For months, Rep. Gregory Meeks of New York, the top Democrat on the Foreign Affairs Committee, had championed legislation to send additional security aid to Ukraine as it defends itself against Russia’s invasion. The proposal, however, was stuck: House Republican leaders refused to consider it, and so the bill languished.
Last month, however, it became unstuck: Proponents of the legislation managed to go around the GOP leadership thanks to a discharge petition — a tactic that allows members to bring a bill to the floor if it’s formally endorsed by a majority of the House. As MS NOW reported last week, the Ukraine aid package cleared the House with 226 votes, including 18 Republicans.
This week, it happened again. NBC News reported:
The House tonight passed another Democrat-led bill that made its way to the floor after a group of Republicans bucked their party’s leadership and joined Democrats in forcing a vote.
The Faster Labor Contracts Act, which would force employers to start negotiating with a newly certified union within 10 days of receiving the request, passed with the support of 20 Republicans and all Democrats.
Critics will note that both this bill and the Ukraine aid still have to clear the Senate, where the measures’ fate remains uncertain, and they would still need Donald Trump’s signature to become law. It’s a fair point.
But let’s not miss the forest for the trees. Republican Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania said in an online written statement, “If the House Floor was managed properly, discharge petitions would never be needed. A successful discharge petition is clear and direct evidence of a poorly managed House Floor — because it demonstrates that the will of the majority of the People is being thwarted by the privileged few.”
Fitzpatrick didn’t mention House Speaker Mike Johnson by name, but given the context, he didn’t have to.
Indeed, it might not be immediately obvious just how embarrassing these latest developments are for the Louisiana Republican and his leadership team.
In the past century or so, successful discharge petitions have been very rare. The reason is simple: Such petitions have long been seen as a slap in the face of a sitting House speaker.
As New York magazine’s Ed Kilgore recently explained, “Indeed, prior to Johnson’s ascent to the Speakership, only two 21st-century discharge petitions achieved the 218 signatures needed to trigger a floor vote.”
This roughly once-per-decade average has undergone a dramatic revision under the Louisiana Republican’s tenure. In the last Congress, which ended in early January 2025, there were two successful discharge petitions, which was itself a significant total. Meanwhile, in the current Congress, which is far from over, there have been six successful discharge petitions, which The Hill accurately described as “extraordinary.”
The first came in March 2025, and it dealt with proxy voting for new parents serving in Congress. In November 2025, another discharge petition advanced the Epstein Files Transparency Act; five days later, a measure to repeal an executive order that gutted federal workers’ union rights also received 218 signatures.
The list grew longer as discharge petitions related to extending Affordable Care Act subsidies, providing temporary protected status for Haitian migrants and extending aid to Ukraine all crossed the necessary threshold.
Usually, members embarrass Johnson by ignoring his wishes and voting against legislation he has urged them to support. But this flurry of successful discharge petitions, which has no modern precedent, makes the House speaker appear even more diminished.
Kilgore’s recent piece added, “Signs of weakness invite further revolts by House members who fear voters more than this mild-mannered former backbencher from Louisiana, whose authority is totally dependent on Trump’s backing, which can be erratic during times when the president is distracted by nonlegislative matters like ending wars and naming things after himself. Politicians, like guard dogs, can smell fear and irresolution.”
The question, then, is less whether we’ll see more successful discharge petitions and more a question of when, as Johnson’s weak hold on power unravels further.
This post updates our related earlier coverage.
The post The more lawmakers go around Mike Johnson, the more obvious his weakness becomes appeared first on MS NOW.
In the weeks leading up to Jan. 6, 2021, Senate Republican leaders knew that Donald Trump was pressuring their members to reject certification of Joe Biden’s victory, but they pleaded with GOP senators to discard the outgoing president’s wishes. In fact, Senate Republican leaders told members there wasn’t even any point in trying, since the radical scheme wouldn’t work anyway.
Republican Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, the then-majority whip, publicly conceded in December 2020 that the plan to reject election certification “would go down like a shot dog.”
Trump wasn’t pleased. In fact, the defeated president labeled Thune a “RINO” — “Republican in Name Only” — on social media, adding, “South Dakota doesn’t like weakness. He will be primaried in 2022, political career over!!!”
In 2022, Thune ran unopposed — in both the primary and the general election. What’s more, his career was far from over, and he became the Senate majority leader early last year.
In 2026, there’s a relative détente between Thune and Trump, though in recent weeks, it’s become increasingly clear the two Republican leaders are not on the same page.
“Thune has to say ‘no’ to Trump a lot,” Punchbowl News reported. “And second-term Trump clearly doesn’t like this at all.”
Consider the developments from the past few weeks:
To be sure, the president hasn’t thrown any recent tantrums about the South Dakotan, but with the way things are going, it’s hard not to wonder if the dam might soon break.
