Whoa. Unexpected. In the House of Representatives they pushed through a discharge petition on the bill ...

👀Whoa. Suddenly. In the House of Representatives they pushed through a discharge petition on the bill for military aid to Ukraine. Now the bill must be brought to a vote over Speaker Johnson’s head.

Immediate note: Trump still will NOT sign this law, even if after the House it is passed by the Senate. But this opens a new stage in the fight for American aid to Ukraine.

To start with: what bill is this, and why has nobody heard anything about it?

The bill was introduced by Democrat Gregory Meeks (first in the collage) back in the distant April 2025.

▪️He proposed allocating $8 billion in military aid to Ukraine for 2026 in the form of a loan, imposing new sanctions against Russia, and generally strengthening support for Ukraine in every possible way (including reopening Lend-Lease, though it’s not entirely clear what that means in practice). But it’s not only Ukraine in there, there’s also aid to the Baltic states, support for NATO, basically the whole package they could possibly pile on.

▪️Naturally, Speaker Johnson did not even consider this bill. But in July 2025 Gregory Meeks opened a discharge petition to bring the bill to a vote over the speaker’s head. The petition was signed by most Democrats and, by the end of 2025, the two most pro-Ukraine Republicans: Don Bacon (second in the collage) and Brian Fitzpatrick (third).

▪️In April, the Democrats finished off all of their own signatures, but they were still one vote short (for the petition to pass, it needs 50% + 1 vote, that is 218 out of 435). And now, suddenly, Kevin Kiley (fourth in the collage), who in March left the Republican Party and became an independent, cast the missing 218th vote today.

What happens next?

▪️The vote is supposed to take place in the House in the first week of June, Politico reports. In the House there will most likely be more than enough votes, journalist Ostap Yarysh writes. Next comes the Senate. The votes there, too, would theoretically be enough, but without Trump they will not do anything, even though the Republican leader John Thune is quite pro-Ukraine.

▪️So in any case, nothing will happen before the elections in November. But if somehow the Democrats take the Senate in November... (which is still unlikely, although if Trump keeps screwing up like this... anything is possible), then options may appear. Under a favorable set of circumstances, it would then be possible to push the bill through with 2/3 of the votes (a veto-proof majority), so Trump would not be able to reject it.

In short, we’ll keep watching.

The main takeaway for today is that support for Ukraine in the US is very strong, there is still a bipartisan majority there, and if not for Trump at the top, the aid would not have gone anywhere.

And yes, thanks to Gregory Meeks, to all the Dems who signed the petition, to Republicans Don Bacon and Brian Fitzpatrick, who are going against Trump’s policy, and to now-independent Congressman Kevin Kiley, who left the Republican Party.