During the last week of February, a large billboard appeared across the street from Mike Johnson’s home church in Benton, Louisiana.
“For a time like this,” it said, quoting a Bible verse next to a picture of a damaged Baptist church in Berdyansk, Ukraine. Johnson was addressed by name.
The ad was paid for by Razom, a Ukrainian human rights group, and appealed to Johnson’s deep Christian faith — and his power as House speaker to secure billions of dollars in U.S. funding to defend Ukraine against Russia’s full-scale invasion.
The campaign paid off last week when Johnson shocked Washington and U.S. allies around the world by allowing the House of Representatives to vote for that aid, providing $95 billion in funding for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan were released.
The Senate also passed the package on Tuesday evening, allowing President Joe Biden to sign it into law on Wednesday. The Pentagon immediately announced the immediate delivery of $1 billion worth of weapons from U.S. military stockpiles – crucial support just as Russian forces are threatening to overwhelm Ukrainian defenses.
It marks a huge about-face for Johnson, who has previously voted repeatedly against Ukraine aid and used his power as speaker for months to block a vote on new support. And it is the culmination of a months-long behind-the-scenes campaign by intelligence chiefs, White House officials, European diplomats and Ukrainian evangelical Christians to persuade him.
People close to Johnson insist that he has long been sympathetic to the plight of the Ukrainian people and has tried in recent months to find a way forward to satisfy warring factions within the Republican Party, including isolationists threatened to oust him because of his support for Ukraine.
“He has never lacked clarity about who is right and wrong in this conflict,” said a person close to Johnson.
The White House first contacted Johnson just days after he became spokesman in October, according to administration officials, who said he was initially briefed on Ukraine by U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan.
But in February of this year, it was Biden himself who applied the pressure, summoning Johnson to the Oval Office and urging him to stop delaying a funding bill for Kiev and Israel that had passed the Senate weeks earlier.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer described the meeting as one of the “most intense” he had ever attended. But when Johnson showed up, he gave little sign that he was convinced.
European nations feared that new U.S. support for Ukraine had died and rushed to find alternative means for Kiev. Ukrainian military leaders warned that they were running out of ammunition.
Looking back, people familiar with the Oval Office meeting now argue that it was crucial to Johnson’s willingness to negotiate. Attendees, including Democratic House Speaker Hakeem Jeffries and Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, were briefed on Ukraine by Sullivan and CIA Director Bill Burns.
According to administration officials, Johnson was recently briefed again by Burns, who hosted the spokesman’s staff at CIA headquarters on March 29 to discuss Ukraine.
Johnson also received briefings from senior Pentagon officials, including from the United States European Command. The intelligence was convincing.
“I really believe in the intelligence and intelligence that we have been given,” Johnson said last week as he explained his decision to call a vote. “I believe Xi [Jinping] and Vladimir Putin and Iran are truly an axis of evil. . . I think Vladimir Putin would continue to march across Europe if he were allowed to.”
Meanwhile, Razom, the Ukrainian group behind the Louisiana billboard, tried to appeal to the speaker in other personal ways.
She organized a speaking tour for Roman Rubchenko, a Ukrainian basketball star who played for the state’s university, to tell Louisiana voters about the war. Razom also arranged for a helmet and letter from Ukrainian firefighters on the front lines with Russia to be sent to Johnson, whose late father served as a firefighter in Shreveport, Louisiana.
Private meetings between Johnson, a devout Baptist, and persecuted Ukrainian Christians were also a “big factor,” said Melinda Haring, a senior adviser at Razom.
Pavlo Unguryan, a Ukrainian evangelical leader who met Johnson after Biden’s State of the Union address in March, helped organize a meeting last week before the House vote with Serhii Gaidarzhi, a fellow Baptist whose wife and four-month-old son did was killed by a Russian drone strike in Odessa at the beginning of March.
In back-channel negotiations with the White House, Johnson stressed the need for accountability over how Ukraine’s money was spent – a major concern of some Republican aid skeptics – and called for more sanctions against Russian companies and entities.
He also pushed for assurances from the White House that Kiev would receive more ATACMS, a U.S. tactical missile system but with longer range than those already in place in Ukraine, as well as ammunition and other weapons systems.
Johnson’s demands for the weapons reflected demands from Ukrainians – including President Volodymyr Zelensky during a meeting with Johnson in December, according to the people involved.
Johnson also sought to shore up support for his position within the party.
On April 12, he traveled to Mar-a-Lago to meet with Trump. The former president, an avowed isolationist, had already come under pressure from several pro-Ukraine foreign leaders, including British Foreign Secretary Lord David Cameron, who pleaded with Trump at dinner on April 9 for more support for Kiev.
According to a person familiar with the discussions, Johnson used the meeting to tell Trump that he would vote on aid to Ukraine. Trump expressed his approval of the speaker in a press conference after the meeting. His reaction a few days later, when Johnson announced his plan, was muted.
But by then, Iran had launched a massive airstrike on Israel on April 13, attacking a U.S. ally and changing the mood in Washington.
Johnson laid out his plans for the four-part national security package two days later, as Congress returned from a weekend of urgent foreign policy discussions. Later that evening, he spoke on the phone with Biden, who had also called him the day before.
“The Iranian attack on Israel was, in his view, an important act that increased the urgency,” said a person familiar with Johnson’s thinking. “The world needs to see that the United States stands behind Israel.”
The law passed Saturday included $26 billion in additional U.S. aid to Israel as well as money to Kiev.
“This is a live-fire exercise for me, as it is for so many families,” Johnson told reporters last week, referring to his son, who will start at the U.S. Naval Academy in the fall. “To put it bluntly: I would rather send bullets to Ukraine than American guys. . . We have to do the right thing and history will judge us.”
Unguryan, the evangelical leader, declined to comment on the details of his private conversations with Johnson, saying only that his “brother in Christ” had prayed for the Ukrainian people.
“Speaker Johnson remained on his knees and prayed to Almighty God to give him the wisdom to make this very important decision, to make a right decision,” he said.
Additional reporting by Felicia Schwartz in Washington