden enjoys improved election indicators, including in a new Marist Poll this morning. The president has a 3-point edge over Trump among registered voters nationally. He’s doing better than in 2020 among white voters and he has eliminated the advantage that Trump had among independents earlier this month. Trump’s support among white voters and independents has splintered. Among registered voters who say they “definitely plan” to cast ballots in November, Biden holds a 6-point lead and he’s up 5 points in a hypothetical multi-candidate field.

▪ Nevertheless, here are five Biden campaign worries.Plus, Democrats are pulling out all the stops against independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

▪ Kennedy is now on ballots in Hawaii, Michigan and Utah as an independent presidential candidate as his campaign continues to work on ballot access.

▪ Third-party candidates, specifically Kennedy, Jill Stein and Cornel West, potentially pull more votes away from Trump than from Biden, according to the latest NBC News poll of registered voters completed April 16.

▪ What happens if Trump is convicted ahead of November? Hypothetically, he could be branded a felon but remain free to seek the presidency.

▪ On the eve of his opponent’s criminal trial, Biden and his campaign released a message on the social media platform X Sunday with a Biden sound bite accusing Trump of “coming after” Americans’ money, Social Security and Medicare.

▪ Veepstakes: GOP vice presidential hopefuls are looking for Trump’s golden ticket.

▪ How Biden, Trump favor safe spaces in their respective communications.

▪ The Arizona House speaker finds himself in the eye of abortion rights tornado.

▪ California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) says lawmakers in his state will introduce a bill this week to assist women traveling from Arizona, which has a near-total ban on abortion, to obtain such services. “If Donald Trump becomes president of the United States, he will sign a national abortion ban, period, full stop. He’s the one that’s responsible for the conditions that persist today,” the governor told MSNBC Sunday.

WHERE AND WHEN

The House will meet at 10:30 a.m. Tuesday.

The Senate will convene at 10 a.m. Tuesday.

The president will receive the President’s Daily Brief at 9 a.m. Biden will travel to Triangle, Va., to deliver remarks about Earth Day at 2:15 p.m. in Prince William Forest Park. The president will announce $7 billion in grants through the Environmental Protection Agency’s Solar for All competition, part of the Inflation Reduction Act’s $27 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund. He will return to the White House.

Vice President Harris will travel to La Crosse, Wis., to announce two final rules to improve access to long-term care and the quality of caregiving jobs. At 12:50 p.m. CT, the vice president will convene nursing home care employees for a conversation about their work, joined by Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Chiquita Brooks-LaSure. Harris will speak at 2:45 p.m. CT in La Crosse at a political organizing event focused on reproductive freedoms. She will return to Washington this evening.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken will speak at the State Department at 2 p.m.about the release of the 2023 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices.

First lady Jill Biden will fly to Nashville to speak at 7:30 p.m. at the event, “Walkin’ after Midnight: The Music of Patsy Cline.”

ZOOM IN

CONGRESS

The House’s passage of the foreign aid bills marked a victory for Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) who has been corralling his razor-thin — and often fractious — majority in the lower chamber. But hanging over the achievement is a threat from the far-right flank of Johnson’s party to oust him over the Ukraine legislation.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), an opponent of U.S. assistance to Ukraine who has been threatening to oust Johnson from his leadership role for a month, told Fox’s “Sunday Morning Futures” that Johnson’s Speakership is “over.” Johnson has called Greene’s threats “absurd” and said he would not resign.

Greene, facing criticism from colleagues and nationally, asserted “the American people agree with me.”

“They are outraged, and what they’re saying is they don’t want to vote for Republicans anymore,” she said. “The Republican Party in charge right now, it’s no different than the Democrat party.”

In fact, a majority of Americans support continued U.S. military assistance to Ukraine, according to polling, but Greene is reflecting a partisan divide evidenced in surveys since early this year.

Meanwhile, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Michael McCaul (R-Texas) praised Johnson on ABC’s “This Week” Sunday, saying the Speaker “went through a transformation” on getting the foreign aid package to the House floor.

“I think he tried to do what the, you know, say the Freedom Caucus wanted him to do. It wasn’t going to work in the Senate or the White House. At the end of the day, we were running out of time. Ukraine’s getting ready to fall,” McCaul said. “I think the briefings that he got in the classified space, the advice he got from people like me and [Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio)], House Intelligence, Armed Services, I think talking to world leaders, he became the man that went from a district in Louisiana to the Speaker of the United States, to also someone who had to look at the entire world and had to carry the burden of that and make the right decision.”

