House Speaker Mike Johnson is pledging to act on Ukraine aid when lawmakers return to Washington next week, but behind the scenes the Louisiana Republican is still undecided on the best path forward and keenly aware of his narrow majority and the threat to his speakership that looms.
It’s a confluence of issues that sources say has left Johnson entertaining a series of options as the speaker has continued his outreach to members about how to proceed during the two-week recess. “He’s got a gun to his head right now,” Rep. Don Bacon, a swing-district Republican, said of the speaker. “But we need to have a Churchill, not a Chamberlain right now. He could be on the right side of history.” Johnson is under intense pressure to thread the needle.
That would require a two-thirds majority, a high bar to clear. In any scenario, Johnson is expected to need a significant number of Democrats to vote for the package. But some progressives have signaled they’ll vote against additional aid to Israel. Sources close to the process say one of the options that has been floated to overcome that hurdle is to break the aid package up so that aid to Israel and Ukraine would be voted on separately.
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