Senate Republicans have balked at a border security deal they demanded in exchange for supporting continued aid to Ukraine...
Anticipating its failure, Mr. Schumer has told White House officials and Senate Democrats that he has a Plan B — to immediately seek a second vote on taking up the foreign aid without the border deal. That would set up Republicans to potentially vote twice in one day to block the emergency national security spending bill, a grim prospect for a party that suffered a series of humiliating setbacks (1) on Tuesday that showed its inability to govern.
(1) On the grounds that he didn't secure the Southern border House Republicans moved to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. The vote failed after Republicans voted against impeachment.
(2) Senate Republicans demanded that aid to Ukraine and Israel be joined with a border bill, got jointure, had one of their own negotiate the three-part bill, then withdrew support because Trumpie wanted to use the border as a political issue.
*This is the AP headline just now, at 3:19 pm Wednesday:
Senate Republicans block bipartisan border package, scuttling deal they had demanded from Democrats
(3) House Republicans brought up an Israel aid stand-alone bill Tuesday night, and lost the voted.
(4) Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, has threatened to oust him [Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson] from the speakership if he brings to the floor any bill that includes funding for Ukraine.
A foreign observer on Reddit asked a great question:
Americans, how do we answer? They can't govern and that goes back years and years, through government shutdowns to ousted Speakers from Boehner to McCarthy.
I would answer that it's Trumpie's party, his personal political clown car vehicle, that it is not a tented political party, it's a Mar-a-Lago enclosed ballroom. Now, why that is another question: it's a cult, but we shall not digress. Trumpie didn't want any of these things as not in his personal interests, so his party didn't support them.
There is something else in the shadows of personal cult: Some Republicans, going back to Speaker Newt Gingrich are unwilling to govern; not just that they are unable to, they are that, to be sure, but in addition, they don't want to govern. Sounds crazy, right? But they are the government. They prefer shutting down the entire government. They were sent to D.C. by that half of our country who want smaller and smaller government and if they can't get that, no government. As to our foreign friend's question "what can be done about it?", defeat Trump, which will be done (again); but that won't end it. Members of Congress like Taylor Greene, like Gaetz, will still be members of Congress. They will not be defeated: their constituents approve of them.