The House officially opened debate Friday on Speaker Mike Johnson’s multi-part foreign aid plan after Democrats stepped in to help overcome conservative defections.

The House voted 316-94 to bring up the four-bill package, which includes aid for Ukraine, Taiwan and Israel, as well as GOP policy sweeteners. But underscoring deep intra-party frustrations with Johnson’s strategy, 55 Republicans voted against advancing the package — a once unheard-of GOP rebellion that has grown more common given their single-digit margin.

Normally that would be enough to scuttle Johnson’s plan, but 165 Democrats voted to bring up the bills. It’s the first time they’ve done so during Johnson’s speakership — an alliance that is likely to fuel calls from his most vocal critics to strip him of his gavel.

The House is now slated to vote on the bills early Saturday afternoon, and Johnson will once again need substantial help from Democrats to get them over to the Senate. Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) said Friday that he plans to support the package, while Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) declined to state his position when asked.

“I’m pleased that we were able to come to a bipartisan agreement,” said House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.). He added: “It’s working out the way the speaker wanted it to, which is that every member is free to vote their conscience … in a way they usually aren’t.”

The House structured the package so as to ease its consideration in the Senate, requiring less time and procedural votes to pass the upper chamber. While senators are scheduled to be out of Washington next week, there’s ongoing discussion about canceling that recess to take up the House plan if it passes.

Democrats waited to back the rule Friday morning until they got a signal from their leadership. They trickled into the chamber Friday morning and mostly held back their votes on the question of whether to start debate. But the floodgates opened when party leaders walked up to the dais and turned in their green voting cards, indicating they would vote yes.

The procedural victory for Johnson comes after the Rules Committee signed off on the structure of debate close to midnight on Thursday after a marathon meeting. Reps. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), Chip Roy (R-Texas) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) voted against teeing up the bills for the floor, but Democrats joined the remaining Republicans on the panel to advance the bills out of committee — an unusual step for the minority party in the House.

“It’s not satisfactory,” said Rules Chair Michael Burgess (R-Texas), noting that Republicans should have been able to provide the votes for the rule on their own.

Burgess said it’s up to the speaker as to whether the three conservatives should remain on the committee and continue to ensnare GOP legislation.

Three of the bills largely mirror the Senate-passed $95 billion foreign aid package, which previously stalled out in the lower chamber.

The Israel aid measure would provide more than $26 billion for the country. That includes $4 billion to replenish the Iron Dome and David’s Sling missile defense systems and about $9.2 billion in humanitarian aid.

The Ukraine aid bill would provide $60.8 billion to assist in the ongoing war against the Russian invasion. The bill includes about $10 billion in repayable economic assistance – with the expectation that the money likely won’t be repaid, doing little to placate conservative Ukraine aid critics.

The third bill includes more than $8 billion in Indo-Pacific assistance, while the fourth would enact a host of policy provisions, including revised legislation that would force the divestiture of TikTok by its Beijing-based parent company.

Olivia Beavers, Burgess Everett and Jennifer Scholtes contributed to this report.

Look for something quite unusual on the House floor Friday: Democrats will likely provide the necessary votes on a rule setting up debate on a foreign aid package for Israel, Ukraine, Taiwan and a fourth pillar that also includes a TikTok divestment bill.

How this will work: House lawmakers will vote on the rule, passed thanks to Democrats on the Rules Committee late Thursday, around 10:30 a.m. The vote breakdown promises to be a strange one; the minority party virtually never votes for a majority-led rule. Final votes on the bills would then be held Saturday, but the rule allows them to be reassembled and sent over to the Senate as one.

“We may be in the minority in the House right now, but [House Minority Leader Hakeem] @RepJeffries is essentially functioning as the real Speaker already,” wrote Rep. Grace Meng (D-N.Y.). “Work horses not just show horses.” More from Jordain on the late-night drama.

Also on the agenda: The chamber will begin considering a modified version of their strict border security measure under suspension of the rules, which would require two-thirds support to pass. Republicans could not pass a rule for this measure in Rules earlier in the week and Democrats don’t back it, so passage chances appear low.

