(CNN) — More than a dozen GOP lawmakers defied their own leadership — and President Donald Trump — by voting with Democrats to approve a major bill to deliver billions of dollars in aid to Ukraine while imposing steep sanctions on Russia.
The House voted 226 to 195 to approve the package, which cracks down on Russia with new oil and gas sanctions, in its first big pro-Ukraine measure of Trump’s second term.
Speaker Mike Johnson has urged his members to oppose the measure, arguing in a closed-door meeting Wednesday that they should give Trump space to negotiate with Russia, according to a person in that meeting.
But ultimately, 18 Republicans – and one independent who frequently votes with Republicans – voted to pass the bill in what amounts to a rebuke of Trump’s posture toward Russia’s war in Ukraine, eager to send a message to their leadership after the party with Trump at its helm has drifted in recent years away from backing Ukraine as staunchly as it once had. The party is now fractured over the issue, with many Republicans arguing that the US should not send further aid to the war-torn country.
To even bring the bill to the House floor for a vote required a revolt against House GOP leadership. California Rep. Kevin Kiley, an independent who frequently votes with the GOP, was the final signature on a discharge petition — a procedural tool used to circumvent leadership and force votes on the floor. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, a GOP centrist and co-chair of the Congressional Ukraine Caucus, spent months working with Rep. Greg Meeks, a Democrat from New York, to land the 218 signatures needed to fast-track the bill to the floor without Johnson’s approval.
The measure includes strict sanctions on Russian leaders and institutions, including top banks, oil and mining companies. It also includes 500% tariffs on all Russian goods imported to the US and a ban on Russian crude oil from being imported into the US.
There’s also new military support for Ukraine, including authorizing $8 billion for arms sales, and an extension of a Biden-era military lend-lease program.
With Trump’s foreign policy focus squarely on Iran in recent months, the brutal conflict between Ukraine and Russia has only intensified — with little US. involvement. Trump has made no tangible progress in his vow to quickly end the war when he took office in January 2025. And in one recent instance, Trump aggravated even some members of his own party by loosening restrictions on Russian oil to lessen the global price impact of the Iran war. Meanwhile, many House Republicans are eager for their party to address prices at home, rather than weigh in on another global conflict.
Multiple GOP and Democratic sources predicted that the Ukraine bill would pass in the House, but added its fate is uncertain in the Senate. (Several Republicans there have been vocal Ukraine supporters in the past, but it’s not clear if there are enough senators to reach the critical 60-vote threshold.) If bill were to be taken up in the Senate and pass the chamber, it would be Congress’s first big move on the Ukraine-Russia war since a contentious supplemental funding bill from spring 2024, when then-President Joe Biden was still in office.
Top lawmakers have agreed to send some US aid to Ukraine in various defense packages in recent years, but not without resistance from the White House.
The-CNN-Wire
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