The post With increasing frequency, GOP’s Thune and Trump are not on the same page appeared first on MS NOW.
As 2026 got underway and much of the country was mortified by the deaths of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti in Minnesota, the public backlash was swift and quantifiable. An Economist/YouGov poll found that a 47% plurality of Americans said U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement was making Americans less safe, while a 46% plurality said ICE should be abolished altogether.
A Quinnipiac poll released at about the same time found that 57% of Americans disapproved of the way ICE was enforcing immigration laws.
The need for reform seemed obvious. In fact, an NBC News poll released in February found that almost 3 in 4 U.S. adults supported either “reforming” or “abolishing” the agency.
Democratic officials seized on those public attitudes and demanded that Congress impose new restrictions and safeguards on federal immigration agencies as part of pending spending bills that fund ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
Four months later, the Republican majority ignored the polls, circumvented Democratic lawmakers and narrowly approved a spending package that will fund ICE and CBP for the remainder of Donald Trump’s second term, throwing an additional $70 billion at immigration enforcement. (The party used the budget reconciliation process, which prevented Senate Democrats from imposing a 60-vote threshold in the upper chamber.)
GOP leaders beat back efforts to include a provision formally killing off the idea of a White House compensation fund, but that wasn’t the only thing missing from the package: The legislation includes literally nothing in the way of new safeguards or restrictions on federal immigration agencies or their enforcement tactics.
In other words, polls showed strong public support for changes to the status quo. Republicans decided they did not care.
In a written statement, Rep. Jamie Raskin, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, said, “House Republicans are choosing to hand over $70 billion more in taxpayer dollars to fund ICE and Border Patrol’s chaos in our communities. This is on top of the $140 billion they already gave ICE in their ‘Big, Ugly Bill.’ MAGA Republicans refused to negotiate on popular and essential reforms to responsibly enforce our immigration laws while respecting the civil liberties of our people. I voted hell no.”
The Maryland congressman added, “ICE and Border Patrol aren’t targeting ‘the worst of the worst.’ College students, nurses, babies and children, pregnant women, cancer patients, and even American citizens have been rounded up in their lawless, brutal raids. This corrupt agency is making all of us less safe. We need affordable health care, not an open money spigot for ICE corruption and masked federal agents killing American citizens and disappearing our neighbors from the streets.”
The president is expected to sign the package into law, probably as early as Wednesday.
The post Republicans ignore public calls for reforms, throw another $70 billion at ICE and CPB appeared first on MS NOW.
By Philip GIRALDI
Contact us: info@strategic-culture.su
Israel will benefit enormously and Americans will bear the burden
There is near certainty that Section 224 of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for 2027 will pass through the House of Representatives to become law this coming week after a failed attempt last Thursday in the House Armed Services Committee to pass an amendment to delete it led by Democratic Party Congressman Ro Khanna and Republican Thomas Massie. The NDAA will now be awaiting only the fully expected signature of Israel’s servant President Donald Trump on the Act to become part of the nation’s legislative package that will set the rules and regulations that the nation’s defense will operate under. It will, unfortunately, also set up through Section 224 a “United States-Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative” that integrates “US-Israeli military research and development, co-production of weapons systems, licensing agreements, AI, directed energy, data integration, and missile defense.” It also creates the framework for “bilateral research and development, co-production of weapons, joint ventures, licensing agreements, and seemingly every manner of US-Israeli military-industrial complex cooperation.” The Director of the “Initiative” will be responsible for the coordination of the work and it is already being suggested that he will be an Israeli. And the funding will come 100% from the US Treasury by way of the budgeted allocation of $1.5 trillion that has been requested for the US military in 2027.
The result is to completely connect the functionality of the US military with that of the Israeli military in what has been described as an equal partnership that will include the government of Israel and its Israeli Defense Force as full participants. There will be full intelligence sharing and a planning process that will determine many aspects of how the American Department of War (sic) procures its weapons and equipment and establishes its strategic goals. This is plausibly the hidden story behind why Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been slyly suggesting that Israel might in future forego the $3.8 billion in annual automatic “aid” (which some refer to as “tribute”) from the US Treasury, a process begun by President Barack Obama. Netanyahu, working through his accomplices in the White House and the US Congress, clearly would have known in advance that a much larger slice of the pie was on its way via Section 224.
Those politicians who have sponsored and promoted 224 inevitably cite how the Jewish state is a major “ally and best friend” even though it is neither, but they ignore the dark side fact that it is also a genocidal state whose leaders have been condemned by international courts for multiple war crimes that is hated by most of the world. And this hatred has rubbed off on the United States, which is Israel’s principal source of arms, money and political cover. The slaughter in Gaza and now in Lebanon would not occur without the support of Presidents Joe Biden and Donald Trump.
