The NPR Politics Podcast - Will Mike Johnson Survive His Own Israel, Ukraine Aid Pitch?

Episode Date: April 17, 2024

Speaker Mike Johnson has split apart the foreign military aid package sent over by the Senate into separate bills, focused on Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan respectively. He's also moving forward on border legislation and other red-meat Republican policy issues in an apparent effort to appease hardliners and protect his own job.This episode: political correspondent Susan Davis, national security correspondent Greg Myre and congressional reporter Barbara Sprunt.This podcast was produced by Kelli Wessinger and Casey Morell. Our editor is Eric McDaniel. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi. Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, this is Tim Bronsle in a beautiful park in Cincinnati walking with my dog Emma on what we call a Sniffari. This show was recorded at 12.39 p.m. on Wednesday, April 17th. Things may have changed by the time you hear it, but we'll still be on this sniffing tour. Here's the show. I love that. That's great. I feel like I've never heard that term before.

I do the exact same thing. My dog annoys me by constantly sniffing everywhere we go. And now you've learned a new word, Sniffari. I got that. That's great. I feel I've never heard that term before. I do the exact same thing. My dog annoys me by constantly sniffing everywhere we go. Now you've learned a new word, sniff-ar. I got it. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. I'm Barbara Sprint.

I cover Congress. And I'm Greg Myrie. I cover national security. And Iran's unprecedented attack on Israel over the weekend is creating new urgency on Capitol Hill to finally pass a long-delayed foreign aid package that includes assistance to both Israel and Ukraine. Greg, we haven't talked on the podcast yet about the Iranian attack on Israel. Can you just catch our listeners up to speed about exactly what happened over the weekend? Right. Iran launched a major

aerial assault on Israel, fired more than 300 weapons. About half were drones, half were missiles. Virtually all of them were shot down. A few got through. They caused very minor damage at a military base in Israel. One young girl was hurt. But it was a really successful shoot down by Israel, along with help from the United States, France, Britain, Jordan was also involved. The Iranians said they did this in response to an Israeli attack on a diplomatic compound, an Iranian diplomatic compound in Syria a couple weeks earlier. This was a big deal because it marked a direct confrontation between Israel and Iran rather than the kind of shadow fighting we've seen over many years. And how is that affecting U.S. strategy in the region now? Yeah, I think

I'd say a number of things about that. First of all, the U.S. really wants to prevent a wider war in the region. That's been President Biden's goal since the Hamas attack way back on October 7th. This is, again, drawing the U.S. into the region in an even bigger way. It participated in the shoot down of these drones and missiles. It also, I think, improved the atmospherics, at least in the short term, between the U.S. and Israel. They had this successful partnership. Other countries were involved as well, Britain, France, and Jordan. It shifted the spotlight off Gaza, at least for the moment, where the U.S. and others have been pressing Israel to ease the

humanitarian crisis. But in terms of what comes next, the U.S. and European countries are telling Israel that this was a successful defense of this Iranian strike. It was a win. Take the win and de-escalate. Israel's security cabinet is still meeting, talking, trying to figure out the Israeli response. We don't know what it could be. There's a range of options. Could be a very visible strike against Iran in the coming days. Could be a covert action weeks or months down the road that we don't hear about until much later. Or Israel could opt to let the Iran front in these conflicts calm down. At issue on the Hill is billions of dollars in aid to Israel. Last check, it was around $13 billion, but this legislation is working its way, so we don't know what the final tally will be.

How critical is this pot of money to Israel in terms of supporting their military and their military strategy? So in the short term, Israel has more than enough firepower in Gaza. In fact, the criticism has been that they're using way too much, killing way too many civilians. We saw how successful they were in defeating the Iranian attack. Their various air defense systems worked well in collaboration with the U.S. and others. So in the immediate term, not critical. And Israel is the biggest U.S. recipient of military aid, close to $4 billion a year on an ongoing basis. And this has been the case for decades. But that said, this is important in the longer term for a couple reasons.

