Billions of US aid to Ukraine have again been blocked by Republicans who, led by Donald Trump, have torpedoed a migration and international aid deal. An agreement that they themselves negotiated for months is defeated by the opportunism of possible electoral gain.
On Wednesday, a package of measures to improve the chaotic situation at the American southern border – which was linked for politically strategic reasons with military support to Ukraine and Israel – did not receive enough votes in the Senate. Former President Trump, who is certainly not a supporter of the Ukrainian resistance to the Russian invasion, believes it is more important in this election year to let Democratic President Joe Biden struggle with migration than to attempt to solve it.
The political question in the US is which party suffers more from the failure of the agreement between the Democrats and Republicans in the Senate. The Democrats have a major problem with the southern border, where as many as 10,000 people a day have been crossing illegally in recent months. This makes many voters feel unsafe and see immigration as the issue on which they base their voting choice. Republicans reaffirm that Washington can get little or nothing done if the House and Senate do not have the same majority and that they are mainly a nuisance power. What is certain is that Ukraine will not gain anything from it and may not receive any more American help to defend itself this entire year. The last aid package dates from the end of 2022.
Wall and power
It turned out to be too good to be true: in a Congress that has historically achieved little, a Democrat, a Republican and an independent senator agreed last week on how to tackle migration in the country. An issue that has been the subject of disagreement for decades. Their agreement was full of tough measures that Republicans have been promoting for years: migrants must be able to be stopped with barriers, jailed and deported more quickly. The president would even have the authority to temporarily close the border completely. The wall and the power that Trump promised during his presidency actually came closer. Without Democratic wishes being granted, such as prospects of citizenship for millions of illegal immigrants.
The union of border guards who support Trump, employers who say they need immigrants and mayors of cities that host refugees were all in favor. Democrats accepted the restriction of asylum rights because they also see that the border has become too porous and voters do not like how easily and in what numbers people enter. The right one Wall Street Journal spoke out for this “tremendous improvement.”
But while the deal was still being negotiated, Trump announced that it had to be blocked anyway and first got the Republican majority in the House of Representatives and then also enough senators to do so. The agreement was, as Trumpist House Speaker Mike Johnson said, “dead on arrival.” President Biden called on Republicans on Tuesday to “stand their ground” against Trump. Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate who supported both Ukraine and a deal, is under fire within his party for even wanting to negotiate with the Democrats.
Double disorder
The disarray among Republicans is currently so great that they even failed to complete a vote in the House on Tuesday on the procedure for removing a minister. The one who has no chance anyway impeachment of Alejandro Mayorkas, the Secretary of Homeland Security, could not be taken a step further because the narrow Republican group was one vote short.
The Democrats hope that the Republican blockade of plans that the party itself advocates will get through to voters. Biden’s party wants to attribute the impasse on migration and aid to allies to the ‘Do Nothing Congress‘. In 1948, the unpopular President Harry Truman won re-election with that slogan. But it is highly doubtful whether this can also work in 2024. An exciting campaign film cannot be made from a Congress that only managed to pass 27 laws in the entirety of last year. Images of persistent chaos at the border are much better suited to this.