By Sahil Kapur—
NBC News
Congress is set to vote Saturday on four bills that would authorize new U.S. aid to Israel and Ukraine, along with security assistance for the Indo-Pacific region and also on whether TikTok's parent company would have to sell the social network to not be banned in the United States.
The House of Representatives is scheduled to vote on the four bills in succession in the afternoon, a day after an extraordinary bipartisan coalition brought together the votes, with more Democrats (165) than Republicans (151) in favor of the rule to proceed to measures.
The bills are expected to be approved and then go to the Senate for approval in the coming days. Together, they include the $95 billion aid package defended by the president, Joe Biden, with some changes compared to the version approved two months ago by the Upper House.
The vote represents an act of defiance by House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-Louisiana, against a faction of conservatives who oppose Ukraine funding and pressured him not to bring it to a vote. Three of them — Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., Thomas Massie, R-Kentucky, and Paul Gosar, R-Ariz. —
have threatened to remove him as speaker.
Passage of the bill may bring Greene one step closer to forcing a vote to recall him.
After months of vacillation, Johnson sided with Biden, Democrats and Republicans who believe that helping Ukraine defend itself from Russian aggression is essential to U.S. national security interests, citing reports he has received and warning : “Vladimir Putin would continue marching through Europe if he is allowed.”
“I would rather send bullets to Ukraine than to Americans,” Johnson told reporters, noting that his son will enter the Naval Academy this year. “This is a live-fire exercise for me, as it is for many American families. “This is not a game, this is not a joke.”
Before the vote, former President Donald Trump issued a confusing statement in which he sympathized with both the pro- and anti-Ukraine aid factions of the Republican Party, without taking a clear position.
In addition to the three relief bills, the fourth measure includes a policy to force China-based ByteDance to sell TikTok within nine months (which the president could extend to a year) or face a ban on Nacional level. The policy, which lengthens the deadline for a sale of an earlier House bill, has the Senate's buy-in along with Biden's support, putting TikTok closer than ever to a ban in the United States.
If approved, the bills are expected to be packaged together and sent to the Senate, which will have to vote on all the legislation to send it to Biden's desk to become law. It's unclear when that will happen, but Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., are outspoken supporters of the package's foreign aid provisions.
“I hope the president will soon have long-awaited funding on his desk to support our friends in Ukraine and Israel and in the Indo-Pacific region, and relief for innocent civilians in need of humanitarian aid in Gaza and around the world.” Schumer said before the House vote, warning that Ukraine's hopes against Russia would diminish without additional American weapons to defend itself.
Late Friday, Schumer indicated the Senate was working toward unanimous agreement to move quickly to vote on foreign aid legislation. “We are working on an agreement for the consideration of the supplement,” he assured in the plenary session of the Upper House.
McConnell said earlier this week that “this is the political reality: if you think the fall of Afghanistan was bad, the fall of a European capital like kyiv to Russian troops will be unimaginably worse, and if stalled U.S. assistance makes that possible , there will be no question about where the blame will fall: on us.”