周日，议长迈克·约翰逊赢得了一名共和党高层和一名进步民主党人的称赞允许对950亿美元的对外援助计划进行投票暗示他将能够保住他的工作，如果保守的强硬派兑现他们的威胁，强行投票罢免他作为一家之主。
“我为议长感到骄傲，迈克·约翰逊。“他经历了一次转变，”众议院外交事务委员会主席、德克萨斯州共和党人迈克尔·麦克考尔(Michael McCaul)在美国广播公司新闻频道(ABC News)“本周”上说“在一天结束的时候，一个勇气的侧面是把国家放在你自己之上——这就是他所做的。他说，‘最终，不管我的工作是什么，我都将站在历史正确的一边’，我认为这是我非常钦佩的一点。”
来自加州的民主党众议员Ro Khanna表示同意。
“我在许多问题上不同意议长约翰逊，我一直对他持批评态度，”卡纳在另一次采访中告诉《本周》的联合主持人乔纳森·卡尔。“但他在这里做了正确的事情，他应该保留他的职位，直到任期结束。"
佐治亚州共和党众议员马乔里·泰勒·格林(Marjorie Taylor Greene)是约翰逊在党内最大的批评者之一，他已经提议但尚未就一项动议采取行动，该动议要求他退出议长职位，原因是他支持对外援助法案，特别是帮助乌克兰抗击俄罗斯入侵的608亿美元。
包括众议院共和党会议主席埃莉斯·斯特凡尼克(Elise Stefanik)在内的更多共和党人在周末投票反对乌克兰援助法案，而不是支持该法案。
格林只需要再有一个共和党人和她一起推翻约翰逊，就像去年凯文·麦卡锡的情况一样，除非有足够多的民主党人支持他。Khanna周日表示，即使没有额外的让步，他们也会这样做。
"你和其他在此刻保护他的民主党人会要求任何回报吗?"卡尔催促道。
“我会把谈判交给...(少数党领袖哈基姆)杰弗里斯，但我不认为政治中的一切都需要交易，”卡纳说。“我认为这里有议长约翰逊，他不仅将此付诸表决，而且还将法案分开，我认为这是勇敢的。他让人们在台湾问题上、在对以色列的进攻性援助问题上、在乌克兰问题上投票。对此我给予他信任。”
众议院周六的投票推动了针对乌克兰、以色列、台湾和其他印太盟友的四项对外援助法案。这对约翰逊等共和党领导人来说是一个戏剧性的逆转。几个月来，约翰逊一直表示，对乌克兰的额外资金必须与美国边境和移民法的收紧挂钩。
但在这一点上促成妥协的努力未能赢得足够多的保守派。在美国前总统唐纳德·特朗普(Donald Trump)的反对下，参议院一项高调改革边境政策的协议很快被约翰逊和其他人否决，理由是不够充分。
然后，本月早些时候，约翰逊宣布他支持就额外援助进行个人投票，包括向乌克兰和目前与哈马斯交战的以色列提供援助。
“坦率地说，我宁愿给乌克兰送子弹，也不愿给美国男孩送子弹，”约翰逊上周援引他即将上海军学院的儿子的话说。
在“本周”节目中，卡尔就约翰逊不断变化的观点以及立法过程中的长期拖延向麦克考尔施压，要求国会最终支持白宫去年首次提出的类似援助金额。
麦克考尔说，约翰逊最初支持强硬派共和党人的立场，但认识到随着政府分裂，必须选择另一条道路。
“他试图做什么，你知道，说自由核心小组希望他做什么。麦考尔说:“这在参议院或白宫是行不通的。“说到底，我们的时间不多了。乌克兰正准备倒下。”
麦克考尔说，约翰逊的机密简报和众议院情报委员会主席迈克·特纳等共和党领导人就此问题举行的听证会影响了他的想法。
他认为，本质上来说，约翰逊曾经是一名名不见经传的议员，今年秋天在共和党众议院会议的混乱权力斗争中被推上议长职位后，不得不在工作中学习。
麦克考尔说:“他从路易斯安那州的一个选区成为了美国的议长，也成为了一个必须放眼整个世界、必须承担责任并做出正确决定的人。”
“迈克·约翰逊的股票已经大幅上涨。我认为人们对他的尊敬程度大大提高了，因为他不顾自己的工作做了正确的事情。这赢得了很多尊重，”麦克考尔继续说道。“也来自民主党方面。”
除了周六批准的对外援助法案外，约翰逊还不得不反复利用民主党少数党的选票来推进一些关键立法，如政府拨款。
这是因为共和党人只拥有为数不多的微弱多数票，但他们之间无法就各种法案达成共识。
在“本周”节目中被问及这样的动态是否表明众议院现在实际上处于某种“联合政府”时，麦克考尔回答说:“我不知道，也许有些人喜欢这样。”
随后，他批评了格林等议员对约翰逊的最后通牒。
“当这项动议每周在国会受到威胁时，它就被滥用了，”麦克考尔说。“我认为我们需要解决这个问题。这是一个被少数人滥用的工具，当我的会议的大多数人不同意他们的观点时。”
他说，在援助乌克兰的问题上，像格林这样谴责更多援助是对主要国内问题的浪费的共和党同僚“接受了这种非此即彼的观点。...你不能支持没有边界的乌克兰。我们可以双管齐下。我们是一个伟大的国家。现在我们陷入了一个政治问题。”
他接着说:“全世界的眼睛都在看着我们，我们的对手也在看着我们，历史也在看着我们。”“这也是我一直告诉我的同事们的。”
在另一次采访中，众议员卡纳详细阐述了他对本周末另一大部分援助投票的看法:在哈马斯10月7日的恐怖袭击引发战争后，以色列在加沙与哈马斯作战时应获得更多资金。
卡纳是投票反对以色列个人援助法案的37名民主党人之一，但他试图在他反对进攻性资金和防御性资金之间进行对比，以使以色列能够保护自己。
“这是一次艰难的投票。我的意思是，看，这是一种反对【以色列总理本雅明】内塔尼亚胡无条件获得攻击性武器的立场，而他正在谈论进入拉法...当我们知道更多的妇女和儿童将要死去时，”卡纳说，呼应了越来越多的批评，即以色列对加沙城市的轰炸造成太多平民死亡。(以色列坚称其采取措施保护平民。)
“我们想明确表示，必须改变策略，加沙不再有饥荒和苦难，”卡纳说，继续说道:“那么，当全世界都在说那里有饥荒，我们需要一个新的策略，我们需要释放人质(据信被哈马斯扣押)并实现和平时，我们为什么要无条件地把这个给内塔尼亚胡?”
在伊朗本月直接袭击以色列后，卡尔投票反对为以色列提供资金，这标志着两国之间长期以来被视为影子战争的新阶段。在卡尔的压力下，卡纳表示，他将支持严格与国防相关的资金。
然而，他说，目标应该是通过在该地区建立联盟来结束战斗。
