As House Speaker Mike Johnson tries to pass distinct foreign aid packages — on Ukraine, Israel, and the Indo-Pacific — through a House divided and against hardcore MAGA objection, the Speaker will have one Republican in his corner who won’t be there long.
Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI) recently announced his resignation from Congress, with his last day scheduled for this Friday. Yet as Johnson works to push the bills through — with a Saturday night vote deadline — Gallagher’s office told Axios that “the congressman has the flexibility to stay and support the aid package on Saturday.”
The willingness of Gallagher to stay past his self-made expiry date isn’t surprising from a policy standpoint — it was the maddening inability of the House to pass legislation like this that frustrated Gallagher while he was in office.
[NOTE: Gallagher, whose foreign policy focus is on China and the Indo-Pacific, said in early 2023 that “if deterrents were to collapse even further in Ukraine, or if we were to allow Russia to totally take over Ukraine, I think it would give Xi Jinping a massive green light to make a move on Taiwan, and then we would find ourselves in a really, really serious and dangerous situation the likes of which we haven’t seen since World War II.”]
But if the Congressman’s willingness to stay on to help the U.S. maintain its principled foreign policy stance isn’t out of character, his willingness to endure even one more day of the strain that Gallagher has faced on the job is perhaps surprising.
Speaking with reporters this week after a hearing on China and fentanyl, Gallagher revealed he had faced death threats and that his family had been endangered by extremists who disagreed with his political positions.
“This is more than just me wanting to prioritize being with my family,” Gallagher said. “I signed up for the death threats and the late night swatting, but they did not. And for a young family, I would say this job is really hard.”