House speaker floats potential demands to move long-stalled Ukraine aid package – live

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Johnson calls rightwing attempt to remove him as speaker 'a distraction from our mission'

Just before Congress left town last month, rightwing congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene formally proposed removing Mike Johnson as speaker over frustrations that he didn’t secure more conservative policy wins in a bill to keep the government open.

It’s a sore subject for House Republicans, who last year saw Kevin McCarthy booted from the leadership post by a small groups of disaffected Republicans assisted by all Democrats. We don’t know yet if Greene’s motion has enough support to pass, but in his interview with Fox News, Johnson described it as a “distraction”:

I think all of my other Republican colleagues recognize this as a distraction from our mission. Again, the mission is to save the republic. And the only way we can do that is if we grow the House majority, win the Senate and win the White House. So, we don’t need any dissension right now. Look, Marjorie Taylor Greene filed the motion. It’s not a privileged motion, so it doesn’t move automatically. It’s just hanging there. And she’s frustrated.

Johnson noted that “she and I exchanged text messages”, and the pair plan to talk early next week.

Johnson floats potential demands to move long-stalled Ukraine aid package

Good morning, US politics blog readers. Congress may be out of Washington DC, with lawmakers back in their districts and home states until next week, but there are signs of movement in the long-stalled military aid package for Israel, Ukraine and other national security priorities. Yesterday, Republican House speaker Mike Johnson gave an interview to Fox News where he signaled three demands he may make in order to move the package through the chamber. These were including in the legislation provisions to seize Russian assets and give them to Ukraine, make the aid a loan that Kyiv will pay back at a future date, and roll back Joe Biden’s decision earlier this year to pause new natural gas export projects.

The big questions now are: will Democrats, who control the Senate and have already passed a version of the military aid bill, accept Johnson’s asks? What about his fellow Republicans in the House, where there are rumblings of booting Johnson from the job? And what of Donald Trump, who clearly has his eye on the matter – after all, he played a big part in killing an earlier compromise that would have paired the assistance with hardline immigration policies. We’ll see if any answers reveal themselves today.

Here’s what else is going on:

• The Biden administration and conservatives squabbled over the weekend after the president declared 31 March “Transgender Day of Visibility”, which happened to correspond with Easter Sunday.

• US and Israeli officials will meet virtually to discuss potential alternatives to an offensive against the southern Gaza city of Rafah, Reuters reports.

• White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre briefs reporters at 12pm ET.