Vote Saturday in the US House of Representatives on aid to Ukraine and Israel

The American House of Representatives will vote on Saturday on envelopes of several billion dollars for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, texts which have received supported support of President Joe Biden.

Elected officials will vote on four proposed laws, the outlines of which were revealed early Wednesday afternoon.

The first provides for $61 billion to help Ukraine — mostly military aid.

Separate texts also plan to release more than $26 billion to support Israel and several billion dollars for Taiwan.

“This is a very important message that we let's send to the world this week,” said the Republican leader of the US House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, who has long blocked the sending of funds to Ukraine.

Tangled in partisan quarrels, Congress has been struggling for months to adopt an envelope for kyiv, at war with Russia since February 2022.

– Biden Tribune –

US President Joe Biden in Scranton, Pennsylvania on April 16, 2024 © AFP – ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS

In a press release published in the afternoon, US President Joe Biden said he was “very favorable” to these envelopes.

“The House of Representatives must adopt these texts this week and the Senate must act immediately,” urged the Democratic leader, who has been pleading for months for the sending of these funds.

Wednesday morning, he reiterated his call in the columns of the Wall Street Journal.

“Both Ukraine and Israel are attacked by impudent enemies who seek their annihilation,” he said in a column.

“If both countries are entirely capable of defending their own sovereignty, they depend on American aid to do so, including in arms, and we are at a pivotal moment,” he wrote in the daily.Russian President Vladimir Putin “wants to subjugate the Ukrainian people and absorb their nation into a new Russian empire”, he added, also believing that “the Iranian government wants to destroy Israel, and thus razing the only Jewish state in the world forever from the map.”

“America must never accept any of these results”, asserted Joe Biden.

– Motion of censure –

Ukraine is desperately short of ammunition in its war against Russia and the American credits are exhausted.

Israel, for its part, faced a direct and unprecedented attack from Iran on the night of Saturday to Sunday, in a context of high regional tensions.

< p>A package of $60 billion in military and economic assistance for Ukraine was adopted in the Senate in February. But Republicans in the House of Representatives refused to consider the text — due, among other things, to a dispute over the issue of immigration.

Speaker of the House of Representatives Mike Johnson during a press conference in Washington, April 16, 2024 © AFP – Julia Nikhinson

If it is adopted by the Republican-majority House, the batch of texts unveiled on Wednesday will then be studied by the Democratic-majority Senate, before possibly arriving on Joe Biden's desk for promulgation.

Mike Johnson's announcement was rejected by some of his Republican colleagues, reviving the possibility of a censure motion and a new crisis in the House.

His predecessor, Kevin McCarthy, was impeached last year after a rebellion by the Trumpist wing of his party.

< p>Mike Johnson plunged the Republican Party “into chaos by serving the Democrats and adopting Biden's agenda”, criticized elected official Marjorie Taylor Greene on X.

“Now he's going to finance wars abroad,” she added. He “must announce a date for his resignation and allow Republicans to elect a new one to put America first and pass a Republican agenda.”

The “speaker” ruled out any voluntary departure.

“I will not resign”, Mike Johnson told the press, deeming the threat of filing “absurd” 'a motion of censure.

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