Democrats will protect Mike Johnson over Ukraine aid vote, Jeffries suggests

The Democratic leadership in Congress has suggested it would protect the Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, if he bucks his far-right colleagues and brings a stalled $60bn Ukraine military aid package to a vote, as a new poll shows public support for Ukraine is now fractured down party-political lines.

Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader, floated the offer in an interview with the New York Times, saying “a reasonable number” of Democrats would vote to save the Republican speaker if the Ukraine vote resulted in a Republican mutiny.

Far-right members of Congress including Marjorie Taylor Greene have said they would seek to depose Johnson if he brings the foreign aid bill forward, threatening to send Republicans toward yet another protracted leadership crisis like the one that paralyzed the House under former speaker Kevin McCarthy.

Jeffries said that if Johnson were “to do the right thing”, there would be a “reasonable number of people” on the Democratic side “who will take the position that he should not fall as a result”. But Jeffries said he had not discussed the matter with Johnson, who has said Congress “must take care of America’s needs first”.

The political carrot was extended a day after Joe Biden and congressional leaders pushed Republicans to move the aid bill forward. Johnson later told reporters that they had been working in “good faith, around the clock every single day” on a spending deal.

Johnson also said the legislative body was “actively pursuing and investigating all the various options” for passing Ukraine aid, but “the first priority of the country is our border”.

A new poll showed that US adults have become politically split down party lines over giving more military aid to Ukraine, which the