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Americans got an unusual, lawmaker’s-eye view of Saturday’s passage of <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/8035/text" target="_blank">legislation</a> providing support to Ukraine. A video <a href="https://twitter.com/RepThomasMassie/status/1781767781945360480" target="_blank">shared on social media</a> showed members of the House — Democrats, specifically — cheering and waving Ukrainian flags as the long-stalled funding measure aimed at bolstering Ukraine’s fight against Russia was advanced to the Senate.

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The video was not presented as a positive. Filmed from the Republican side of the House floor, it affords a glimpse of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who voted against the measure, offering a thumbs-down. Someone close to the camera says, “Isn’t that weird?” And the person who filmed it — Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) — posted it with a disdainful caption.

“This,” Massie wrote, “is the U.S. House of Representatives under the direction of Speaker Mike Johnson [(R-La.)]. Democrats are celebrating his total capitulation with no victory for securing our border.”

The post accrued thousands of favorites and was shared thousands of times, often with comments indicating agreement with Massie’s position — that it was embarrassing or shameful for Democrats to celebrate the legislation and Ukraine.

There’s a reason that the viewpoint of the video is unusual: The use of electronic devices on the floor is forbidden. A few years ago, Democrats <a href="https://rollcall.com/2018/11/14/selfies-on-the-floor-members-elect-break-the-rules-while-they-still-can/" target="_blank">live-streamed</a> a sit-in focused on gun control, after which the ban was <a href="https://rollcall.com/2017/01/03/house-adopts-rules-after-nixing-ethics-office-change/" target="_blank">put in place</a> by the Republican majority. Massie’s video, in other words, broke the rules.

On Tuesday afternoon, Massie had an update.

“Instead of fining democrats for waving flags, the House Sergeant-at-Arms just called and said I will be fined $500 if I don’t delete this video post,” he <a href="https://twitter.com/RepThomasMassie/status/1782858040657510501" target=_blank>wrote</a> on social media. “Mike Johnson really wants to memory hole this betrayal of America.”

“Upon viewing Rep. Massie’s tweet, our team reached out to the Sergeant-at-Arms,” the speaker <a href="https://twitter.com/SpeakerJohnson/status/1782887893494571019" target=_blank>wrote</a> on X. “I do not agree with this assessment and there will be no fine imposed on Rep. Massie.”

Fine. Dust off our hands. Crisis averted.

But, of course, none of this was about the video, as Massie’s posts make obvious. It was, instead, about the Ukraine vote, rancor between the parties and rancor within the GOP — rancor that puts Johnson at odds with his party’s fringe.

Consider the contents of the video itself. There’s a reason the Democratic side of the chamber was waving Ukrainian flags, and it wasn’t just that they were enthusiastic about the support being provided to Ukraine. It was also meant to contrast their support for Ukraine with Republican opposition — and, by extension, with tacit GOP support for Russia’s invasion.

No Democrats <a href="https://clerk.house.gov/Votes/2024151" target=_blank>voted against</a> the bill. A majority of Republicans did — more heavily from the further-right edge of the party conference. Republicans who voted against the measure averaged an ideology score of 0.6 on <a href="https://voteview.com/" target=_blank>Voteview</a>’s measure (called DW-NOMINATE), where a 1 is the most conservative a member can be. Those who supported the legislation averaged 0.42.

Opposition to additional support for Ukraine is often framed in the cost, the scale of government spending that’s presented as being shipped overseas. The reality of Ukraine funding <a href="https://www.cfr.org/article/how-much-aid-has-us-sent-ukraine-here-are-six-charts" target="_blank">in general</a> and <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-house-vote-long-awaited-95-billion-ukraine-israel-aid-package-2024-04-20/" target="_blank">this bill specifically</a> is that a lot of the spending occurs domestically. About $23 billion of the $61 billion included in the legislation, for example, is meant to restock stores of American weapons and munitions that were sent to Ukraine. That materiel has to be <a href="https://sgp.fas.org/crs/natsec/IF10605.pdf" target="_blank">sourced from American companies</a> (with some limited exceptions).

The broader issue — the one being highlighted by the Democrats in their response to the bill’s passage — is that many on the right-most flank of the GOP conference are hostile to Ukraine’s position. In many cases, that’s a reflection of former president Donald Trump’s view of the conflict and his <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/02/22/trump-reacts-putins-invasion-ukraine-exactly-youd-expect/" target=_blank>well-established</a> sympathies for Russian President Vladimir Putin. Greene, for example, has more than once <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/04/18/marjorie-taylor-greene-lasers-israel-amendment/" target=_blank>echoed</a> anti-Ukraine rhetoric boosted by Russia.

The challenge for Johnson all along was figuring out how to pass the bill — which he supported — without alienating Greene, Massie and the party’s fringe. Under ongoing pressure from Greene in particular, he finally just gave up. That was the frustration Massie offered when sharing the video: not that the bill passed but that Johnson let it pass. That was his response to being told that the video would trigger a fine: It’s Johnson wanting to muffle criticism.

Johnson’s response to Massie was conciliatory, waving the whole thing away. That makes sense from the typical perspective of a political leader; the fine is meaningless and the offense mild. But here it’s more fraught. This isn’t simply Massie posting a video. It is, instead, Massie using the confines of the House to attack Johnson specifically. He’s bringing the tactics of the right-wing fringe — online outrage and cherry-picked information — within the walls of the House. He’s injecting the online world into the space that Johnson controls.

The effects of that are not significant, certainly. Massie could have had as much success clipping C-SPAN’s coverage of the vote. But the symbolism is striking. Johnson’s tenure (like former House speaker Kevin McCarthy’s before him) is imperiled by the motivations of the right-wing fringe to appeal to the online and on-air conversation rather than to the consensus of the party. In his response to Massie, Johnson is carving out a space for that online conversation on the floor of the House.

It’s anyone’s guess whether Johnson retains his position until January. Probably. Maybe? But this skirmish is a good reminder of why he may not: A big chunk of his conference is less interested in funding an effort to repel Russia’s invasion of Ukraine than in scoring social media attention — and opposes funding Ukraine in part <i>because</i> of the social media attention it generates.

The Aftermath: The Last Days of the Baby Boom and the Future of Power in America

Ohio State University

Philip Bump is a Post columnist based in New York. He writes the newsletter <a href="https://wapo.st/3m3QTiy">How To Read This Chart</a> and is the author of <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/696653/the-aftermath-by-philip-bump/">The Aftermath: The Last Days of the Baby Boom and the Future of Power in America</a>.

Philip Bump

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