VANCE VS. MCCONNELL: Freshman Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) and McConnell have been the faces of the debate over Ukraine in the upper chamber, splitting the Republican Party for months. But with the Senate’s foreign aid votes coming up, is Vance representing a future Republican Party where isolationists and America First advocates are in control? Perhaps not this week.

The Hill’s Alexander Bolton reports McConnell has told colleagues he will spend his final two years in Congress attempting to bring back the party of Eisenhower and Reagan. Nevertheless, some GOP senators believe Vance, a potential Trump running mate, is poised to expand his influence.

▪ The Hill:Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who backs U.S. assistance to Ukraine, ripped into Vance Sunday.

▪ The Washington Post: House lawmakers escalated efforts to restrict video-sharing platform TikTok over the weekend, renewing pressure on the Senate by advancing a bill that would force the company to be sold or face a national ban.

▪ The Hill: Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and former Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) lamented the state of Congress in a side-by-side CNN interview on Sunday, with Manchin saying that Americans should be “ashamed” of the legislative body.

ELSEWHERE

© The Associated Press / Sarah Yenesel | Former President Trump, denying criminal indictments, spoke to reporters Friday outside the Manhattan courtroom where a jury will begin to hear opening arguments today.

TRUMP WORLD

Trump’s criminal trial will begin today in Manhattan with lawyers’ opening arguments following a bumpy four-day process last week that seated a jury and alternates. The former president through his lawyers unsuccessfully filed appeals last week in an effort to slow the trial, currently anticipated to last six weeks and include detailed witness testimony.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s prosecution team and Trump defense attorneys today will present their respective opening summations, laying out for the jury what to expect. Trump faces 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree. The charges are related to alleged payments to adult film actress Stormy Daniels to secure her silence about an alleged affair that Trump denies. Bragg alleges the defendant used fraudulent business records and efforts to hide information from voters ahead of his 2016 presidential election.

Trump, who accuses Judge Juan Merchan of political bias and election interference, risks being fined by the court during a Tuesday hearing to consider 10 alleged violations of a gag order. On Sunday, Trump used his social media platform to say, “REMOVE THE GAG ORDER!!! WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO HIDE???”

The order forbids attacks on witnesses, prosecutors, jurors and court staff members, as well as their relatives and relatives of the judge. Trump has used social media, campaign events and blistering commentary while entering and exiting the courthouse to protest his innocence and criticize others. He says he’ll testify in his own defense at trial, although he is not required to.

Trump is no stranger to court proceedings and has become the first current or former president to face criminal charges. Prosecutors want to cross-examine the defendant, should he take the stand, about lawsuits he has lost, including a civil jury’s finding last year that he was liable for sexually abusing the writer E. Jean Carroll.

Trump also posted a $175 million bond while he tries to overturn a judge’s Feb. 16 finding that he lied about his wealth as he built a real estate empire. That case is pending in September. The Supreme Court on Thursday will hear Trump’s appeal that he has total immunity from prosecution for actions and decisions while he was president.

The New York Times: Where jurors seated for the Trump trial say they get their news.

OPINION

■ The Supreme Court should rule swiftly on Trump’s immunity claim, by former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), guest essayist, The New York Times.

■ In our changing climate, food availability must be a top concern, Joe Robertson, opinion contributor, The Hill.

THE CLOSER

And finally … 🌎 It’s Earth Day, an annual opportunity to focus on the environment, the future of the planet and human-made risks.

▪ ABC News: The 2024 global theme for Earth Day is “planet vs. plastic.”

▪ The Hill: Biden today will unveil the first job listings in the new American Climate Corps program.

Let’s begin with this country. The presidential election will have major implications for the fight against climate change, The Hill’s Rachel Frazin reports . The differences between Biden and Trump remain stark when it comes to oil drilling and fossil fuels, carbon emissions, ocean preservation and plastic pollution, and land use policies, to name a few. A Trump presidency could have dire consequences for the planet, environmental experts argue.

🌡 Globally, scientists are worried about a sudden and worrying surge in global temperatures this year. Fueled by decades of uncontrolled fossil fuel burning and an El Niño climate pattern that emerged last June, the planet has breached a feared warming threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels. Nearly 19,000 weather stations have notched record high temperatures since Jan. 1. Each of the past 10 months has been the hottest of its kind. Scientists are still struggling to explain how the planet could have exceeded previous temperature records by as much as half a degree Celsius (0.9 degrees Fahrenheit) last fall, The Washington Post reports.

“If we keep setting records, then we have to revisit some of our assumptions, because it may be there is some new persistent forcing that is not being accounted for,” said Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist at Berkeley Earth, a nonprofit focused on land temperature data analysis for climate science based in Berkeley, Calif.

Stay Engaged

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