Israel does need to reload, replenish some of the weapons they've been using up in the current conflicts. And from Israel's perspective, this is perhaps most important as a show of ongoing U.S. support, long-term U.S. support. And it includes weapons Israel says it will need in the years to come. This will include advanced fighter jets that will have to be built from scratch. They won't actually get there five years or so from now before they show up, but you do have to plan in advance. And Barbara, this money for Israel, obviously there's been criticism of Israel's handling of the war, but support for this money has not been as much an issue on Capitol Hill as assistance to Ukraine has in the past several months. There is still believed to be a majority of support on Capitol Hill in both parties to support funding for Ukraine. But there

is deep opposition within the Republican Party to continue this assistance. Obviously, a problem when Republicans control the House. But Speaker Johnson has appeared to come up with a new new strategy to try to get this aid cobbled together through the House. A new new strategy. A new new strategy. Can you can you explain sort of what he's trying to do here? Because it's a bit complicated. It is. So he's taking a different approach than the Senate did. So remember in February, even though it feels like it was way longer ago than that, the Senate passed a $95 billion foreign aid package that included aid to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. But basically from jump, we knew that that would never get a vote in the House in that particular format,

because as you said, there are still blocks of Republican members in Speaker Johnson's conference that remain deeply, deeply opposed to any further funding for Ukraine. So Johnson's strategy now, which he announced later in the evening on Monday this week, is to split that into four bills. So there would be a bill for funding for Israel, for Taiwan and for Ukraine. And then the fourth bill is sort of like a grab bag of other GOP priorities, some seizing of Russian assets, components of a TikTok bill, sanctions towards Iran, China and Russia. Sweeteners, in other words, things that you get people on board to vote yes for. That's right. Yeah. But they're all distinct bills. And the thinking is that in splitting these bills up, each member gets to vote their conscience on each piece instead of like as a whole package. We are still waiting for the text of those bills.

We expect the first three bills text to come fairly soon on foreign aid. We know it's tens of billions. I guess we should say a new, new, new, new element to keep it going, which is that the speaker has also said that the Rules Committee will be posting text on a border security bill that includes some key components of a previous border bill that was passed by the House of Republicans. The piece of that puzzle that I think is interesting is Johnson had promised for months that he would not allow for additional aid to Ukraine without more border security for the crisis at the southern border. By putting the border measure under this separate rule, the bill on the border won't necessarily be a factor in this foreign aid funding package. So like you said, it's complicated, but that is the broad outline. But Barbara, this is one of the inherent problems with the Johnson speakership is his majority has not been able to pass any major legislation without the support of Democrats.

Bills that have had to go through the Rules Committee consistently fail. And he's had to use procedural workarounds because his own party has been willing to take down Republican legislation. And he's in a tough spot. You know, like he has the narrowest majority that you can have a speaker. He has coalitions within his conference that remain deeply divided on issues like funding for Ukraine, for example. He's certainly trying to thread the needle, as it were. There's no doubt he is in a very difficult position. I spoke to a Republican member coming out of a meeting with the GOP conference earlier this week, and he was like, Jesus himself could not manage this conference. You couldn't get the votes. So, you know, there's metrics there.

All right, let's take a quick break. And when we get back, we'll talk more about Ukraine and how this could all affect Speaker Johnson. And we're back. And Greg, for the sake of this podcast, let's presume that something gets passed into law on Capitol Hill that provides some sort of funding to Ukraine at the end of the day. What is the level of confidence from the foreign policy and national security people that you talk to that Ukraine can ultimately come out victorious in this war against Russia. So there is still a strong sense that Ukraine could, in effect, win, but they don't talk about it in sort of all or nothing terms. If Ukraine gets enough weapons, it will win, or there's no way Ukraine can win, so let's stop sending them weapons. Modern wars just tend not to be all or nothing propositions. They tend to fall somewhere in the middle. One side does worse or better, and you usually end up with some sort of negotiated settlement

involving some very painful compromises. So the Russians have close to a quarter million troops in Ukraine. They hold close to 20% of Ukrainian territory. Ukraine is not likely to drive all those Russians out, no matter how many weapons they get. But there's also a difference between Ukraine not driving all those forces out and still being able to prosecute a successful war and preventing Russia from taking more territory. Remember, Russian leader Vladimir Putin unleashed this full-scale war two years ago with the intent of taking Kiev, the capital, in just a few days.

He got pushed back, but he's still talking about Ukraine as not really being a country, something that really is part of the Russian tradition and history. So just because Ukraine is not advancing or if they offered a compromise, it doesn't mean Putin would take it or that Putin still doesn't want to capture Kiev and ultimately rule Ukraine. So there's a lot of in-between between Ukraine winning entirely or losing entirely. And supporters of this aid for Ukraine said, you have to keep Ukraine as a credible fighting force, even if they can't kick out all Russian forces.

