Congressional Glance
House Republican Leader Steve Scalise told reporters that Johnson had been talking with White House officials about a package that would deviate from the Senate’s $95 billion foreign security package and include several Republican demands. It comes after Johnson has delayed for months on advancing aid that would provide desperately needed ammunition and weaponry for Kyiv, trying to find the right time to advance a package that will be a painful political lift.
House Speaker Mike Johnson Is Negotiating With White House To Advance Ukraine Aid
Nancy Pelosi joins House Democrats in urging Biden to halt arms to Israel
More than three dozen congressional Democrats – including representative Nancy Pelosi, the former House speaker and a key Joe Biden ally – signed a letter to the president and the secretary of state Antony Blinken, urging a halt to weapons transfers to Israel.
“In light of the recent strike against aid workers and the ever-worsening humanitarian crisis, we believe it is unjustifiable to approve these weapons transfers,” the letter said. It was signed by Pelosi and 36 other Democrats including Representatives Barbara Lee, Rashida Tlaib and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Friday’s letter also calls on the US to withhold future arms transfers pending a US investigation into the airstrike on the World Central Kitchen humanitarian workers or if Israel “fails to sufficiently mitigate harm to innocent civilians in Gaza”.
Freedom Caucus Chair endorses convicted Capitol rioter’s Congressional run
Freedom Caucus Chair Bob Good (R-Va.) endorsed a convicted Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol rioter in his bid against a sitting GOP member of the lower chamber.
Good threw his support behind Derrick Evans, a former West Virginia legislator who was charged in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.
Evans pleaded guilty to one charge of civil disorder and was sentenced to three months in prison after he livestreamed the riot and later entered the building.
“It is my privilege to endorse Derrick Evans for Congress in West Virginia’s first congressional district. We cannot change Washington and save the country by electing the status quo,” Good said in a statement. “We need true, courageous conservative warriors like Derrick Evans.”
Mike Johnson hints vote on Ukraine aid is up next despite threat to speakership
The US House speaker, Mike Johnson, has raised expectations that a vote on funding for Ukraine could be imminent in the chamber, even at the risk of the Republican losing his leadership position.
Johnson touted “important innovations” to a possible Ukraine package during an interview on Fox News’s Sunday Night in America with Trey Gowdy, and he suggested a vote on a standalone bill could come soon after Congress returns from Easter recess on 9 April.
But the Louisiana Republican acknowledged forces in his party were trying to unseat him over his efforts to find a bipartisan solution to stalled US funding for Ukraine’s efforts to repel Russia’s military invasion, which began in February 2022. The far-right extremist Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene filed a motion to remove Johnson in March, but she stopped short of calling it for a floor vote.
Groundbreaking former senator, vice presidential nominee Joe Lieberman dies at 82
Former Sen. Joe Lieberman, the 2000 Democratic nominee for vice president who later became a political independent, died of complications from a fall, his family announced Wednesday.
"Senator Lieberman's love of God, his family, and America endured throughout his life of service in the public interest," his family said in a written statement.
Lieberman, 82, a former Connecticut state senator and attorney general who was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 1988, developed a reputation for bipartisanship during his years in Washington. Lieberman was also the first Jewish-American candidate nominated on a major party ticket.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez calls Israeli Gaza campaign an ‘unfolding genocide’
Progressive US congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called the Israeli military campaign in Gaza an “unfolding genocide” in a scathing speech that demanded the Joe Biden White House suspend aid to Israel’s armed forces.
“As we speak, in this moment, 1.1 million innocents in Gaza are at famine’s door,” Ocasio-Cortez said in a speech on the House floor on Friday.
Citing 30,000 Palestinian deaths in Gaza and noting 70% were women and children, she continued: “A famine … is being intentionally precipitated through the blocking of food and global humanitarian assistance by leaders in the Israeli government. This is a mass starvation of people, engineered and orchestrated.
“This was all accomplished – much of this was accomplished – with US resources and weapons. If you want to know what an unfolding genocide looks like, open your eyes.”
Republicans lash out at Greene over threat to oust Speaker Johnson
House Republicans are lashing out at Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) over her surprise bid to remove Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) from power, warning that it threatens to divide an already warring GOP conference ahead of elections when the House is up for grabs.
Greene told reporters she is not bringing her motion to vacate resolution to the floor immediately — “I don’t have a timeline” — but the mere idea of removing another Speaker has infuriated many fellow Republicans, who are aiming their fire at Greene.
Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), who spearheaded the successful motion to vacate against former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), told Politico “I’m not going to question her decision, I’m just not ready to support a motion to vacate.” Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.), who also voted to oust McCarthy, said he is “currently” against booting Johnson, though he echoed Greene’s frustration with Johnson’s handling of government funding.
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