Morning Report — The Hill interviews McConnell: ‘Let the House vote on Ukraine’ 

Gridlock in the Capitol. A world on fire. So little time. 

Congress is facing looming government funding deadlines, but lawmakers in the House will be out of Washington as February ends, leaving behind a laundry list of tasks. For Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), chief among them is ensuring Congress provides aid to Ukraine, he told The Hill’s Alexander Bolton in an exclusive interview. Showing resolve to deter foreign aggression by providing aid to Ukraine and standing up to Russia is the “single biggest issue we’ve had in a long, long time,” he said. 

The veteran GOP leader warned that the Senate’s $95 billion emergency defense package, which includes $60 billion for Ukraine, faces an uncertain future in the House after Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) issued a scathing statement hours before its passage. Given former President Trump’s opposition to the package and Trump’s lobbying of GOP senators to oppose it, McConnell cast getting 22 Republican votes for the bill as an impressive outcome. But he signaled he doesn’t think Johnson’s insistence on taking another shot at adding border security and immigration reforms to the package is a viable idea. 

“There’s a reason why we haven’t passed a major immigration bill in all these years,” he told The Hill. “The only advice I would give the Speaker publicly: Let the House vote on Ukraine. Just let them vote. Nobody can really figure out who’s where, and I hope he can find a way to do that.” 

Johnson’s refusal to schedule a vote on Ukraine aid is fueling new efforts by lawmakers in both parties to locate a viable Plan B amid dwindling weapon supplies. Rep. Gregory Meeks (N.Y.), senior Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said the most promising tactic on the short list of options is a discharge petition, an obscure procedural mechanism empowering 218 lawmakers to pass bills the Speaker will not consider. Discharge petitions are rarely successful, but Meeks said he’s already talking to Republicans about signing on, and predicted that it was the most viable path to winning Ukraine aid given Johnson’s entrenched opposition (The Hill). 

MCCONNELL’S ADVICE TO JOHNSON COMES as House Republicans are planning to unveil a Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan and border bill as an alternative to the Senate’s package as early as today. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) told reporters Wednesday that he will brief Johnson about the measure’s contents before its release but did not offer details of its contents — or the colleagues he was working alongside (Politico). 

“Stay tuned in the next 24 hours, I think you’ll see something that I think will be bipartisan,” he said. 

In addition to his opposition to Ukraine aid, and the possibility of a new border deal, Johnson must defend his chamber’s impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and recalculate his slim Republican majority following the loss of a congressional seat in New York. 

When senators return to work on Feb. 26, they will have to contend with the Mayorkas impeachment articles out of the House. As The Hill’s Al Weaver and Rebecca Beitsch report, faced with a potential third impeachment trial in five years, the Senate is likely to avoid the matter entirely. Senators expect Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) to move to either dismiss the two articles against Mayorkas or to refer them to the committee level, effectively tabling the process (The New York Times). 

But to tackle any of those issues, lawmakers must fund the government ahead of their March 1 and March 8 deadlines, when different stopgap spending bills are slated to run out. Members on both sides are confident they will finish the annual funding work ahead of the deadlines to stave off a funding lapse, but they also acknowledge the schedule is tight and sticking points are already beginning to emerge (The Hill and Forbes). 

AMID REPUBLICANS’ INTERNAL FRACTURES about national security and international aid, the House Intelligence Committee chair set off alarms Wednesday with a social media revelation about a classified national security threat assessment, reportedly involving Russia. Johnson clarified Wednesday that “there is no need for public alarm” after Chair Mike Turner (R-Ohio) called on President Biden to declassify information about a “serious national security threat.” 

The U.S. has advised lawmakers and allies in Europe about Russia’s advances toward a new, space-based nuclear weapon intended to threaten America’s extensive satellite network. The United States lacks an ability to counter such a weapon and defend its satellites (The New York Times and ABC News). The capability Moscow seeks is in development and has not been deployed (The Hill). 

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Immigration: For every inaction, there’s a reaction. The administration is weighing potential executive steps if Congress won’t legislate new border and asylum policies, reports The Wall Street Journal. And because new money for border security was blocked in the Senate, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials began pondering the money-saving (and attention-getting) option of releasing thousands of detainees and cutting detention levels from 38,000 beds to 22,000, The Washington Post reported. Biden on Wednesday used an obscure immigration authority to shield an estimated 6,000 Palestinians in the United States from deportation for the next 18 months, according to The New York Times. 

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 LEADING THE DAY 

POLITICS 

MEMORIES: Biden introduced the subject of the date of his son Beau’s cancer death during five hours of interviews over two days in October with Justice Department Special Counsel Robert Hur. It was not the other way around, reports NBC News. “How in the hell dare he raise that?” Biden, 81, fumed in remarks to reporters last week. Hur released a report clearing the president after he retained classified materials dating to his time as vice president, and disclosed sensitive information to a ghostwriter while working on a memoir. The report aggravated public worries that the president’s memory, described as hazy, is a sign he’s not up to the job. The recorded and transcribed context of the special counsel’s questions and Biden’s responses last fall may become public as congressional committees prepare hearings drawing from findings in the bruising report.  