As if all that wasn’t enough, the Senate struggled Thursday evening to reach agreement on a package of amendments to a reauthorization of a controversial surveillance tool, known as Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. That program faces a midnight lapse.

Votes are not yet scheduled but are expexted Friday. “We are continuing to work on an agreement on the FISA bill,” Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said late Thursday on the floor.

Speaker Mike Johnson‘s foreign aid package will advance to the floor, after Democrats on the Rules Committee stepped in to counter conservative defections.

The contentious panel vote tees up the four-bill plan for floor consideration on aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, as well as a fourth bill of related GOP policy priorities meant to entice otherwise skeptical Republicans to at least vote to allow debate on the package.

The bundle still needs to clear a so-called rule vote on the House floor before lawmakers formally begin debate and move to votes on passage of the individual bills. Though the House will hold separate final votes on each of the four bills, which is expected to occur on Saturday, they’ll be merged into one bill before being sent to the Senate.

Reps. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), Chip Roy (R-Texas) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) voted against teeing up the bills for the floor. Normally opposition from three conservatives would be enough to scuttle Johnson’s plan in the committee. But Democrats on the panel on Thursday night helped move the package to the floor — a step that typically the minority party doesn’t do in the House.

Democrats are also expected to need to help formally start debate on the House floor, where Republicans can only lose two of their own members before needing help from across the aisle.

Johnson is expected to lose at least several of his own members on the rule vote on the floor, amid skepticism in his right flank over more money for Ukraine and angst because GOP leadership didn’t link the foreign aid package to new U.S. border provisions.

Johnson had intended to bring up a GOP border bill separately this week but it derailed in the Rules Committee on Wednesday amid Republican frustration on his strategy. Instead, GOP leadership announced on Thursday night they will bring the border bill up under suspension on Friday. That will require it to meet a higher two-thirds threshold in order to pass, which it is not expected to meet.

Norman said on Thursday that it was “tough” to vote no in the Rules Committee on bringing the foreign aid package to the floor, but that he would oppose it.

“We met with Speaker Johnson yesterday. … Our only ask was to include a border bill in this rule, not a stand-alone, which the Senate will sit on, give us something,” Norman said on Thursday.

Linking the border to the foreign aid package would likely scuttle its chances of passing in the Senate, which also has to pass the House package before it can go to President Joe Biden’s desk.

Johnson has defended his strategy on the foreign aid package, but it also comes with a major risk to his speakership with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) threatening to trigger a vote to oust him.

She told reporters this week that she won’t call up her resolution to try to strip Johnson of his gavel before the foreign aid package comes to the floor. Johnson has publicly brushed off the motion to vacate threat, telling reporters: “If I operated out of fear over a motion to vacate, I would never be able to do my job.”

But Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), the chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, acknowledged that Johnson has “had a lot of pressure on him.”

“I was with him the night before he made his decision and I know he takes it very personally,” McCaul said. “He told me the next day ‘I want to be on the right side of history.’”

Party leaders are quietly negotiating how to bypass a conservative blockade and bring Speaker Mike Johnson’s four-part foreign aid package to the House floor, according to four people familiar with the discussions.

Three Republicans on the powerful Rules Committee — Reps. Chip Roy of Texas, Ralph Norman of South Carolina and Thomas Massie of Kentucky — are threatening to vote against the so-called rule as the panel meets Thursday, which would block the package before it reached the House floor if all Democrats also opposed it. Typically, the majority party is responsible for clearing the Rules Committee without help from the minority.

The panel took a break after they finished hearing from witnesses earlier in the afternoon, and members have been delayed as cross-party negotiations continue, according to the four people familiar with the conversations.

In exchange for helping circumvent the conservatives, Democrats are hoping they’ll be able to extract concessions from the other side of the aisle and are actively talking with Republicans, according to those people. But it’s not clear what, if anything, Johnson would give them for helping bring the bills to the floor. Democrats have called on him to bring Ukraine aid, in particular, to the floor for months.

