US Senate approves $95bn aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan

The Democratic-led US Senate has voted to pass a $95.34bn aid package for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, amid growing doubts about the legislation’s fate in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives.

In a pre-dawn vote, lawmakers cleared the 60-vote threshold to send the legislation on to the House.

Joe Biden has been urging Congress for months to hurry through the new aid to Ukraine and US partners in the Indo-Pacific, including Taiwan. After Hamas’s 7 October attack on Israel, the US president also requested funds for the US ally, along with humanitarian aid for Palestinians in Gaza.

Ukrainian officials have warned of weapons shortages at a time when Russia is pressing ahead with renewed attacks.

Both houses of Congress must approve the legislation before Biden can sign it into law.

The bill appears to face long odds of getting to the floor in the House, where the Republican Speaker, Mike Johnson, criticised it for lacking conservative provisions to stem a record flow of migrants across the US-Mexico border.

“In the absence of having received any single border policy change from the Senate, the House will have to continue to work its own will on these important matters,” Johnson said in a statement late on Monday.

“America deserves better than the Senate’s status quo,” said Johnson.

Sen John Thune, the chamber’s No 2 Republican, said it was not clear what Johnson would do. “The House, I assume, is going to move on something. Obviously, they’re going to address Israel,” he said.

Hardline Republicans predicted that the Senate legislation would be dead on arrival in the House.

“The bill before us today … will never pass in the House, will never become law,” the Republican senator Rick Scott of Florida said in an early morning speech on the floor.

The legislation includes $61bn for Ukraine, $14bn for Israel in its war against Hamas and $4.83bn to support partners in the Indo-Pacific, including Taiwan, and deter aggression by China.

It would also provide $9.15bn in humanitarian assistance to civilians in Gaza and the West Bank, Ukraine and other conflict zones around the globe.

Republicans have demanded for months that the foreign aid bill include border restrictions. A bipartisan border deal, negotiated over the course of several months, fell foul of most Senate Republicans after it was rejected by Donald Trump, the party’s leading White House candidate.

The Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer stripped the border security language from the bill last week.

Trump, who hopes to use the border issue to unseat Biden in the November election, has since turned his criticism on the foreign aid bill, saying on social media that aid to US allies should instead take the form of loans.

Aid to Ukraine faces powerful headwinds in the House, where Trump’s interests hold greater sway with Republicans, who control the chamber by a thin majority.

Reuters contributed reporting to this article.