As senators gathered on the floor for a typical Monday night vote at the end of October, Senator Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky Republican and minority leader, approached Senator Chuck Schumer, his Democratic counterpart, with some unsettling news: Border security was going to have to be part of any package to free up endangered assistance for Ukraine.
To Mr. Schumer of New York, the majority leader, the ultimatum revived unpleasant memories of his participation in difficult immigration negotiations in 2013 that yielded a compromise, only to collapse despite strong bipartisan support in the Senate. But saying no could doom the Ukraine aid and leave Democrats holding the bag. He and his staff grappled with the problem for a week, then gathered for a conference call on Sunday, Nov. 5. A bold new approach took hold.
“We had an epiphany — sort of, lightning strikes,” Mr. Schumer recalled in an interview. “Do border. If we did it right and were tough about it, it’s a win for us. And it helps us with Ukraine because so many of our people care about Ukraine, they will vote for a good border bill.”
The abrupt change in conventional Democratic thinking had profound significance for the ensuing four months on Capitol Hill. It touched off a circuitous series of events — including some near-death experiences — that paved the way for the Senate’s approval early Tuesday of $95 billion in aid to Ukraine, Israel and U.S. allies in the Indo-Pacific. The final package notably did not contain new border security provisions, after Senate conservatives opted to kill that element of the legislation despite their initial insistence that it be included.
The tanking of the immigration proposal, hammered out over weeks of talks between the designees of Mr. Schumer and Mr. McConnell, ultimately cleared the way for passage of the foreign aid bill. Enough Republicans — 22 in the end — were unwilling to desert Ukraine, and many of them believed that Mr. Schumer and his fellow Democrats had made a good-faith effort to strike a border security deal that was sabotaged by members of their own party.