Tensions ran high in Congress yesterday as the House moved ahead with a controversial $61 billion Ukraine funding package, House Republicans escalated their threats to strip House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) of the gavel, and the Senate advanced a controversial spying authority.
The controversial $95 billion bundle of foreign aid legislation nearly matches similar legislation to a similar bill passed by the Senate, and falls only $10 billion short of President Joe Biden’s foreign aid request.
In a late-night vote, the House Rules Committee voted 9–3 to advance the rules for the legislation, clearing the way for an initial procedural vote on the House floor. While Democrats typically vote against advancement, they stepped in to overcome defections by three conservatives, Reps. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Chip Roy (R-Texas) who voted against it.
Final passage of the bills is expected on Saturday in keeping with a rule requiring 72 hours pass between the unveiling of a bill and its final passage.
Escalating tensions over Ukraine funding also led to a renewed threat to force Johnson out of the speaker’s chair.
Yesterday morning, reports surfaced claiming that Johnson was considering a change to the motion to vacate rules to make it harder for rank-and-file members to force a speaker out.
Other reports suggested that some members were pushing Johnson to remove Norman, Massie, and Roy from the Rules panel.
Those reports infuriated Republicans like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who has a standing motion to vacate against Johnson that has yet to be activated.
They led some members of the House Freedom Caucus, including Reps. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) and Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), to threaten to immediately move to vacate the speaker’s chair should Johnson attempt such a rule change, and caused the House Freedom Caucus to set up a task force to watchdog leadership as they move ahead on foreign aid.
Yielding to this pressure from the right, Johnson announced yesterday afternoon that he would not be changing the rules, despite saying that “the House rule allowing a Motion to Vacate from a single member has harmed this office and our House majority.”
Though the day ended without substantial developments, growing GOP restlessness with the speaker suggests he’s currently in the most precarious position he’s been in since taking the gavel in October.
Over on the Senate side, meanwhile, lawmakers overcame a procedural hurdle to limit debate on the reauthorization of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which is set to expire at midnight tonight if not reauthorized.
A House-passed version of the same bill did not include a warrant requirement, the aspect of the issue that’s most divided Congress.
In the upper chamber, members like Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) have been especially critical of the program, and are expected to back amendments to improve civil liberties in the use of FISA.
Still, the reauthorization passed the House in a bipartisan 273–147 and is likely to easily pass the Senate later today.
Biden, meanwhile, has called the reauthorization of Section 702 without a warrant requirement “critical,” and is widely expected to approve the legislation.
—Joseph Lord and Jackson Richman
CCP SUBSIDIZING FENTANYL EXPORTS TO USA
China’s communist regime is subsidizing the manufacture of illegal opioid analogues that are shipped en masse to the Americas, according to a new Congressional investigation.
The report was published by the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and found evidence that the regime is encouraging the export of illegal chemicals used in the production of drugs that have killed hundreds of thousands of Americans.
Select Committee Chair Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) said during an April 16 hearing that the CCP was encouraging the illegal flow of deadly drugs for the purpose of weakening and undermining the United States as a whole.
“Through its actions, as our report has revealed, the Chinese Communist Party is telling us that it wants more fentanyl entering our country,” Mr. Gallagher said.
“It wants the chaos and devastation that has resulted from this epidemic. And yes, that means more dead Americans.”
Synthetic opioids like fentanyl have killed hundreds of thousands of Americans in recent years, including 76,000 last year alone.
The bulk of the drugs responsible for those deaths are manufactured in Mexico with chemicals made in China.
Most of the chemicals in question are illegal in both the United States and China, but the report found that the CCP is offering tax subsidies and grants to companies engaged in the creation and export of such drugs to the Americas.
Among the drugs subsidized by the CCP is 3-Methylfentanyl, which was reportedly used as a chemical weapon in a 2002 terrorist attack in Moscow.
Several of the Chinese companies receiving state subsidies openly advertise that they sell illegal drugs to the Americas and receive grant funding from the regime.
Likewise, the report also found that the CCP has ownership stakes in some of those same companies.
Former Attorney General William Barr testified to the committee that communist China “produces nearly all” the precursors used to make fentanyl and other synthetic opioids that have ravaged the United States.
“They are knee-deep and actively sponsoring, encouraging, and facilitating the production and export of fentanyl and fentanyl precursors for distribution in the United States,” Mr. Barr said.
