Gaetz tries to push out McCarthy after deal averts shutdown

Following his speech on Sunday, Mr Biden was asked: “Are you going to be able to trust McCarthy when the next deal comes around?”

“We just made one about Ukraine. So we’ll find out,” Mr Biden said.

Many lawmakers acknowledge that winning approval for Ukraine assistance in Congress is growing more difficult as the war grinds on. Republican resistance to the aid has been gaining momentum in the halls of Congress.

Voting in the House this past week pointed to the potential trouble ahead. Nearly half of House Republicans voted to strip $300 million from a defense spending bill to train Ukrainian soldiers and purchase weapons. The money later was approved separately, but opponents of Ukraine support celebrated their growing numbers.

Then, on Saturday, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., omitted additional Ukraine aid from a measure to keep the government running until Nov. 17. In doing so, he closed the door on a Senate package that would have funneled $6 billion to Ukraine, roughly one-third of what has been requested by the White House. Both the House and Senate overwhelmingly approved the stopgap measure, with members of both parties abandoning the increased aid for Ukraine in favor of avoiding a costly government shutdown.

Biden said that deal was made to keep the government running and he worked to reassure U.S. allies additional funding would be there.

“Look at me,” he said turning his face to the cameras at the White House. “We’re going to get it done. I can’t believe those who voted for supporting Ukraine -- overwhelming majority in the House and Senate, Democrat and Republican -- will for pure political reasons let more people die needlessly in Ukraine.”

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez vehemently defended her democratic colleague Jamaal Bowman after it emerged he triggered a fire alarm during a vote on government funding in the House.

Republican Nicole Malliotakis, has drafted a motion to expel Mr Bowman from the chamber, accusing him of trying to delay the vote.

Ms Ocasio-Cortez told CNN’s Jake Tapper that the GOP caucus should “check their own values”, as they file a motion against Bowman while “protecting” Congressman Santos who has been charged with fraud, money laundering and theft of public funds.

Mr Bowman said he was “rushing to vote” and when a door would not open, he “activated the fire alarm, mistakenly thinking it would open the door”.

Mr Biden said in a White House speech on Sunday that he’s “sick and tired of the brinksmanship” after the narrowly averted shutdown of the US government.

“I’ve never seen a Republican Congress or any Congress act like this… Enough is enough is enough. I strongly urge my Republican friends in Congress not to wait. Don’t waste time as you did all summer,” he said.

European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said Sunday from Kyiv that he believed it wouldn’t be the last word on funding from the U.S., but he noted the EU’s continued substantial financial support for Ukraine and a new proposal on the table for additional funding .

“I have a hope that this will not be definitive decision and Ukraine will continue having the support of the U.S.,” he said.

The latest actions in Congress signal a gradual shift in the unwavering support that the United States has so far pledged Ukraine in its fight against Russia, and it is one of the clearest examples yet of the Republican Party’s movement toward a more isolationist stance. The exclusion of Ukraine funding came little more than a week after lawmakers met in the Capitol with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who sought to assure lawmakers that his military was winning the war, but stressed that additional aid would be crucial for continuing the fight.

After that visit, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said that one sentence summed up Zelenskyy’s message in his meeting with the Senate: “‘If we don’t get the aid, we will lose the war,” Schumer said.

Mr Biden said in a speech on Sunday that he “fully” expects Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) “to keep his commitments to secure a passage and support the need to help Ukraine as they defend themselves against aggression in brutality”.

McCarthy, pressured by his right flank, has gone from saying “no blank checks” for Ukraine, with the focus being on accountability, to describing the Senate’s approach as putting “Ukraine in front of America.” He declined to say after the vote on government funding whether he would bring aid for Ukraine up for a House vote in the coming weeks.

“If there is a moment in time we need to have a discussion about that, we will have a discussion completely about that, but I think the administration has to make the case for what is victory,” McCarthy said.

In the Senate, both Schumer and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky pledged to move quickly to try and pass the full White House request. But it was clear that goal will be increasingly difficult as more rank-and-file GOP senators have questioned the aid or demanded that it be attached to immigration policy that would help secure the southern border — echoing similar demands in the House.

Florida Sen. Rick Scott, a Republican who voted for the spending bill after the Ukraine aid was stripped out, said that Congress needs to have “a conversation with the American public.” He said he was optimistic after seeing the money taken out of the bill.

“In my state, people want to be helpful to Ukraine, but they also want to be helpful to Americans,” Scott said. “And so they want to really understand how this money has been spent.”

Alabama Rep. Mike Rogers, the Republican chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said he would like to send a clear message to the world about U.S. support for Ukraine by passing legislation, but believes the Pentagon has “enough draw-down money” to last through December. He said he believes McCarthy still supports funding for Ukraine.

“I think he’s dealing with a caucus that’s got fractures that he has to deal with and none of them can be ignored when you’ve got a four-seat majority and 15 nuts in the conference,” Rogers said, referring to far-right lawmakers who have staunchly opposed funding for Ukraine.

Rep. Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y., the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said he heard McCarthy tell Zelenskyy during his visit that “we will give them what they need.”

“Unfortunately, the message that speaker and the former president is sending is that they can’t be relied upon,” Meeks said, adding a reference to former President Donald Trump, who has called on Congress to withhold additional Ukraine funding until the FBI, IRS and Justice Department “hand over every scrap of evidence” on the Biden family’s business dealings.

The U.S. has approved four rounds of aid to Ukraine in response to Russia’s invasion, totaling about $113 billion, with some of that money going toward replenishment of U.S. military equipment that was sent to the front lines. In August, Biden called on Congress to provide for an additional $24 billion.

Matt Gaetz will offer a motion to vacate the chair in an attempt to oust House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, the right-wing Florida Republican told CNN.

This comes after MAGA Republicans were outraged by Mr McCarthy striking a deal with Democrats on Saturday to avert a government shutdown.

“I do intend to file a motion to vacate against Speaker McCarthy this week. I think we need to rip off the band aid. I think we need to move on with new leadership that can be trustworthy,” Mr Gaetz told CNN.

“Look, the one thing everybody has in common is that nobody trusts Kevin McCarthy,” he added. “He lied to Biden, he lied to House conservatives. He had appropriators marking to a different number altogether. And the reason we were backed up against the shutdown politics is not a bug of the system. It’s a feature.”

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Mr Gaetz, the leader of a dissident faction of Republicans who have opposed any short-term spending measures as well as long-term budgets that do not include spending cuts to their liking, led his holdouts to defeat this past week as Republicans, unable to cut a deal between members of their own party, cut a deal with Democrats to avoid them instead.

Now, the Florida congressman is vowing revenge and plans to force Mr McCarthy out of his seat unless Democrats decide to cut him a political favour and save him.

It was long the most likely outcome to result from the weeks-long battle over spending packages and one that leaves the entire Republican caucus in troubled waters. The lower chamber still needs to pass full budget measures before a new shutdown deadline in November.

The Republican caucus fumed openly at those holdout conservatives on Saturday while Democrats celebrated the collapse of GOP resistance.

“What we have seen is that no spending bills will happen without Democratic support,” Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries told reporters.

“We went from devastating cuts that would have impacted the health safety and economic well-being of the American people and 24 hours [later] to a spending agreement that meets the needs of the American people across the board, entirely consistent with what Democrats have said from the very beginning,” he noted triumphantly.