Lawfare Daily: How Congress Passed the National Security Package with Molly Reynolds
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 30 April 2024
⏱️ 50 minutes
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Summary
On April 24, President Joe Biden signed the National Security Package into law. It's a bundle of legislation that provides aid to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan and requires TikTok's Chinese parent company to divest from the app or face a national ban, among various other provisions.
Lawfare Associate Editor Katherine Pompilio sat down with Lawfare Senior Editor Molly Reynolds to unpack what exactly is in the package and explore the legislation’s journey through Congress. They talked about the group of hardline Republicans that blocked the legislation in the House, how Speaker Mike Johnson had to rely on the help of Democrats to get the aid package for a vote on the House floor, how Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell worked together to get the legislation through the Senate to Biden’s desk, and more.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The following podcast contains advertising. |
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| 0:30.0 | Democrats the whole time were sort of mostly clear that you know they definitely |
| 0:37.2 | wanted to support assistance to Ukraine the politics of supporting assistance to Israel without additional conditions |
| 0:46.2 | on how the Israelis use that aid, that has gotten more complicated over time. |
| 0:52.4 | It's the Law Fair Podcast. |
| 0:54.0 | I'm Catherine Pompilio, associate editor of Law Fair, |
| 0:57.0 | with Molly Reynolds, senior fellow in governance studies |
| 1:00.0 | at the Brookings Institution, and senior editor at law fair. |
| 1:04.0 | I think it is possible that we will see a vote on resolution declaring the speakership vacant so the same mechanism from the floor |
| 1:15.8 | that we saw against McCarthy I think it's possible we'll see that against Johnson |
| 1:20.4 | today we're talking about the story of the national security package legislation in Congress. |
| 1:27.0 | So, Molly, there's obviously a lot going on, or a lot has been going on in Congress and most recently President Biden just signed the |
| 1:37.4 | national security package into law amongst you know everything else that's happening. Let's unpack this piece of legislation. |
| 1:44.9 | What's the purpose of it? How many bills are in it? Can you please just explain it to me? |
| 1:49.9 | Sure. So the legislation that the House and the Senate passed and that President Biden has now signed into law has four parts. |
| 1:58.4 | So one part involves providing additional assistance to Ukraine. |
| 2:04.0 | One part involves providing additional assistance to Israel. |
| 2:08.2 | There's also some money in there for humanitarian assistance in Gaza and the ability to use that money in other places |
| 2:19.3 | around the world as well. |
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