他说:“现实是，除非我们与伊朗、沙特阿拉伯和以色列开展安全合作，在中东建立外交架构，否则你永远不会获得和平。”
卡纳也是对立法运动持怀疑态度出于对数据安全和外国影响的担忧，迫使抖音的中国母公司将其出售，否则将在美国面临禁令，抖音方面称这是毫无根据的。
“我认为它不会通过第一修正案的审查，因为我认为有限制较少的替代方案。...我怀疑它能否通过最高法院的审查，”卡纳预测道。
Mike Johnson earns bipartisan praise for backing Ukraine aid, suggesting his speakership is safe
Speaker Mike Johnson earned praise from both a top Republican and a progressive Democrat on Sunday forallowing votes on a $95 billion foreign aid package, suggesting he'll be able to hold onto his job if conservative hard-linersmake good on their threat to force a vote to remove himas the leader of the House.
"I am so proud of the speaker, Mike Johnson. He went through a transformation," House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul, a Texas Republican, said on ABC News' "This Week." "At the end of the day, a profile in courage is putting the nation above yourself -- and that's what he did. He said, 'At the end of the day, I'm going to be on the right side of history, irrespective of my job,' and I think that was what I admired so much."
Rep. Ro Khanna, a Democrat from California, agreed.
"I disagree with Speaker Johnson on many issues, and I've been very critical of him," Khanna told "This Week" co-anchor Jonathan Karl in a separate interview. "But he did the right thing here and he deserves to keep his job 'til the end of his term."
Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, one of Johnson's loudest critics within their party, has proposed but not yet acted on a motion to vacate the speakership over his support for the foreign aid bills -- in particular $60.8 billion to help Ukraine in its fight against Russia's invasion.
More Republicans, including House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik, voted against the Ukraine aid bill than for it over the weekend.
Greene would need only one other Republican to join her in ousting Johnson, as happened last year to Kevin McCarthy, unless enough Democrats side with him. Khanna suggested on Sunday that they will -- even absent additional concessions.
"Would you and fellow Democrats that will protect him at this moment -- ask for anything in return?" Karl pressed.
"I'll leave the negotiations to ... [Minority Leader Hakeem] Jeffries, but I don't think everything in politics needs to be transactional," Khanna said. "I think here you have Speaker Johnson, who not only put this up for a vote but he also separated the bills, which I thought was courageous. He let people vote their conscience on Taiwan, on the offensive aid to Israel, on Ukraine. And I give him credit for that."
