Senate Advances Ukraine, Israel Aid Bill After GOP Stands Down

WASHINGTON ― The Senate on Thursday cleared a key procedural vote on a bill providing billions of dollars in military aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, voting to open debate on legislation that has been stalled by Republicans for months.

The breakthrough came after lawmakers decoupled the $95 billion foreign assistance portion of the bill from tougher border enforcement measures that Republicans demanded last year but then quickly abandoned after a backlash on the right, including from former President Donald Trump.

After much hemming and hawing this week, and multiple rounds of discussions that seemed to go nowhere, 17 Republicans voted with every Democrat to break a filibuster and advance the measure, over the objections of conservatives who demanded that stronger border enforcement changes be added back into the bill.

“The Republicans wanted something and then decided that they didn’t want that thing,” Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) told HuffPost after the vote Thursday. “Now some of them want it again, and I think the adults are just moving on.”

Passage of the bill is not yet assured, however. Senators must take several more procedural votes before a final vote, a process that could stretch into next week. And then there’s still the matter of the House, where many Republicans are firmly opposed to more U.S. support for Ukraine in its struggle for survival against Russian aggression.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) suggested on Wednesday, before the Senate voted, that he was open to letting the House vote on the foreign aid bill. He’d previously said that the bill combining foreign aid and border security was “dead on arrival” in the House.

“We’ll see what the Senate does, where it’s allowing the process to play