Murphy says Trump is blocking more U.S. aid for Ukraine

Sen. Chris Murphy used a Sunday television appearance to make a blunt case that the White House is still holding back U.S. help for Ukraine just as Moscow is preparing new attacks. Murphy said he doubted there was enough bipartisan support to press the Pentagon to reallocate Patriot air defenses for Kyiv and argued that Donald Trump “does not want to do what is necessary” to back Ukraine.

The Connecticut Democrat went further, saying a bipartisan sanctions bill has been sitting on the Senate floor for a year and a half and that Trump was sitting on $400 million Congress already approved for Ukraine. “Trump is sitting on $400 million Congress allocated to help Ukraine and has not spent it,” Murphy said. Margaret Brennan noted that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had said the money would be released, but she said CBS had not seen additional details on how or when that would happen.

The claim lands at a moment when the policy dispute is no longer abstract. On May 22, a bipartisan group of senators pressed Hegseth over delays in sending the $400 million security aid package to Ukraine, and the Pentagon still had not provided Congress a spending plan. Four days before Murphy’s interview, Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukraine had intelligence indicating Russia would launch an assault involving drones and missiles, sharpening the immediate stakes for Patriot interceptors and other air defenses.

Murphy’s comments also exposed the limits of Congress’s leverage. Brennan, speaking with Murphy from Hartford, Connecticut, identified him as the author of Crisis of the Common Good: The Fight for Meaning and Connection in a Broken America and noted that he sits on the Appropriations Committee. She said he would question Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday about a $33.6 billion budget request, putting aid to Ukraine, and the administration’s broader foreign policy spending, back under scrutiny on Capitol Hill.

Murphy instead cast his top priority elsewhere, saying ending the war in Iran was at the top of his list. He called that conflict an “absolute disaster” for the United States, saying families and businesses were being hit by gas prices that were “$6 a gallon in some places.” In that frame, Ukraine was part of a larger argument about whether Trump and Senate Republicans are willing to keep using American power abroad, or whether aid already approved by Congress will continue to stall while the battlefield gets worse.