Lisa Desjardins:
Right.
There was a rare weekend session after that tumultuous week last week and after overnight work that ended in a 6:00 a.m. vote this morning where overwhelmingly the Senate in fact did vote to pass this Ukraine and foreign aid bill.
Let's quickly remind folks what's in it. It's about a $95 billion bill. The largest amount in there is for Ukraine, $60 billion. Then there's also money in here for Israel, $14 billion, just under $10 billion for humanitarian aid. That does include for civilians in Gaza.
And there are sanctions and penalties for fentanyl for international operations and perhaps some countries if they're found to be complicit with fentanyl.
Now, here's what happened. In the end, this was a matter of senators who were veteran senators feeling like there was a complete need to support Ukraine. Let's look at who voted for this today.
The Republican senators, there were 22 of them. You can see, looking at those faces, that is a range, a full spectrum from very conservative to more in the middle for senators. Now, I want to look at this group a different way, another important way, the map of where these senators are from.
Look at that. Senators supporting this Ukraine foreign aid bill come from really kind of the middle of the country and the heart of the Republican kind of party, as well as MAGA country, Trump country. Many of these are big Trump states. In the end, what we saw here, 70 votes, Amna, for this bill, all of this the culmination of Zelenskyy coming, personally pleading with senators.
He was able to get enough, more than enough Republican votes in the Senate today.
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