“I think Democrats will act in a manner that’s incredibly united once we see the rule and see what it says,” Rep. Teresa Leger Fernandez (D-N.M.), who sits on the Rules committee, told POLITICO Thursday when the meeting recessed.

She wouldn’t comment directly on whether Democrats have heard from Johnson, but added, “I hear that [Johnson] has put a lot of time and thinking into this.”

One potential item that’s off the table: changes to the process on forcing a vote to oust a speaker. Johnson said Thursday in a post on X that he doesn’t plan to endorse any changes to the GOP’s current rules governing the so-called motion to vacate, which can currently be triggered by just one member. Some conservatives had confronted Johnson Thursday, amid rumors that he might try to include a change to that threshold in the rule for the foreign aid package.

Rep. Jake LaTurner (R-Kan.) announced Thursday he’ll finish his current term in the House but won’t run for reelection this fall.

“The busy schedule of serving in and running for Congress has taken a toll,” he said in a statement. “The unrepeatable season of life we are in, where our kids are still young and at home, is something I want to be more present for.”

He called the current congressional dysfunction “distressing” but added “the vast majority of people I have served with are good and trying to do the right thing.” He got to Congress in 2021 after toppling scandal-plagued former Rep. Steve Watkins (R-Kan.)

Conservatives in the House Freedom Caucus are signing up to take shifts to monitor the chamber floor in order to prevent their own party leaders from making unilateral moves that could curb their power.

The Freedom Caucus’ Floor Action Response Team, shorthanded as “FART,” aims to guard against an unannounced request to pass resolutions that would stealthily limit their leverage against leadership, according to two Republicans with direct knowledge, who were granted anonymity to speak candidly.

While one of the Republicans said the group largely doesn’t expect major developments, members also don’t want to be caught flat-footed if a GOP colleague tried to seek unanimous consent or a voice vote for a resolution that would change the House’s structure. Two potential examples of threats the Freedom Caucus perceives: the removal of its members from the Rules Committee or changes to agreements made at the beginning of this Congress with former Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

It’s a troubling sign for Speaker Mike Johnson, who’s trying to pass a foreign aid package that deeply divides his conference amid a growing ouster threat from his right. While Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) spearheads that push to boot him, a greater number of rank-and-file House Republicans are calling for changes to the concessions McCarthy gave conservatives in order to win the gavel last year.

The huge amount of intraparty power the former speaker had to give to the right flank is making it nearly impossible for Johnson to govern with his tiny majority, in the eyes of those Republicans.

During a Wednesday meeting with the speaker and the Republican Main Street group, members of that more establishment-minded bloc pitched Johnson on two changes, according to two other Republicans familiar with the matter. The first would remove Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), Chip Roy (R-Texas) and Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) from the Rules panel — ending an effective conservative stranglehold on the pivotal panel that preps bills for floor debate.

“There were a number of members who told him that he should not allow malcontents to serve on the Rules Committee,” Main Street Chair Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.) told POLITICO afterwards.

The second proposed change by Main Street members was to raise the threshold required for majority-party members to force a vote on ousting a speaker from its current number of one. Members of that group argued that McCarthy’s offers to the right — giveaways that ultimately helped end his term as speaker — are handcuffing Johnson.

Notably, Main Street members did not specifically propose that Johnson make those changes as part of debate on the foreign aid bill — but just urged to move as quickly as possible. Even so, the very idea infuriated conservatives, who vowed it would backfire if Johnson pursued them.

“Talking about changing the threshold to the motion to vacate [the speakership] is likely to induce the motion to vacate,” said Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.).

Gaetz, who is not a Freedom Caucus member, later joined several members of the group in a heated floor exchange with the speaker, during which the Floridian said “we did not get the answer that we wanted” about the changes Johnson might entertain.

Greene put it more bluntly: “Mike Johnson owes our entire conference a meeting. And if he wants to change the motion to vacate he needs to come before the Republican Conference that elected him and tell us of his intentions and tell us what this rule change … is going to be.”

Johnson demurred when asked twice on Thursday whether he was entertaining changes to the threshold of members required to force a vote on firing a speaker.

“I haven’t made any decisions on that,” he told reporters, adding that “I’ve been focused on the substance of the [foreign aid] bill itself.”

