The pro-Ukraine faction in the House GOP has taken several blows as the majority party reconfigures its committees and chairmanships for the new Congress.
In the last Congress, Ukraine had GOP allies in three of the most relevant committees — Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX) as the head of the Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Mike Turner as the chair of the Intelligence Committee, and Rep. Mike Rogers leading the Armed Services Committee.
Heading into the next two years, Rogers is the only one left leading his respective committee, while McCaul and Turner's replacements — Rep. Brian Mast and Rep. Rick Crawford — voted against the most recent supplemental funding aid package for Ukraine.
Earlier this week, Speaker Mike Johnson removed Turner from his chairmanship and the committee entirely, though he did not specify why he made the decision. Johnson tapped Crawford to fill the vacancy and added Rep. Greg Steube (R-FL) and Rep. Eli Crane (R-AZ) to the committee, both of whom also voted against the most recent Ukraine supplemental.
"I was disappointed to hear the news," Rep. Jason Crow (D-CO), a member of the intel committee, told the Washington Examiner. "Mike Turner, he's a friend and has done a really nice job with the committee over the last few years."
The Colorado lawmaker argued that the House Republican Conference has undergone "a very rapid change" from establishment "traditional Reagan Republican" types to "folks who are more inclined to pursue isolation policies."
It’s a “trend that has been happening for a while now,” he added. “It’s one that concerns me. It seems to have been sped up, and the changing of the guard on those two committees, I think, is an illustration of that broader trend within the conference right now.”
The majority of House Republicans voted against that aid package in April 2024, 112-101, but every Democrat voted in favor of it, which is why it passed. In November, Republicans won control of both chambers of Congress and the White House, further diminishing the likelihood that Ukraine would get significant amounts of additional aid.
“While the entire Western world stands in support of Ukraine’s fight to expel Vladimir Putin’s Ukraine invasion force, I cannot in good faith vote to send billions of dollars in non-military financial aid to Ukraine to prop up its economy when Americans are struggling with rising costs at home," Crawford said at the time.
Not only were the trio of former chairmen supportive of President Joe Biden's continued support for Ukraine, they urged the president to further loosen restrictions the U.S. had placed on how Ukraine uses U.S.-provided weapons more than a year before the president ultimately made that very decision.
When Biden changed the policy from not allowing Ukraine to hit anywhere inside Russia's borders to just the area over the border, all three lamented the decision as a "half-measure."
“This decision should have been made before Russia’s recent offensive in Kharkiv, not after. Instead, the Biden administration’s continued handwringing crippled Ukraine’s response, forcing them to stand idly by and watch Russian forces prepare for an imminent attack just across its border," they said in a joint statement in May 2024. "Once again, President Biden’s policy of slow walking and half-measures is dragging out this conflict without providing Ukraine with a decisive advantage on the battlefield to force Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table as soon as possible.”
Once Biden finally allowed Ukraine to use U.S.-provided weapons to hit military targets deeper within Russian territory this fall, Trump said he "vehemently" disagreed with the decision.
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Trump wants to see the war come to an end, and his chosen secretary of state, Marco Rubio, told lawmakers during his confirmation hearing that both sides should be prepared to make concessions to conclude the nearly three-year war.
"I think with Trump in the White House, he'll be pretty much driving the foreign policy agenda," McCaul told the Washington Examiner last month. “I’ll probably be in agreement with it nearly most, if not all the time, but it does give me some flexibility [to] speak up when I see things that should be different."