Biden signs foreign aid bill that provides essential military aid to Ukraine

Washington
CNN
–

President Joe Biden signed into law on Wednesday an aid package that provides essential military aid to Ukraine, ending months of negotiations and debate.

The aid package, approved by the Senate late Tuesday night and worth $95 billion in total, includes nearly $61 billion in aid for Ukraine, $26 billion for Israel and $8 billion for the Indo-Pacific. The package also includes a bill that could eventually lead to a ban on TikTok in the United States — giving Chinese parent company ByteDance roughly nine months to sell it or else be banned from app stores in the United States.

Wearing a US-Ukraine flag pin and speaking from the White House after signing the bill Wednesday, Biden said it was a good day for America, a good day for Ukraine and a good day for world peace.

The aid package, Biden said, will make America safer. It will make the world safer. And it continues America's leadership in the world.

The signing of the aid package was the culmination of months of tense negotiations, personal lobbying by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and a split in the House Republican caucus that continues to threaten House Speaker Mike Johnson's leadership position. House hardliners opposed further US funding to Kiev and threatened to oust Johnson over his handling of the negotiations. Conservatives in Congress have opposed additional aid for what they see as an unwinnable war.

Biden had spent months lobbying Johnson to move forward with aid to Ukraine, asking senior administration officials and CIA Director Bill Burns to lay out the stakes for Ukraine — and ultimately democracy in Europe and around the world. – if Russia continues to make inroads into its military. campaign there.

Earlier this year, Biden signaled his intentions to make significant concessions on immigration if Congress moves forward with the aid bill. Republicans in Congress had sought those concessions but backed away from the issue after former President Donald Trump signaled his opposition to allowing Biden to claim a victory on an issue Trump hopes to campaign on.

He acknowledged the bumpy road to getting through the pack in his remarks on Wednesday.

It was a tough road, Biden said. It should have been easier. Should have gotten there sooner. But in the end, we did what America always does: We rose to the moment, we came together. We are done.

Spending much of his remarks talking about aid to Ukraine, Biden noted that Russia has been responsible for a brutal campaign against Ukraine.

They have killed tens of thousands of Ukrainians, Biden said, bombed hospitals, gardens, grain silos, tried to plunge Ukraine into a cold, dark winter.

But left unsaid in that statement is something likely to cause further frustration from the Bidens' left: Israel has also been accused of targeting hospitals in Gaza, using hunger as a weapon of war and waging a campaign military inaccuracy that has killed dozens of people. thousands of Palestinians, many of them children. The aid package includes billions of dollars in additional military equipment for that country.

Some of the Democrats who voted against the bill cited aid to Israel as the reason they did so.

The final vote in the Senate was 79-18. Fifteen Republicans voted against the bill with two Democrats and one independent. Among the senators who voted against the bill was Sen. Bernie Sanders, who spent time with Biden earlier this week and said he opposed further US funding of Israel's war in Gaza.

Enough is enough, Sanders said in a post on X shortly after the bills passed. There is no more money for [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu's war machine.

The effects of the bills will be felt most quickly and acutely on the battlefields of Ukraine, whose soldiers have faced ammunition shortages and battlefield losses in the absence of U.S. aid this year.

Biden said shipments of military supplies to Ukraine would begin in the coming hours and would include air defense equipment and ammunition for artillery and missile systems, along with armored vehicles.

The Pentagon announced that a $1 billion aid package would go to Ukraine just moments after Biden signed the bill.

Among the capabilities included in the new package are munitions for the High Mobility Artillery Missile Systems (HIMARS), artillery shells, RIM-7 and AIM-9M air defense missiles, Bradley infantry fighting vehicles, Stinger anti-aircraft missiles and more. It also includes various logistical and tactical vehicles, anti-armor systems, training munitions and spare parts, as well as small arms ammunition, including 50-caliber rounds to combat drones.

CNN reported Tuesday that administration officials have told Congress that the U.S. would send the Army's Long-Range Tactical Missile Systems, or ATACMS, a system that Ukraine has long requested. The Pentagon revealed it had already sent those long-range missiles earlier this month after Biden spoke.

Biden secretly approved the transfer of the long-range missile in February for use inside Ukrainian territory. The ATACMS missiles were then quietly included in the $300 million aid package announced on March 12 and were finally delivered to Ukraine earlier this month, according to Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Garron Garn.

It was not announced that we were providing Ukraine with this new capability at the time in order to maintain operational security for Ukraine at their request, Garn said, deferring to questions about their use for the Ukrainian military.

Last fall, the U.S. first sent the short-range variant of the ATACMS missile system to Ukraine, which can reach about 100 miles, while the longer-range version can reach up to 190 miles.

Ukrainian officials have privately and publicly asked the US to target long-range missiles deeper behind Russian lines. US officials have previously resisted, citing supply issues and concerns about further provoking Moscow if they are deployed.

Biden's campaign will still use TikTok to reach voters, officials say, despite Biden signing the potential ban into law.

The decision underscores the tense dynamics of the platform, which is owned by a Chinese company. While national security officials, including those in the Biden administration, have warned of its dangers, it remains hugely popular with young Americans, on whom Biden will rely to win re-election.

Asked Wednesday if the campaign would continue to use the app, an official said it would.

A fragmented media environment requires us to show up and meet voters where they are, and that includes online, the official said. TikTok is one of the many places where we made sure our content was seen by voters. When the stakes are so high in an election, we'll use every tool at our disposal to reach young voters where they are. We are using enhanced security measures.

Biden joined Tiktok earlier this year, and often posts videos aimed at comparing his policies to Trump, who is not on the platform.

The bill signed by Biden on Wednesday gives TikTok's Chinese parent, ByteDance, 270 days to sell TikTok. Failure to do so would lead to significant consequences: TikTok would be banned from US app stores and from web hosting services that support it.

This would effectively limit new downloads of the app and interaction with its content. Biden's decision to sign the bill Wednesday sets the deadline for the sale at Jan. 19, 2025. However, under the legislation, Biden can extend the deadline another 90 days if he determines the companies have made progress toward a sale, giving TikTok potentially up to a year before facing a ban.

This story has been updated with additional reporting.

CNN's Haley Britzky, Oren Liebermann and Natasha Bertrand contributed to this report.