Jordain Carney contributed to this report.

The Senate advanced a controversial surveillance bill on Thursday afternoon by a 67-32 vote, as leaders race to fight off attempts to change it that could result in a lapse over the weekend.

The vote to break a filibuster on a law extending and reforming the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act’s section 702 authority sets up a crucial showdown before the Saturday expiration of the program. Critics of the authority, which allows warrantless surveillance of foreign targets, want major changes designed at making it much tougher to access American information that is swept up in the program. They also want to strike House language updating which data providers’ information could be used in the program.

Due to Senate procedure, the spy powers law will expire on Saturday without agreement from all 100 senators to vote more quickly. That in mind, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell must craft a deal that sets parameters on amendment votes and debate time in order to pass the legislation before the deadline.

And changing the two-year extension at this late stage would require the House to vote again on it before Saturday, an arduous exercise that could result in a lapse due to the tight timetable. If the Senate changes the bill, “we run the real risk of FISA expiring,” said Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, the top Republican on the Intelligence Committee.

The fight over surveillance is creating unusual bipartisan coalitions and is likely to lead to a series of challenging Senate votes. Libertarian-leaning lawmakers in both parties want significant alterations — mainly centered on the data provider issue and more warrant requirements when the intelligence community accesses American information — while backers of the intelligence community are warning their colleagues not to play around with the bill with such little time to spare.

Senators in both parties are making a last-minute push to strip out an amendment from the House that would make changes to the law over which data providers must comply with the FISA program. In an interview, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said there’s been no debate about the provision within the Intelligence Committee.

“It was snuck in at the last moment and it’s a massive increase in the number of people that could be forced by the government to be spied on,” Wyden said.

Wyden and Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) said they would insist on a vote to cut that language before moving forward. Both expressed concern that the amendment text is too opaque; Hawley said “it needs to be stripped out.”

Neither said they want the program to shut down over the weekend but would demand that the Senate vote on their amendment before moving forward. Rubio and Senate Intelligence Chair Mark Warner (D-Va.) said they supported keeping the House language, a sign the amendment may struggle to pass.

The Biden administration is spending the week reassuring senators that the bill would not expand the scope of who can be targeted. Biden officials briefed senators on Wednesday and Thursday about the change and reiterated that point, according to a person familiar with meetings.

Attorney General Merrick Garland also wrote to Senate leaders with an explanation of the change. He called it “narrowly tailored” and included an attached explanation asserting it would be unlawful to use the new definition of “electronic communication service provider” to target businesses or private entities.

“It’s really a technical change, but it’s really quite important,” Rubio said. “As people become informed on it, I think a lot of the opposition will melt away.”

Wyden dismissed that explanation, but there are issues beyond that. Other senators argue the bill’s incidental collection of Americans’ information should be much harder for the government to access. Opponents of the legislation want votes on amendments that would require a warrant for that information and another that would prohibit the collection of it altogether.

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said he’d like a vote on the warrant requirement, a sign of the unusual coalitions when it comes to government surveillance programs.

Senators also disagree on what it would even mean if the program expires, especially after a court granted an extension of the surveillance powers into 2025. Warner and Rubio say that companies may cooperate less with the FISA program if there’s an expiration of the law, though Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) calls that argument “scaremongering.”

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle aired outrage Thursday after a POLITICO report that the Chinese embassy lobbied members of Congress on legislation that would force the sale of TikTok by its Beijing-based parent company.

“These reports are no surprise. The Chinese Communist Party has a vested interest in keeping TikTok under its current ownership structure in the United States so it can influence and spy on Americans,” Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.), outgoing chair of the House’s select China panel, said in a statement to POLITICO. “The more the CCP digs in to retain control of the platform, the more it demonstrates exactly why we must divest TikTok from the CCP.”

He’s not alone among senior House committee members.

“I don’t like foreign governments, especially adversaries, interfering with our democratic process, but they do,” said Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), chair of the House Foreign Relations Committee.

“TikTok has no connection with China, I thought, so why would they do that?” quipped Rep. Jake Auchincloss (D-Mass.), a member of the China panel.

