The House overwhelmingly passed a national security supplemental package that combines multiple pieces of legislation seeking to bolster U.S. security as well as force sanctions on Iran after an attack on Israel last weekend.
Lawmakers voted 360-58 to advance the 21st Century Peace through Strength Act, one of the bills in Speaker Mike Johnson’s four-pronged foreign aid package being voted on by the House on Saturday. The other three bills provide funds to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan, while the fourth bill focused solely on strengthening U.S. national security.
“In order to truly confront the generational threat posed by the unholy alliance of Russia, China, and Iran, we need to make substantive policy changes in addition to providing critical security assistance to our partners and investing in our defense industrial base,” Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX) said in a statement ahead of the vote. “The time to pass this is now — we cannot wait anymore.”
The legislation includes a number of bills that had already garnered support from the House Foreign Affairs Committee, including a revised TikTok clampdown that passed the lower chamber last month but stalled in the Senate.
The original version would have forced Chinese parent company ByteDance to divest in the social media platform within six months, but the updated version would extend the timeline to up to a year. Without the forced sale, TikTok downloads would be prevented in app stores.
The legislation also includes sanctions against foreign countries, which McCaul called the “most comprehensive sanctions against Iran [that] Congress has passed in years.” The package includes sanctions against the Hamas militant group, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the Iranian government.
One of the most prominent measures included in the bill is the REPO Act, which would seize frozen Russian assets and transfer them to the Ukrainian government to fight against the Kremlin. Several lawmakers have expressed support for such an idea, noting it would provide a way to make Russia pay up for the invasion.
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Other measures tucked into the bill include a requirement for the president to update Congress regularly on the finances of Iranian leadership and require U.S. financial institutions to close accounts connected to those individuals.
The national security supplemental will be combined with the other three foreign aid bills and is set to be transferred to the Senate as one comprehensive piece of legislation. It’s not yet clear when the Senate will consider the bills, although Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said on Saturday that party leaders are looking to hold a vote as early as Tuesday afternoon.