Table Of Content
- A Chinese Firm Is America’s Favorite Drone Maker. Except in Washington.
- Senators weigh in on TikTok as House bill heads their way
- Speaker Johnson News Conference at Columbia University
- What you missed on Day 8 of Trump's trial: New witnesses and contact info for Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal
- Architect of the Capitol

House Republican leadership has put forward billions of dollars in foreign aid bills for Ukraine, Israel and allies in the Indo-Pacific. New York Democratic Rep. Gregory Meeks, ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, joins "America Decides" to discuss how his party is planning to respond. House Speaker Mike Johnson is bundling the bill that could lead to a ban on TikTok into his four-part foreign aid plan. The legislation would require TikTok's Chinese owner, ByteDance, to sell the popular social media network or face a ban in the U.S.
A Chinese Firm Is America’s Favorite Drone Maker. Except in Washington.
Al Jazeera’s Patty Culhane said the Democrats who voted against the bill on Israel were very vocal in their criticism of the Israeli prime minister. The ministry also said it “will coordinate the relevant budget uses with the United States through existing exchange mechanisms, and work hard to strengthen combat readiness capabilities to ensure national security and peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait”. Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense thanked the US House for its “rock solid” support for Taiwan after the bill passed. However, reacting after the House approval, Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said the new US aid package would “deepen the crisis throughout the world”. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy expressed his gratitude on Saturday, saying US lawmakers moved to keep “history on the right track”. Republican Party holdouts repeatedly put forward the name of Rep. Byron Donalds of Florida, ensuring continuation of the stalemate that increasingly carried undercurrents of race and politics.
Senators weigh in on TikTok as House bill heads their way
Efforts to ban TikTok go back to the Trump administration, but the issue has been revived in recent months. The House already passed a similar bill in March — a bill that the Senate showed little interest in taking up. This new version expands the window for ByteDance to sell TikTok to nine months (compared to six months in the previous bill) and gives the president the ability to grant a single, additional 90-day extension. Also referred to as a congressman or congresswoman, each representative is elected to a two-year term serving the people of a specific congressional district. The number of voting representatives in the House is fixed by law at no more than 435, proportionally representing the population of the 50 states. Currently, there are five delegates representing the District of Columbia, the Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa, and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands.
Speaker Johnson News Conference at Columbia University
The US has so far sent Ukraine roughly $111bn in weapons, equipment, humanitarian assistance and other aid since the start of the war more than two years ago. Democrats have said they may support Johnson in any effort by the Republican far-right to oust him over Ukraine aid. Another bill included a provision to force the Chinese company ByteDance to sell its popular social media app TikTok, which Congress is worried gives China the ability to gain information about American citizens. That bill – the 21st Century Peace through Strength Act – also included the seizure of frozen Russian sovereign assets, and more sanctions on Iran. The Israel bill includes about $4.4bn to replenish depleted US supplies given to Israel; $4bn for missile defense, including the much-vaunted Iron Dome, and $1.2bn for the Iron Beam; and $3.5bn to help Israel buy weapons. There are also provisions to make it easier to supply Israel with US munitions held in other countries.
Kyle Austin runs in crowded Eastern Montana House primary - Billings Gazette
Kyle Austin runs in crowded Eastern Montana House primary.
Posted: Thu, 25 Apr 2024 04:12:00 GMT [source]
Former President Donald Trump weighed in Wednesday for the first time on the debt ceiling deal reached by President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy took a victory lap immediately after the House passed the debt limit deal with a big bipartisan showing. Minutes before the vote on assistance for Kyiv, Democrats began to wave small Ukrainian flags on the House floor, as hard-right Republicans jeered.
After Roe v. Wade was overturned in June 2022, then-Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich, a Republican, persuaded a state judge that the 1864 ban could be enforced. Still, the law hasn’t actually been enforced while the case was making its way through the courts. Brnovich’s Democratic successor, Attorney General Kris Mayes, urged the state’s high court against reviving the law. Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision guaranteed the constitutional right to an abortion nationwide.

