More than a dozen GOP lawmakers defied their own leadership — and President Donald Trump — by voting with Democrats to approve a major bill to deliver billions of dollars in aid to Ukraine while imposing steep sanctions on Russia.
The House voted 226 to 195 to approve the package, which cracks down on Russia with new oil and gas sanctions, in its first big pro-Ukraine measure of Trump’s second term.
Speaker Mike Johnson has urged his members to oppose the measure, arguing in a closed-door meeting Wednesday that they should give Trump space to negotiate with Russia, according to a person in that meeting.
But ultimately, 18 Republicans – and one independent who frequently votes with Republicans – voted to pass the bill in what amounts to a rebuke of Trump’s posture toward Russia’s war in Ukraine, eager to send a message to their leadership after the party with Trump at its helm has drifted in recent years away from backing Ukraine as staunchly as it once had. The party is now fractured over the issue, with many Republicans arguing that the US should not send further aid to the war-torn country.
To even bring the bill to the House floor for a vote required a revolt against House GOP leadership. California Rep. Kevin Kiley, an independent who frequently votes with the GOP, was the final signature on a discharge petition — a procedural tool used to circumvent leadership and force votes on the floor. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, a GOP centrist and co-chair of the Congressional Ukraine Caucus, spent months working with Rep. Greg Meeks, a Democrat from New York, to land the 218 signatures needed to fast-track the bill to the floor without Johnson’s approval.
