The House of Representatives approved a $95 billion foreign aid package for Ukraine, Israel and other U.S. allies during a rare Saturday session that threatens the future of embattled Republican Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) among some of his GOP colleagues.
The long-stalled measures also includes a plan to force a sale — or lead to a ban — of the popular Chinese-owned social media website TikTok, which American officials have called a threat to national security.
"We did our work here, and I think history will judge it well," Johnson said after the votes, the Associated Press reported.
The legislation — which marries military aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan with Gaza humanitarian help — was a major victory for Johnson. He pushed for the bill in the face of stiff opposition to Ukraine aid from the hard-right Freedom Caucus in a faceoff that threatened to bounce him from the speaker's role. A majority of Republicans voted against Ukraine aid on Saturday.
The Freedom Caucus had also demanded in vain that increased border protection measures be included in the legislation.
The package is expected to win passage in the Senate, and President Joe Biden has pledged to sign the measures immediately after that.
"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," Biden said in a statement, CNN reported.
"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."
Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-NY) reportedly took steps Saturday for that chamber to begin voting on the bills Tuesday afternoon.
The Senate was scheduled to be in recess next week but will convene for the votes, according to CNN.
A TikTok spokerson called the House move against the company "unfortunate," and accused lawmakers of "using the cover of important foreign and humanitarian assistance to once again jam through a ban bill."
If signed into law, the measure "would trample the free speech rights of 170 million Americans, devastate 7 million businesses, and shutter a platform that contributes $24 billion to the U.S. economy, annually," the spokesperson added.
Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who last month filed a motion to oust Johnson as speaker, suggested that Saturday's votes had sealed his fate, calling him "already a lame duck."
"I'm actually gonna let my colleagues go home and hear from their constituents because I think people have been too obsessed with voting for foreign wars and the murder industry here in America to actually understand how angry Americans are," she told CNN.
Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky also said he and other Johnson opponents would give Johnson a chance to resign, which Johnson has said he won't do.
Johnson told reporters he wasn't worried about facing a motion to vacate, which the the procedural tool used to remove the House speaker.
"I have to do my job," he said. "I've done here what I believe to be the right thing to allow the House to work its will. And as I've said, you do the right thing and you let the chips fall where they may."
He said the foreign aid needed to be passed because the world was a "tinderbox."
"Three of our primary adversaries — Russia and Iran and China — are working together and they're being aggressors around the globe," he said. "They're a global threat to our prosperity and our security. Their advance threatens the free world, and it demands American leadership. We turn our backs right now, the consequences could be devastating."
Johnson also said he hadn't spoken to his intraparty opponents and predicted he would still be speaker in November, when the presidential election will take place.