NEW YORK, PLUS ONE: Democrats say they’re elated that Empire State voters Tuesday elected former Rep. Tom Suozzi, a Democrat, to fill the seat vacated by disgraced Republican former Rep. George Santos, narrowing the GOP’s majority, adding an experienced lawmaker to the delegation and unearthing clues about how Democrats might hone their messaging before November. 

GOVERNOR STARS IN TEXAS: The U.S. southern border is long, the migrant crisis is real and Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s skill at keeping immigration issues at the top of the national agenda while putting the Biden administration on defense is evident. The Hill’s Julia Manchester looks at Abbott’s future inside the GOP. 

“He’s the guy on the border,” said Brendan Steinhauser, a Texas-based Republican strategist. “He’s been very smart about it politically, very smart about it, I think, from a policy standpoint, trying to get more power for the state.” 

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ZOOM IN 

INTERNATIONAL 

ISRAEL WILL PRESS AHEAD with an offensive against Hamas in Rafah, the last refuge for displaced Palestinians in southern Gaza, after allowing civilians to vacate the area, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday. The Israeli leader, who is under growing international pressure to hold off on the planned assault, gave no indication as to when the offensive might take place or where the hundreds of thousands of people now crammed into Rafah might go. 

His comments came a day after talks in Cairo on a possible ceasefire and the handover of hostages held by Hamas ended inconclusively, stoking fears among the displaced Palestinians that Israel would soon storm Rafah (Reuters). Israeli troops on Thursday entered Nasser Medical Complex, the hospital in southern Gaza where thousands of displaced Palestinians had been sheltering in recent days. Hundreds of Palestinians had begun to flee the hospital in Khan Younis on Wednesday after the Israeli military ordered displaced people sheltering there to evacuate, forcing them to try to find refuge elsewhere in the enclave, even as the area is pounded by airstrikes and riddled with fighting (The New York Times). 

BIDEN IS SHOWING FEW SIGNS he’s willing to take action against Netanyahu for failing to heed U.S. warnings against launching an offensive in Rafah, amid fears of a greater humanitarian catastrophe impacting more than one million Palestinians. The Hill’s Laura Kelly reports that Senate Democrats critical of Israel’s conduct in the war in Gaza had succeeded in getting Biden to issue a memorandum putting Netanyahu on notice — that U.S. weapons deliveries were contingent on the scaling up of humanitarian assistance to the Palestinians. Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), the driving force behind the memo, called for Biden to take action.  

“Unless and until the Netanyahu government allows more relief into Gaza, President Biden needs to invoke section 620-I of the Foreign Assistance Act,” he said, referring to the provision that blocks U.S. military assistance to a country hindering the delivery of humanitarian aid. “Kids in Gaza are now dying from the deliberate withholding of food…  that is a war crime… President Biden must take action in response to what is happening.” 

FBI Director Christopher Wray made an unannounced visit to Israel Wednesday to meet with Israeli law enforcement and intelligence officials to discuss current and future threats facing both countries. He also reiterated the FBI’s continued support to Israel after the Oct. 7 attacks (The Hill).  

Israel on Wednesday launched its longest and heaviest attack on neighboring Lebanon since the start of the Gaza war, striking several locations in the south. The airstrikes killed at least three Hezbollah fighters and seven civilians, and raise further the specter of war between the two long-standing enemies (The Washington Post). 

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ELSEWHERE 

TRUMP WORLD 

TODAY MARKS A CRITICAL MOMENT in Trump’s hush money prosecution as a judge mulls whether the case will move forward and if the former president will face his first criminal trial next month, writes The Hill’s Zach Schonfeld. Trump is expected to attend the hearing in New York alongside his lawyers, who will argue the indictment must be tossed because the charges are legally defective and that the former president was selectively prosecuted.  

The hearing marks a significant milestone for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D) after he brought the first indictment of a former president last spring by charging Trump with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. Bragg accuses Trump of improperly recording reimbursements to former Trump Organization lawyer Michael Cohen to conceal from the public an affair with adult film performer Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 presidential election. 

‘A WEIRD PLACE TO BE’: Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’s (D) relationship with a top prosecutor in the 2020 election interference case involving Trump will be under a microscope today as a judge weighs whether she and her office should be disqualified from the case. Willis and special prosecutor Nathan Wade earlier this month acknowledged having a “personal relationship” but insist there is no conflict of interest, The Hill’s Ella Lee reports. They say they were only friends when Willis hired Wade to investigate Trump. But defense attorneys contend that’s not true, promising that the hearing will yield evidence that the state’s top prosecutor hired Wade after he was already her romantic partner and has since financially benefited from his employment.  

“If all this legal analysis turns on the definition of dating, flirting, a situationship, a relationship, a committed relationship — that’s just a weird place to be, but that seems to be where we’re at,” said Anthony Michael Kreis, a law professor at Georgia State University.   

The New Yorker: The tangled fates of Willis and her biggest case. 

HEALTH & WELLBEING 

VETERAN SUICIDES: A federal agency may soon approve MDMA, also known as ecstasy, to treat post-traumatic stress disorder, writes The Hill’s Taylor Giorno. Advocates and some lawmakers say they’re optimistic about the potential benefits of using the illegal stimulant and psychedelic drug in “MDMA-assisted therapy” to treat post-traumatic stress. They hope it could prevent some of the more than 6,000 suicides among military veterans each year. ​ 

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THE CLOSER 

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