What you missed on Day 8 of Trump's trial: New witnesses and contact info for Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal
Rep. Steve Womack of Arkansas and House Appropriations Chair Kay Granger, two other Republican Jordan holdouts, said they agree. He’s a passive skeptic of the 2020 presidential election results, but was an active election denier who appeared at a “Stop the Steal” rally in Pennsylvania and also appears to have played a role in former President Donald Trump’s post-election strategy to overturn the results. Rep. Jim Jordan failed to win the House speakership on his first bid Tuesday, leaving the House in paralysis after 20 Republicans opposed the Ohio Republican. McCarthy touted the bill’s provisions on work requirements, clawing back COVID funding and rescinding funding for the IRS.
Architect of the Capitol
What started as a political novelty, the first time since 1923 a nominee had not won the gavel on the first vote, has devolved into a bitter Republican Party feud and deepening potential crisis. With McCarthy’s supporters and foes locked in stalemate, the House cannot fully open for the new session, essentially at a standstill, unable to swear in elected members and conduct official business. And feelings of boredom, desperation and annoyance seemed increasingly evident on Thursday.

The Senate is expected to vote Tuesday on the foreign aid bills passed by the House over the weekend, but the move could cost Speaker Mike Johnson his job. The man needed to see the necessary national-security budget bill through, Mike Johnson, the Republican speaker of the House, seemed unfit for the task. Thrust into the role from relative obscurity six months ago after his loud, isolationist colleagues defenestrated their previous leader, Kevin McCarthy, Mr Johnson lacked leadership experience.
Through defeat after defeat, McCarthy remained determined to persuade Republicans to end the paralyzing debate that has blighted his new GOP majority. “This sacred House of Representatives needs a leader,” said Democrat Joe Neguse of Colorado, nominating his own party’s leader, Hakeem Jeffries, as speaker. As night fell before the second anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol by Trump supporters trying to overturn Joe Biden’s election, Democrats said it was time to get serious. The divisive speaker’s fight only underscored the fragility of American democracy exposed by that assault. Even if McCarthy is able to secure the votes he needs, he will emerge as a weakened speaker, having given away some powers and constantly under a threat of being voted out by his detractors.
But Scalise’s allies feel like they did far more to rally around Jordan than Jordan did when Scalise initially won the nomination last week. House Majority Whip Tom Emmer and Conference Chair Elise Stefanik have been working behind the scenes to help Jordan flip votes this afternoon, multiple sources familiar tells CNN. But Majority Leader Steve Scalise has decided not to get actively involved – illustrating how the current top Republican leaders are taking different approaches to the speakership drama, with emotions still raw inside the conference. Speaker Kevin McCarthy defended the debt limit deal from conservative criticism during a speech on the floor while the House debated.
The House approved a bill Friday to extend Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act for a shortened period of two years, reauthorizing a crucial national security surveillance program. Its stock of air-defence interceptor missiles, fired from a mix of American, European and Soviet-era launchers, has dwindled. Russian attack jets have recently been providing close air support to troops with seemingly little risk of being shot down. America’s Patriot missile-defence systems are in high demand elsewhere, including Israel, and production is low. On April 11th it successfully launched an attack on a thermal power station in Kyiv using a Kh-69 stealth cruise missile that eluded a Patriot interceptor. Even with enough kit, Ukraine confronts a serious manpower disadvantage compared with Russia.
The vast majority of that will be spent on lethal aid by replenishing American military stockpiles, allowing more to be given away, and procuring new weapons and ammunition from American arms firms. An American three-star general has already been assigned the job of organising arms deliveries, subject to the vote. The Pentagon should be able to start getting shells to Ukraine within two weeks, reckons Michael Kofman of the Carnegie Endowment, a think-tank, and can supply enough to last for a year or so.
Rep. Nancy Mace said that she still trusts House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, despite her frustrations with and opposition to the debt limit deal that passed the House on Wednesday night. President Joe Biden called House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and other congressional leaders Wednesday night after the debt ceiling bill cleared the House, a White House official said. Members were voting on a package worth close to $95bn in total, but which had been broken up into four separate bills, as Johnson effectively de-coupled the vote on Ukraine from funding for Israel, which is more widely supported among both Democrats and Republicans. There’s no love lost between McCarthy and the eight Republicans who voted to oust him. Particularly on a day when they’re expected to allow the new speaker to pass his own clean CR without similar repercussions for his job.