And there’s more, coming from the Senate which is doing something similar via the FY27 Intel Authorization bill which will make US intelligence sharing with Israel mandatory. The bill in question is S-4615, introduced on May 20th by leading Israel Firster Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas. The full text is here. S-4615 includes Section 622, entitled “US-Israel intelligence sharing enhancement.” This new section would establish as law (where it would apply forever, unless repealed by Congress) new US national security-related obligations with respect to Israel. It includes a Statement of Policy: “(1) To maintain and strengthen the strategic security partnership with Israel as a means of advancing the national defense of the United States… (2) To enhance intelligence collaboration through robust intelligence sharing and analytic partnership with Israel… (4) To ensure that security assistance and defense cooperation are structured to help Israel maintain its qualitative military edge…”
When the Intel Authorization Bill comes up for a vote in the Senate it will no doubt pass due to the Republican Majority supplemented by the usual Israel Firsters among the Democrats. And to complete the takeover by Israel there is a bill moving through Congress that will give US military benefits to American citizens, often Israeli dual nationals, who serve in the Israeli military, to include educational and medical benefits unavailable to other Americans who have not served in the US armed forces. Ironically, Israel’s new status as America’s partner in national security and warfare coming from both parts of Congress is not shared with any of Washington’s actual allies in NATO, making the relationship with Israel both unique and, in the opinion of many, uniquely dangerous as an empowered Israel will inevitably work to advance its security perceptions and Middle East “Eretz Israel” ambitions at the expense of genuine concerns that the United States might have intrinsic to its much broader worldwide exposure to global threats. In other words, pandering to Israeli concerns will actually make the United States much weaker and more vulnerable.
Astonishingly, the danger that Israel poses to US national security through its insertion as something like an equal into the planning process has been little remarked in the mainstream US media, possibly due to increased federal and state government pursuit of “antisemites” which includes criminalization of criticism of Israel. And it is certainly once again suggesting the power of the Israel Lobby, its “bought” media and its stable of supporting Jewish billionaires. But there has been considerable concern being expressed across much of the alternative media, some of which has even reached the front pages, suggesting that there is some leakage going on to feed official reservations about 224. The New York Times, which sometimes serves as a go-to leaked resource for the intelligence and defense communities had an interesting article on Israeli spying on the United States sourced to the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) which appeared just after 224 was being debated in Congress.
The Times article is entitled “Pentagon Sees Growing Espionage Threat From Israel” and is summarized as “The Defense Department has increased the counterintelligence threat assessment to its highest level, and Israel is believed to have eavesdropped on American negotiations with Iran.” The story details how “Israel is now at the Pentagon’s highest counterintelligence threat level.” It includes how American officers working with their Israeli counterparts both in the US and overseas have had their phones and other messaging systems tapped through the insertion of surreptitious listening devices by the Israelis. Negotiations to end the Iran War have also been particularly targeted, both through phones being used by the negotiators as well as from the Washington end where the calls and messages are received.
The reality is, of course, that Israel has been a major source of spying and even worse against the United States since the 1950s, always ranking in FBI and Department of Defense assessments as one of the top three foreign espionage offenders, frequently as number one. And Israeli clandestine covert actions and false flag attacks have not hesitated to kill Americans as part of their efforts to cover-up their more disreputable activities. Notably, the Israeli false flag attack on the US Navy’s USS Liberty in international waters on June 8th 1967 in which 34 crewmen were killed stands out, particularly due to the subsequent cover-up conveniently arranged by Presidents Lyndon B Johnson and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara.
Israeli spies, which might have included Netanyahu himself when he resided in the US, arranged the illegal removal of enriched uranium from a Zionist-Jewish-owned metallurgical company in Pennsylvania and also obtained the special triggers in California that enabled Tel Aviv to create a nuclear arsenal. When President John F Kennedy sought to stop that development he was assassinated, quite possibly with help from Mossad. And then there was the most damaging spy in the history of the US, Jonathan Pollard, who stole for Israel the most sensitive intelligence ever obtained by a foreign power. He is now running for the Knesset in Israel and is speaking of the next two likely targets for the Israeli army once the Palestinians, Lebanese and Syrians are disposed of, neighbors Egypt and Turkey!
The appearance of the Times article is suspicious and it might have been a shot across the Israeli-Israel Firster bow from the intelligence community coming as it apparently did from what was once called the Department of Defense. But Israel appears to have won this round and will be entering into a new relationship with the United States national security, intelligence and defense systems. Given the utter ruthlessness of Israel and the willingness of its sponsors in Washington to let it get away with mass murder, literally, this is a disaster for the United States and will only produce excruciatingly bad results.
Original article: www.unz.com
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