House Set to Vote on Foreign Aid Package

The U.S. House is set to vote on House Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R) foreign aid package. The package includes aid to Ukraine and Israel, funding to counter China in the Indo-Pacific and aid for Gaza.

The four-part package also includes a measure that would force the sale of the controversial social media platform TikTok.

Many in the House have been trying to get aid for Ukraine and Israel passed for quite some time. Earlier in the year, a bipartisan Senate bill was unveiled, yet lack of House Republican support has caused the bill to languish in the House.

Johnson faces heavy scrutiny from some Republicans ahead of the upcoming House vote. His detractors include Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R) who has often faced criticism for being a troublemaker. Greene has threatened to oust Johnson. However, she has not released a schedule for her bizarre potential actions.

The House Speaker made it clear that if he did not draft the bills, House Democrats still would have pushed for the funding without him. House Democrats have already attempted to use what is known as a discharge petition but did not get the necessary signatures to follow through with it.

Despite not having the support of some hardline House Republicans, the bill does have support from some in the U.S. Senate. New York Senator Chuck Schumer (D) stated that the Senate would move to quickly send the bill to the president once it is received.

Recently, Texas Representative Joaquin Castro (D) co-introduced the Open Translation Center Act. The bipartisan bill would fund a “research center that will be charged with creating publicly-accessible translations of open-source materials (including speeches from government officials, official proclamations, and other documents) from China, Russia, and other nations of strategic interest to the United States.”

The bill would translate documents from the nations of strategic interest; provide explanations of the translated material; make some of the material public; and train analysts to work in the field.