“Without China’s production and export of fentanyl and fentanyl precursors, there would be no fentanyl crisis in the United States and the mass slaughter would effectively stop.”
—Andrew Thornebrooke
DEMOCRATS THINK ABORTION AMENDMENTS WILL WIN VOTERS IN 2024
Democrats are leveraging abortion as a central issue in the 2024 election, and they are waging that campaign through ballot initiatives in key battleground states.
The theory is simple, according to political analyst Keith Nahigian. “Ballot questions help to get more independent expenditures for ‘get out the vote’ campaigns,” he told The Epoch Times.
In Arizona, a campaign is underway for a ballot measure amending the state constitution to provide the “fundamental right” to abortion up to the point a baby could survive outside the womb, typically around 24 weeks.
In Nevada, a petition drive is in the works to include an amendment on abortion access. In Colorado and Maryland, voters will decide on abortion-related amendments in November.
The move to amend state constitutions to guarantee abortion access is a calculated strategy by the Democratic Party to rally voters to the November election.
“When abortion is on the ballot, voters turn out to defend their rights,” the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee wrote in an April 5 memo.
“Seven battleground states are on track to have abortion measures on the ballot in 2024 … this further guarantees that reproductive freedom will remain a driving issue for voters this November.”
They’re not wrong. Ohio voters turned out in record numbers for an off-year election in 2023 when an abortion amendment was on the ballot. It passed with a 14 percent margin.
Republicans, now tuned in to the issue, are treading lightly.
President Trump said on April 10 that the Arizona Supreme Court decision “needs to be straightened out.”
“And I’m sure that the governor and everybody else will bring it back into reason and that will be taken care of,” he said.
Arizona Republican Kari Lake, a candidate for the U.S. Senate, said the court’s decision was “out of line with where the people of the state are.”
Republicans are using the same tactic with election integrity—placing related measures on the ballot in nine states, including in Arizona, Florida, and Wisconsin.
The real value of these initiatives is in keeping a hot-button issue forefront in voters’ minds according to Nicholas Higgins, a political science professor at Northern Greenville University.
“You can’t make people think anything, but you can make them think about things,” Higgins told The Epoch Times. Keeping an issue like abortion or election integrity constantly in the news can have a small positive effect on voter turnout, he said.
The abortion measures may not impact voters as much as Democrats think they will according to Jim Lee, president and CEO of Susquehanna Polling and Research.
“They‘ll vote Trump, and then they’ll vote to codify abortion in the state constitution,” he told The Epoch Times.
Besides, unlike an off-year election, people are already fired up about going to the polls according to GOP campaign consultant Barrett Marson.
“We are overwhelmed with issues that impact us and will for the next four years and beyond,” Marson told The Epoch Times. “This is going to impact races up and down the ballot.”
—Lawrence Wilson and Jacob Burg
BOOKMARKS
In a “totally uncommon” situation, two of the jurors serving in Trump’s New York hush money trial are lawyers. According to an article by Politico, that’s likely good news for the former president, who could receive an acquittal on technical grounds.
Echoing the rhetoric of his leading rival for the presidency in 2024, President Joe Biden accused Beijing of “cheating” America on trade. The Epoch Times’ Eva Fu reported on the president’s remarks, delivered to the United Steelworkers headquarters on April 17, which represent his harshest comments on China to date.
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, whose impeachment articles were dismissed in the Senate yesterday, told lawmakers that he hasn’t read the articles of impeachment filed against him. The Epoch Times’ Samantha Flom reported on the remarks, which led to a heated exchange with Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah).
Another Republican lawmaker announced that he’ll be leaving Congress in January 2025, The Epoch Times’ Jacob Burg reported. Unlike Reps. Ken Buck (R-Colo.) and Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.), who have stepped down or will do so before the fall, Rep. Jake LaTurner (R-Kan.) will finish his term in the House.
Presidential contender Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was unfazed after 15 members of his family endorsed Biden, The Epoch Times’ Jeff Louderback reported. He shrugged it off, saying that political involvement “is a family tradition.”
A nominally Republican initiative dubbed “Republican Voters Against Trump” is primarily funded by liberal mega donors, The Epoch Times’ Austin Alonzo reported. The Republican Accountability PAC is pouring $50 million into the initiative, which will broadcast advertisements in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin ahead of the 2024 general election.