Rep. Troy Nehls (R-TX) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) are among the Republican lawmakers who are "outraged" on Saturday after Democrats appeared to taunt Greene with Ukrainian flags on the House floor.

The House voted over the weekend to approve a bipartisan foreign aid bill, enraging Greene, who has steadfastly opposed sending help to Ukraine. Raw Story reported that, after the vote, she unloaded on reporters in a swear-filled rant.

One of the things that "outraged" her, according to a report from MSNBC, is the waving of the Ukrainian flags.....

Congressman Troy E. Nehls (R-TX) said, "House Democrats are waiving Ukraine flags on the House floor as members of Congress vote to send nearly $61 billion more to Ukraine. Disgusting."

Reps. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) also had a problem with the flag waving.

"Democrats chanted 'Ukraine' while waving Ukrainian flags on the Floor of the UNITED STATES House of Representatives. The Uniparty approved $60.8 billion more for Ukraine while the US quickly approaches $35 trillion in debt. The DC Cartel cares more about Ukraine than you," he said.

APRIL 20, 2024
Statement from President Joe Biden on House Passage of the National Security Package

Today, members of both parties in the House voted to advance our national security interests and send a clear message about the power of American leadership on the world stage. At this critical inflection point, they came together to answer history’s call, passing urgently-needed national security legislation that I have fought for months to secure.

This package will deliver critical support to Israel and Ukraine; provide desperately needed humanitarian aid to Gaza, Sudan, Haiti, and other locations impacted by conflicts and natural disasters around the world; and bolster security and stability in the Indo-Pacific. It comes at a moment of grave urgency, with Israel facing unprecedented attacks from Iran, and Ukraine under continued bombardment from Russia. I want to thank Speaker Johnson, Leader Jeffries, and the bipartisan coalition of lawmakers in the House who voted to put our national security first. I urge the Senate to quickly send this package to my desk so that I can sign it into law and we can quickly send weapons and equipment to Ukraine to meet their urgent battlefield needs.

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APRIL 19, 2024
Statement from President Joe Biden on UAW Vote in Tennessee

Congratulations to the workers at Volkswagen in Chattanooga, Tennessee, on their historic vote for union representation with the United Auto Workers. I was proud to stand alongside auto workers in their successful fight for record contracts, and I am proud to stand with auto workers now as they successfully organize at Volkswagen. Across the country, union members have logged major wins and large raises, including auto workers, actors, port workers, Teamsters, writers, warehouse and health care workers, and more. Together, these union wins have helped raise wages and demonstrate once again that the middle-class built America and that unions are still building and expanding the middle class for all workers.

Six Republican governors wrote a letter attempting to influence workers’ votes by falsely claiming that a successful vote would jeopardize jobs in their states. Let me be clear to the Republican governors that tried to undermine this vote: there is nothing to fear from American workers using their voice and their legal right to form a union if they so choose. In fact, the growing strength of unions over the last year has gone hand-in-hand with record small business and jobs growth alongside the longest stretch of low unemployment in more than 50 years. I will continue to stand with American workers and stand against Republican’s effort to weaken workers’ voice.

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APRIL 19, 2024
Statement from President Joe Biden on UAW Vote in Tennessee

Congratulations to the workers at Volkswagen in Chattanooga, Tennessee, on their historic vote for union representation with the United Auto Workers. I was proud to stand alongside auto workers in their successful fight for record contracts, and I am proud to stand with auto workers now as they successfully organize at Volkswagen. Across the country, union members have logged major wins and large raises, including auto workers, actors, port workers, Teamsters, writers, warehouse and health care workers, and more. Together, these union wins have helped raise wages and demonstrate once again that the middle-class built America and that unions are still building and expanding the middle class for all workers.

Six Republican governors wrote a letter attempting to influence workers’ votes by falsely claiming that a successful vote would jeopardize jobs in their states. Let me be clear to the Republican governors that tried to undermine this vote: there is nothing to fear from American workers using their voice and their legal right to form a union if they so choose. In fact, the growing strength of unions over the last year has gone hand-in-hand with record small business and jobs growth alongside the longest stretch of low unemployment in more than 50 years. I will continue to stand with American workers and stand against Republican’s effort to weaken workers’ voice.

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The winds have shifted direction quickly. On Tuesday, Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky signed onto Greene’s motion-to-vacate measure, and today, the duo became a trio. NBC News reported:

A third House Republican has signed onto an effort to oust Speaker Mike Johnson from power, giving his opponents the votes they’d need to remove the Republican leader unless Democrats stepped in to save him. Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., signed onto the “motion to vacate” authored by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., both Republicans said Friday.

According to some accounts, the number of Republicans prepared to kick Johnson out of the speaker’s office is likely to inch higher soon......

If Greene were to force a vote on the House speaker’s fate, she’d have more than enough votes to oust Johnson — if Democrats were to vote against him the same way they voted against then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy in October.

If, on the other hand, members of the Democratic minority were to rescue the incumbent GOP leader — a dynamic that keeps coming up — Johnson would almost certainly keep his gavel, though he’d be weakened badly, and his dependence on Democratic support would complicate his future.

In case that weren’t quite enough, there’s also the question of what, exactly, Democrats might expect from the House speaker in exchange for rescuing him. Would passage of security aid suffice? Would that only be part of a larger Democratic wish list?

Five days later, the House Intelligence Committee’s Republican chair, Ohio’s Mike Turner, was about as candid while echoing the sentiment, conceding that some of his GOP colleagues were peddling rhetoric that’s “directly coming from Russia.” Soon after, former Defense Secretary William Cohen, a longtime GOP lawmaker, said he believes many congressional Republicans are now working as “the arm of Vladimir Putin.”

The list keeps growing. The Hill reported:

Republican Rep. Don Bacon (Neb.) ripped into his colleagues who oppose further funding for Ukraine, arguing they “would like to see” Russia win the more than two-year war against Kyiv. “Now for Ukraine, they have no more artillery. If we do not do this, the Russians will be in Kyiv. Unfortunately, a few of my colleagues would like to see the Russians win. I don’t know why that is the case. I think it’s a terrible thing,” Bacon said in an interview with C-SPAN.

In context, it was clear that the Nebraska Republican was referring to members of his own party.
https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1781022052809371960

.....A growing number of GOP lawmakers are complaining — out loud, on the record, and occasionally even on camera — that there are Republican members of Congress siding with a U.S. adversary, taking steps to help Russia win a war against a U.S. ally. They’re effectively warning Americans that there are some GOP officials on Capitol Hill who aren’t just echoing the Kremlin’s position, they’re also actively and deliberately taking steps to help Russia prevail in an ongoing conflict.

This ... isn’t normal.

The New York Attorney General’s office on Friday asked a judge to effectively void a $175 million bond posted by former President Donald Trump to secure a much larger monetary damage award in his civil business fraud case.

The AG’s office in a filing said that Trump and other defendants in the case had failed to show there is enough identifiable collateral to back the bond for the judgment in Manhattan Supreme Court.

The filing notes that the surety Trump used to obtain the bond, Knight Specialty Insurance Company, is “a small insurer that is not authorized to write business in New York and thus not regulated by the state’s insurance department, had never before written a surety bond in New York or in the prior two years in any other jurisdiction, and has a total policyholder surplus of just $138 million.”

The filing opposes a joint motion by Trump and KSIC to justify the insure as the surety company holding the bond.

Lawyers for AG Letitia James asked Judge Arthur Engoron to require Trump and other defendants to put up a replacement bond within seven days of ruling on the issue.