“It’s so patently obvious that TikTok is owned and controlled by the Chinese Communist Party,” he added, “that if it takes the fact that the Chinese Embassy is taking meetings on Hill to convince you of that — you may have been too far gone.”

The lobbying push will backfire, Auchincloss predicted, and the legislation will pass.

Rep. John Moolenaar (R-Mich.), incoming chair of the China panel following Gallagher’s slated exit from Congress this week, said the report “definitely shows that the CCP is very influential on this issue and very active and illustrates the importance of why we need to separate TikTok’s operations here in the United States.”

McCaul’s counterpart urged China to butt out of congressional consideration of the legislation, which passed the House on a bipartisan basis in March. A modified version that Speaker Mike Johnson added to his pending foreign aid package earned the support of Commerce Committee Chair Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) on Wednesday, taking a major holdout off the board.

“China is watching and China has been a part of helping Russia with their invasion of Ukraine,” said Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.), his party’s top member on the Foreign Affairs Committee. “China should stay out of this — period.”

Across the Capitol, leading Democrats were also incensed by the report.

“I’ve warned time and time again that companies in China are beholden — by law — to the Chinese Communist Party. At this point, it comes as no surprise that Xi Jinping is heavily invested in preventing a TikTok divestiture, which would put American data and TikTok’s potential for malign influence out of the hands of the CCP,” said Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), chair of the Intelligence Committee.

TikTok said in a statement that the embassy’s Hill meetings were “news to us.” The Chinese Embassy, however, did not deny having held them. In a statement, embassy spokesperson Liu Pengyu said that the “Chinese Embassy in the US tries to tell the truth about the TikTok issue to people from all walks of life in the US.”

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) responded to the POLITICO report with his analysis of why the Chinese government would launch the lobbying push: “Because it risks losing a powerful surveillance capability on unsuspecting Americans and a powerful tool for disinformation and propaganda to advance its interests.”

Katherine Tully-McManus and Rebecca Kern contributed to this report.

House Democrats have adopted a wait-and-see posture on Speaker Mike Johnson’s four-part foreign aid package as it faces a key procedural Rules Committee roadblock.

Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries‘ message to the morning caucus meeting: Stay united and frosty on the foreign aid package. He gave no marching orders on exactly what that would require from Democrats. Their votes will almost certainly be needed to get it over the finish line.

He also made the case to lawmakers that its components were essentially the same as the Senate-passed foreign aid bill, according to multiple people in the room. And the caucus applauded when they were told the fourth part of the package, including a bill potentially restricting TikTok and beefing up sanctions on Iran, was free of border provisions.

Democratic leadership also told the room that they urged Republicans to vote more quickly on the legislation and waive the 72-hour-rule, which they said Republicans are adamant about sticking to in this case.

And needing help from Democrats has not stopped some House GOP leaders from lambasting the minority party in the foreign aid debate.

As House Republicans kicked off a committee meeting Thursday morning to tee up floor action on the four bills, the chair of the Rules Committee railed on President Joe Biden for “shattering” both national and global security, by trying to appease “his radical base.”

Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan are “in these dangerous situations — not in spite of President Biden’s leadership, but because of it,” said Rep. Michael Burgess (R-Texas).

Burgess could need votes from Democrats to even move the legislation beyond his committee, considering conservative Reps. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, Chip Roy of Texas and Ralph Norman of South Carolina all oppose the foreign aid bills. If the three combine with Democrats to vote against the bills, the package won’t make it to the House floor.

Massachusetts Rep. Jim McGovern, the panel’s top Democrat, said it’s “beyond the pale” that top House Republicans are blaming Biden while GOP lawmakers threaten to unseat their speaker for moving to pass the foreign aid measures. Especially, he added, since it’s been more than nine weeks since the Senate overwhelming passed the bipartisan $95 billion assistance package in February.

“And meanwhile the world has been watching, and our allies have been waiting — and waiting and waiting — for the GOP to get their act together,” McGovern said. “Well guess what? Our allies are out of time. And the Republican Party is out of excuses.”