How House members are trying to circumvent Johnson

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In today’s edition … Biden, Democrats ramp up Ukraine pressure on Johnson … Russia looms over yet another Trump presidential campaign … but first …

🚨Ronna McDaniel will step down from leading the Republican National Committee on March 8, our colleagues Josh Dawsey, Ashley Parker and Marianne LeVine report. McDaniel, who served as chair since 2017, leaves as the party faces a cash crunch and people close to former president Donald Trump try to seize control.

On the Hill

How House members are trying to circumvent Johnson

How House members are trying to circumvent Johnson

Mike Johnson is facing yet another critical week in his short time as House speaker, as yet another funding cliff looms and lawmakers prepare an end-run on Ukraine aid. Let’s get right to it.

Government shutdown threat

The House isn’t back until Wednesday, and government funding is set to run out Friday at midnight. Negotiators had hoped to finalize and release the bills last night. But talks have slowed.

Democrats say the holdup is House Republicans’ insistence that policy changes, known as riders, are added to the funding bills.

• “We will once again face the specter of a harmful and unnecessary government shutdown caused by an extreme wing within the Republican Party,” Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) wrote in a letter to his colleagues last night.

Johnson fired back in a statement, saying Schumer’s rhetoric is “counterproductive” and that it’s not the time for “petty politics.”

The speaker is under pressure from the House Freedom Caucus to obtain “significant policy changes” in the funding bills, some of which it laid out in a letter last week.

Johnson also faces discontent from many others in his conference who want him to make a decision, keep the government open and stop placating the far-right minority.

The four appropriations bills set to expire Friday — agriculture; military construction-VA; energy and water and transportation; housing and urban development — are the easier ones. On March 8, funding runs out for more controversial bills for which the far right is demanding even more explosive policy riders around abortion, LGBTQ rights and border security.

Johnson is prepared to offer yet another short-term government funding bill if they run out of time this week. But this would be the fourth time Congress would have to punt government spending for fiscal year 2024. This deep in the fiscal year, lawmakers should be focusing on next year’s funding.

A bipartisan discharge petition

And then there’s Ukraine funding. A bipartisan group of lawmakers is trying to maneuver around Johnson to pass it.

While Johnson is focused on government funding this week, rank-and-file House members are taking steps to bypass the speaker’s refusal to act amid threats to his speakership from some anti-Ukraine members of his party, including Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Warren Davidson (R-Ohio).

Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) and Jared Golden (D-Maine) filed a bipartisan bill to fund Ukraine and Israel, and to provide some border security provisions through a discharge petition — a mechanism to bypass the majority.

• Fitzpatrick said he filed the bill on Friday, after speaking with the House parliamentarian, as a way to expedite it.
• “We are forcing this bill to the floor to make sure everybody acts,” Fitzpatrick said on “Face the Nation.” “It’s time sensitive. It’s existential.”

A discharge petition led by a member of the speaker’s own party is a significant development and another sign Johnson has little control over his conference.

Another Democratic discharge petition

House Democrats have also taken their own steps to act on Ukraine if Johnson doesn’t. Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) introduced a new motion to discharge measure on Feb. 15 to force a vote on a Ukraine aid bill.

• “We need to put all the options on the table and make sure that we know all the tools in the toolbox that we have,” McGovern told us Sunday.

This is the second discharge petition Democrats have available to them. The first one was introduced last year as a way to avoid default if Republicans refused to lift the debt limit. This new discharge petition, also a shell bill, was written in a way to accommodate an appropriations bill, such as Ukraine funding. McGovern said a second discharge measure was introduced “out of an abundance of caution” in case the first was challenged.

Any discharge petition, if successful, would force a vote on the floor. But it would need 218 signatures — at least five Republicans — for it to move. The original discharge petition has 213 Democratic signatures. McGovern can start collecting signatures for the new one on March 1.

There are immense challenges for a successful discharge petition, but if frustration boils over, it might work.

Biden, Democrats ramp up Ukraine pressure on Johnson

President Biden delivers remarks in the State Dining Room at the White House on Tuesday.

President Biden will host the four congressional leaders at the White House tomorrow to “discuss the urgency of passing the bipartisan national security supplemental,” according to a description of the president’s schedule.

Johnson will be the only leader in the room who has not offered a full-throated commitment to Ukraine and who is blocking a $60 billion aid package (see above).

Schumer and four other Democratic senators traveled to Lviv, Ukraine, on Friday to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

• “Speaker Johnson cannot let politics or blind obeisance to Donald Trump get in the way. And I look forward to conveying President Zelenskyy’s message directly to Speaker Johnson and any member of Congress who has doubts about the need for aid or the threat of Putin,” Schumer said in a letter to his colleagues Sunday.

Sen. Maggie Hassan (N.H.) was among the Democrats to travel to Ukraine. Hassan, who is not usually a flamethrower, said Ukraine’s future capabilities to fight Russia hinges on Johnson.

“We really hope that Speaker Johnson will take the time to learn about how important this battle is for the freedom of the world, but also for America’s national security. And we will urge him to go to Ukraine if that’s what it takes,” she told us in an interview on Sunday.

Hassan said the trip was eye-opening and reinforced how Ukraine is crippled without U.S. support.

“They can win this war with our help, but without it, they will lose this war,” Hassan said.

