‘Shame on you,’ Polish prime minister tells US Republican senators after Ukraine bill blocked – Europe live

Here’s the background to Donald Tusk’s blunt post this morning.

Joan Greve, senior US political reporter for the Guardian, writes:

The Senate blocked a bipartisan border and national security bill from advancing on Wednesday, as Democrats accused Republicans of bending to the political wishes of Donald Trump at the expense of their constituents.

The vote was 49 to 50, with 45 Democrats and four Republicans supporting the bill’s advancement. Sixty votes were needed to begin debate on the bill.

The Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer of New York, initially supported the bill’s advancement but then changed his vote – a procedural maneuver that would allow the chamber to revisit the proposal in the future.

With the border deal dead, the Senate attempted to advance a separate foreign aid package that would include only the funding for US allies outlined in the bipartisan bill. There was some apparent confusion over how much support that bill had, forcing senators to keep an initial vote on the proposal open for four hours as they debated the best path forward.

When the vote finally closed on Wednesday evening, 58 out of 100 senators were on record supporting the bill’s advancement. But 60 votes will ultimately be required to approve the bill, so it currently lacks the necessary support to pass the Senate. Taking to the Senate floor on Wednesday evening, Schumer announced the chamber would reconvene Thursday to vote on the bill again.

However, it remained deeply unclear whether a foreign aid package without border measures could pass the Senate, which considered a similar proposal back in December. Republicans, who insisted that the legislation must address the border, previously blocked that package from advancing.

The $118bn bipartisan bill would have granted the president a new power to shut down the border when daily crossings pass a certain limit while also expediting the asylum review process, which could have led to quicker deportation for many migrants.

The bill would have provided $60bn in military assistance for Ukraine, $14bn in security assistance for Israel and $10bn in humanitarian assistance for civilians affected by wars in Ukraine, and Gaza and the West Bank.