Barbara, this issue domestically has been one that is potentially defining to the speakership of Mike Johnson and potentially the end of the speakership of Mike Johnson. There's already a motion to vacate the speakership filed by Georgia Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene, a lawmaker who deeply opposes any more U.S. funding for Ukraine. And it sounds like there are maybe more lawmakers on Capitol Hill ready to join her over this. So Johnson announced his plan on Monday night. On Tuesday morning, Kentucky Republican Thomas Massey said he signed on to that resolution from Greene that you mentioned. It's the motion to vacate, which is essentially a way of saying it's a mechanism for calling for a vote to oust Johnson as speaker.

He says that he's talked to members. This is what he told reporters as he came out of a closed-door conference meeting on Tuesday morning with Johnson and other Republican colleagues. He says that he feels there's enough votes on the table for Johnson to get ousted if this motion to vacate vote was triggered. He said he'd lose more votes than Kevin McCarthy as his, you know, Johnson's predecessor. Massey said that he called on Johnson to resign in this meeting. And unsurprisingly, the speaker said he will not

resign. It is, in my view, an absurd notion that someone would bring a vacate motion when we are simply here trying to do our jobs. And, you know, not all critics of Johnson are supportive of this motion to vacate process. I spoke with South Carolina Congressman Ralph Norman coming out of that contentious Tuesday meeting where Massey called for the speaker to resign and said that he was signing on to this motion to vacate resolution. The last thing this country needs is to throw a speaker out, even though I disagree with what he's done. He's an honest man. We went through the rendition, y'all know.

I wouldn't put the country through that. What is the speaker's defense against these detractors? Because, look, like, not a lot of Republicans may support the motion to vacate, but there is a deep reservoir of opposition to the policies that he's trying to advance, potentially over the will of a majority of the majority. I mean, Johnson's case is in part, you know, the math, which is there is very little ways to appease everyone in his conference. He has a very, very thin majority. I think he's very aware of what his members want. I mean, one of the things that

has sometimes frustrated members of his conference is that he does take the time to talk to everyone who has issues. I mean, he takes time to sit with the House Freedom Caucus to listen to their ideas. I think he very much wants to be able to have input from everyone in his conference. But at the end of the day, there's a ton of factions. And I think that he has to be mindful of the fact that it's an election year as well and that, like, there are messaging bills that people want to put forward as they head into November. And, Barbara, help me out here. I'm old enough to remember when foreign policy was generally a bipartisan issue, and I realize those days are long gone. But explain why Democrats are willing to help save Johnson when they didn't do that for Speaker McCarthy when he was ousted last year. Yeah, you know, Democrats certainly will be needed to get these foreign aid bills across the finish line and would need to show up in some form or another, either show up or maybe not show up so

that the threshold is lower if a motion to vacate was called. We've had members already publicly say, including Florida Democratic Congressman Jared Moskowitz, that he'll support Johnson if a motion to vacate vote came up. Democratic caucus chair Pete Aguilar told reporters yesterday that Democrats at this point really want to see aid move forward to Ukraine and Israel. They don't like the chaos. They've been down the road of the many, many votes, as we all remember, for the last speakership fight, and that they don't want the House to be mired in that type of chaos. So I do think at this point, it's notable that Democrats have publicly said they would support Johnson if that motion to vacate came to

pass. Greg, these are almost certainly the last foreign aid votes that could occur before the election. But this debate and the turmoil on Capitol Hill and within the Republican Party is a pretty stark reminder of the contrast between the two parties and the two presidential candidates when it comes to the issue of Ukraine? Oh, absolutely. President Biden has been very supportive of Ukraine since the full-scale invasion by Russia a little over two years ago. He wants to keep that aid going. If it were up to him, he would continue to do so in a second term. Trump has been very skeptical of aid to Ukraine. He said that he could end the war in a day if he were president without explaining why or how. Now, it was interesting last week because Speaker Johnson went down to Mar-a-Lago in

Florida and met with Trump. And Trump said something slightly different where it's possible that they could approve assistance to Ukraine if it was a loan rather than just straight military assistance, something that Ukraine would have to pay back, although it's not clear how Ukraine would be able to do that, given its current financial situation. And he also called again for Europe to step up, which is a bit of a false statement at this point. The Europeans continue to give a lot of assistance. Collectively, they've given more aid to Ukraine than the U.S. has over the past two years. They recently passed a pretty big package of more than

$50 billion spread out over four years, not enough to keep Ukraine going that entire time, but still substantial assistance and a long-term commitment to Ukraine. All right. That is it for us today. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. I'm Barbara Sprint. I cover Congress. I'm Greg Myrie, and I'm a national security correspondent. And thanks for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.