🚨NEWS — Senate Minority @LeaderMcConnell cast fresh doubt on linking Ukraine aid to a border security bill, acknowledging that the politics have been complicated by former President Donald Trump’s campaign.

by gym_fun

13 comments

  1. >🚨NEWS — Senate Minority LeaderMcConnell cast fresh doubt on linking Ukraine aid to a border security bill, acknowledging that the politics have been complicated by former President Donald Trump’s campaign.
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    >McConnell has been the most staunch advocate for aid to Ukraine and has pushed the Senate to give quick approval to a not-yet-released border bill being negotiated by Sens. James Lankford (R-Okla.), Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) and Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.).

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    From democrat:

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    >Wow. McConnell seems to be saying that because Trump “wants to run on immigration,” Congress can’t try to solve immigration now.
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    >**Meanwhile, we must let Russia win a war and watch Ukrainians die, because “the politics have changed.”**

    https://x.com/malinowski/status/1750298013392568601?s=46&t=6_n_h_oUL41eq3AkCYnNiQ

  2. Politics aren’t complicated, Biden just doesn’t want to budge on immigration which is one of the top concerns for voters in the upcoming election. It’s weird how that works. So yes, Biden prioritizes doing nothing at the border over funding Ukraine 😂

  3. See? It was never about immigration all along. And the right wing supporters of Ukraine who have been wasting the last months trying to claim it was in good faith can all jump in a lake.

  8. I don’t understand how the military industrial complex hasn’t bribed politicians to increase military spending on Ukraine (weapons manufacturing etc) that benefits their districts. Like why is spending money on American built weapons that controversial, besides Trump’s campaign. I guess I answered my own question.

  9. It’s worse than this.  The Gaetz wing tied it to this by threat of coup BECAUSE they know it wasn’t solvable.  It’s like the opposite of tying  pork to a must pass bill.  They tied Ukraine to a can’t pass bill.

  12. As an American who keeps pestering my elected officials every single month about how important it is to support Ukraine, this is freaking infuriating. No way in hell that I’ll be voting for anyone who doesn’t fully support Ukraine and (ideally) proven so with their voting record. 🇺🇸❤️🇺🇦

  13. Yes, but the Senate has never been the holdup. Josh Hawley can only whine so much, the rest of the Senate is more or less in recognizance of reality (at least when it comes to foreign policy). Ted Cruz likes to make a lot of noise, but to tweak a Texas idiom – he’s more hat than cowboy (at least on this regard).

    The House is the problem. Dems may regain a majority after the next election in November. The slim majority they held in 2020-22 was what, about five seats? That group was elected in the maps from the 2010 census, the 2022 cycle was the first to reflect the redistricting that followed the 2020 census *and* it is pretty common for the president’s party to lose several seats in midterms; the polls/predictions in the 2022 cycle was a swing of up to 40 seats, but fewer than 10 actually flipped and gave Republicans their current slim edge of nine (now six) seats. Three are currently vacant due to two vacated seats and one who was kicked out, all three vacancies were R seats.

    Of this count, seven currently held by Republicans were won by less than 1% margin, and a further five by a ~3% margin – these eight will be decided by volume of turnout in November (turnout in midterms is often lower than for cycles with a president on the ballot, though 2022 was reduced by less than normal). A similar number of close races are currently held by Democrats, but in the current political environment any held/taken by them in midterms are likely to only maintain or expand their margin in 2024 so I’m not going into those here. [This NPR link](https://apps.npr.org/election-results-live-2022/#/house) doesn’t have a ton of context, but at least you can see the numbers/charts.

    And in addition to *that* there are at least 16 states facing lawsuits that their 2020-based districts are drawn to favor one or the other party – most of the cases in courts right now are for district lines favoring Republicans though this is not necessarily true in every instance. You can get a bit of context for those cases [here](https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/redistricting-litigation-roundup-0). Which of these will be resolved (if any) by this fall is hard to say, but some talking head analysts think anywhere from 0 to 9 seats could be affected in terms of party representation.

    If you are not familiar with how districts can be drawn to favor one party or the other, [this simple diagram should illustrate it nicely](https://static.scientificamerican.com/sciam/assets/Image/2022/Bischoff%20First%20Colored%20Block%20Slide.jpg).

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    The real question is – can these dozen or so districts drive enough turnout against the incumbent to un-seat the current R representative and revoke their overall majority in the House? And if so, which ones? And how do we continue to support Ukraine in other ways until they are seated in January of next year? Even if our own (US) government gets fuckall done “at home” this year it’s not the worst situation as most programs and laws from previous Congressional sessions will continue to be active due to not being replaced – but for situations like in Ukraine there is absolutely a time-sensitive element that can’t just be swept off to next year.

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