She added that “it’s pretty clear” Ukraine might not have had to cede territory, including the city of Avdiivka, if it had the weapons and ammunition it needed.

What we’re watching

On the Hill

Impeachment: We are watching when the House sends two articles of impeachment for Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to the Senate. We don’t expect it to happen until after the government is funded, but you never know!

Thune is no fan of Trump and has said so repeatedly. But the No. 2 Senate Republican is a potential replacement for Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). If he’s a leader during a Trump presidency, being on Trump’s bad side will make his job much more difficult. Plus, he’ll need to placate the growing and vocal Trump faction in the Senate Republican conference.

We’ll be watching whether McConnell endorses Trump or other senators who have held off.

At the White House

Biden is heading to New York today for a campaign meeting.

He’s also deploying Cabinet members and other administration officials to a half-dozen states to talk about the investments made possible by the bills he has signed into law. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona and Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm are among the officials hitting the road today and tomorrow.

On Friday, Biden will meet with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. We’re watching whether the House will make any progress on passing more aid for Ukraine — a top topic whenever Biden meets with European leaders — before the two leaders sit down together.

Finally, Biden is expected to issue an order as soon as this week that would prevent the bulk flow of Americans’ sensitive data — including genetic information — to buyers in “countries of concern,” particularly China, Russia and Iran, per our colleagues Ellen Nakashima and Drew Harwell.

From the courts

Today, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments for Moody v. NetChoice, LLC and NetChoice, LLC v. Paxton, two landmark cases that will shape how content is moderated on social media platforms, thereby transforming the landscape of the internet as we know it.

At issue in both cases is whether laws in Florida and Texas that restrict social media companies from removing certain political posts or accounts run afoul of the First Amendment.

• “The court’s review of those laws will be the highest-profile examination to date of allegations that Silicon Valley companies are illegally censoring conservative viewpoints,” our colleagues Ann E. Marimow and Cat Zakrzewski write. “Those accusations reached a fever pitch when Facebook, Twitter and other companies suspended then-President Donald Trump’s accounts in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.”

At the White House

Biden supercharged these Michigan unions. Will workers return the favor?

Students work on different projects this month at the United Association of Union Plumbers and Pipefitters Local 333 training center in Lansing, Mich. (Emily Elconin)

Our colleague Jeff Stein takes a look at a group of voters key to Biden’s reelection efforts: union workers. Here’s an excerpt:

“Eight years ago, Trump’s appeals to blue-collar workers won over enough union voters to help him flip the pivotal states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania on the way to the White House,” Jeff writes. “In the aftermath of the stunning collapse of their ‘blue wall’ in 2016, Democratic leaders vowed to never again allow a GOP candidate to splinter their union base, committing to rectify the perceived failure of Hillary Clinton’s campaign to appeal to bread-and-butter economic policies.”

“Biden won those states in 2020, and as president, he has done almost everything within his power to keep these voters,” Jeff writes.

• “And yet it’s unclear to what extent these material benefits will pay political dividends this November, even among the people the president is wooing. Union workers in Michigan backed Biden by a 25-point margin in 2020, according to the National Election Pool exit poll, although some polls found a smaller margin. But a Fox News poll this month found Biden’s lead among union voters in Michigan was just 12 points. (Both candidates are expected to win Tuesday’s primaries in the state.)”
• “A substantially narrower margin of victory among union voters on Election Day than Biden had four years ago could result in Trump retaking the White House, campaign strategists say.”

The campaign

Russia looms over yet another Trump presidential campaign

President Donald Trump, left, and Russian President Vladimir Putin pose for photographers ahead a meeting in Helsinki, on July 16, 2018.

Our colleague Ashley Parker examines Trump’s affinity for Moscow and refusal to condemn Russian President Vladimir Putin. Here’s an excerpt:

“Since announcing his first presidential campaign in 2015, Russia has followed Trump like an unshakable thunder cloud,” Ashley writes. “The former president has repeatedly expressed a fascination with Russia, lavished praise on Putin and refused to stand up to the Russian president on a range of issues — from interfering in the 2016 presidential election to invading Ukraine almost exactly two years ago.”

• “Trump’s reticence to forcefully confront Russia and his regular adulation of Putin has long raised the question: With Trump, why do ‘all roads lead to Putin?’ as then-speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) memorably asked in 2019 during a contentious Cabinet Room meeting.”
• “His latest round of pro-Russian cheerleading raises the same query — but now against a dramatically changed backdrop. The Russia-Ukraine war is entering its third year, with no signs of abating. Putin critics are calling the death of [47-year-old Alexei Navalny] — who had survived a previous Russian attempt to poison him — a murder. And under Trump’s leadership, the Republican Party has drifted in a remarkably isolationist direction on foreign policy, with House Republicans currently holding up much-needed aid to Ukraine.”
• Russia experts and some Trump confidants told Ashley that the answer is far more simple than some of the existing theories: The former president likes dictators and strongmen like Putin.

The Media

Must reads

From The Post:

From across the web:

• Russia’s 2024 election interference has already begun. By NBC News’s Dan De Luce and Kevin Collier.
• Andy Kim hands a third straight loss to NJ first lady Tammy Murphy in Senate primary. By Politico’s Daniel Han and Katherine Dailey.
• ICYMI: Gretchen Whitmer’s biggest electoral test: Can she deliver Michigan for Biden? By the New York Times’s Mitch Smith.

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