The House votes on Saturday -- advancing the four foreign aid bills for Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan and other Indo-Pacific allies -- marked a dramatic reversal for Republican leaders like Johnson, who for months have said additional funds to Ukraine must be tied to a tightening of U.S. border and immigration laws.
But efforts to broker compromise on that point failed to win over enough conservatives. A high-profile agreement in the Senate to overhaul border policy was quickly rejected by Johnson and others as insufficient after opposition from former President Donald Trump.
And then, earlier this month, Johnson announced his support for individual votes on additional aid, including to Ukraine as well as to Israel, currently at war with Hamas.
"To put it bluntly, I would rather send bullets to Ukraine than American boys," Johnson said last week, invoking his own son, who is going to the Naval Academy.
On "This Week," McCaul was pressed by Karl over Johnson's changing views -- and the lengthy delay involved in the legislative process, to ultimately end up with Congress backing a similar amount of aid as the White House first proposed last year.
McCaul said that Johnson initially supported the position of hard-line Republicans but recognized that with the government divided, another path had to be chosen.
"He tried to do what the, you know, say the Freedom Caucus wanted him to do. It wasn't going to work in the Senate or the White House," McCaul said. "At the end of the day, we were running out of time. Ukraine's getting ready to fall."
Johnson's classified briefings and hearing from Republican leaders on the issue like House Intelligence Chairman Mike Turner had influenced his thinking, McCaul said.
He suggested that, essentially, Johnson, once a little-known legislator, had to learn on the job after being thrust into the speakership in the fall amid a chaotic power struggle within the GOP's House conference.
"He became the man that went from a district in Louisiana to the speaker of the United States to also someone who had to look at the entire world and had to carry the burden of that and make the right decision," McCaul said.
"The stock in Mike Johnson's gone way up. I think the respect for him's gone way up because he did the right thing irrespective of his job. That garnered a lot of respect," McCaul continued. "And also from the Democrat side."
Beyond just the foreign aid bills that were approved on Saturday, Johnson has had to repeatedly use the votes of the Democratic minority in order to move forward on some key legislation, like government funding.
That's because Republicans hold only a very narrow majority of a few votes but have been unable to reach consensus among themselves on various bills.
Asked on "This Week" if such a dynamic indicates the House is actually now in some kind of "coalition government," McCaul replied, "I don't know, maybe some people like that."
He then dinged lawmakers like Greene for her ultimatum against Johnson.
"When the motion gets threatened every week in the Congress, that is being abused," McCaul said. "And I think we need to fix that. That is a tool that's being abused by a minority when the majority of my conference don't agree with them."
He said that on the issue of Ukraine aid, Republican colleagues like Greene, who decry more aid as a waste over major domestic problems, "bought into this notion that it's an either/or proposition. ... You can't support Ukraine without the border. We can do both. We're a great nation. Now we are stuck in a political issue here."
"The eyes of the world are watching and our adversaries are watching and history is watching," he went on to say. "And that's what I kept telling my colleagues."
Rep. Khanna, in his separate interview, expanded on his views on another big part of the aid votes this weekend: more money for Israel as it fights Hamas in Gaza after Hamas' Oct. 7 terror attack sparked a war.
Khanna was one of 37 Democrats who voted against the individual aid bill for Israel, but he sought to draw a contrast between his opposition for offensive funds versus defensive funds to allow Israel to protect itself.
"It was a hard vote. I mean, look, it -- this was a stance against a blank check for [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu and offensive weapons unconditionally while he's talking about going into Rafah ... when we know more women and children are going to die," Khanna said, echoing the increasing criticism that Israel's bombardment of Gaza cities has killed far too many civilians. (Israel insists it takes steps to protect civilians.)
"We wanted to make it clear that there has to be a change in strategy and no more famine and suffering in Gaza," Khanna said, continuing: "So why are we giving this unconditionally to Netanyahu when the entire world is saying that there's famine there, that we need a new strategy, that we need release of the hostages [thought to be held by Hamas] and peace?"
Pressed by Karl on his vote against funding for Israel in the wake of Iran's direct strikes on the country this month -- marking a new phase in what has long been seen as a shadow war between them -- Khanna said he would have supported strictly defense-related monies.
The goal, however, should be an end to the fighting through coalition building in the region, he said.
"The reality is, until we have a security cooperation effort, a diplomatic architecture in the Middle East, with Iran, with Saudi Arabia, with Israel, you're never going to get peace," he said.
Khanna alsotook a skeptical view of the legislative pushto force TikTok's Chinese parent company to sell it or face a ban in the U.S. amid data security and foreign influence concerns, which TikTok calls baseless.
"I don't think it's going to pass First Amendment scrutiny because I think there are less restrictive alternatives. ... I doubt it survives scrutiny in the Supreme Court," Khanna predicted.
