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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

The US House of Representatives is expected to vote on sending additional aid to Ukraine and Israel on Saturday evening, in a move that could provide $95bn in critical support to American allies and end months of congressional inaction.

Mike Johnson, the Republican Speaker of the House and ally of Donald Trump, told fellow party members on Wednesday that he would publish draft legislation on three bills with additional military funding for Israel, Taiwan and Ukraine.

House members will have 72 hours to study the legislation, setting the stage for a final vote on all three measures on Saturday evening that will be watched closely by US allies in Europe.

Johnson’s gambit comes at a critical time for Kyiv in its war against Russia’s full-scale invasion, and follows months of lobbying by US allies who have warned that Ukraine’s defences could be overrun by far superior Russian firepower without fresh military aid from Washington.

But the decision to send the legislation to the House floor comes with considerable political risk for Johnson. Rightwing opponents within his party have vowed to eject him as Speaker if he allows a vote on the aid, and Johnson is expected to need Democrats’ support to get the funding passed — and to stay on as Speaker.

Momentum to reintroduce the aid packages picked up after Iran’s weekend attack on Israel, with President Joe Biden calling it a “brazen” and “unprecedented” attack on one of the US’s closest allies in the Middle East.

The possible breakthrough on US funding for its allies follows months of inaction in the Republican-controlled House, which has refused to take up a Senate-approved $95bn national security supplemental aid package that included $60bn in funding for Ukraine, as well as billions of dollars for Israel and Taiwan.

US allies in Europe have been alarmed at the deadlock in Congress over more support for Ukraine, where Russian forces have threatened to gain more territory two years after Vladimir Putin launched the full-scale invasion.

The Russian military has stepped up its bombardment of Ukraine in recent weeks as well, amid fears that Ukraine’s aerial defences are growing weaker.

While the EU has scrambled to put together stop-gap military funding packages in recent months, European diplomats admit they lack the defence capabilities and manufacturing capacities to replace the US.

The frozen funding stream has also spooked some European capitals that fear it is a harbinger for US policy towards Ukraine under a potential Trump presidency, should he win back control of the White House in November’s election.

Jens Stoltenberg, Nato’s secretary-general, said on Wednesday he was “encouraged by indications that the US Congress may take up further aid to Ukraine in the coming days”.

“My message is clear: Send more to Ukraine,” he added.

Johnson’s plan, unveiled on Monday, splits the aid into three separate bills, including a $60.8bn Ukraine aid bill, a $26.4bn measure in support of Israel, and an $8.1bn package to send aid to Taiwan and other countries in the Indo-Pacific intended to deter Chinese aggression.

Johnson has said he will also publish a draft of a fourth bill that would seize Russian assets, impose additional sanctions on Russia, China and Iran, and ban TikTok from app stores unless its Chinese owner divests ownership of the video-sharing platform. A fifth bill would seek to boost security on the US-Mexico border.

But passage of the bills is not guaranteed. Republicans control the House by a tiny margin that will shrink to just one vote on Friday, when Wisconsin Republican Mike Gallagher is expected to step down from the chamber.

The White House and senior Democrats have reserved judgment on Johnson’s plan, saying on Tuesday that they were awaiting more details before taking a position.

Johnson’s leadership has been on shaky ground for weeks, since the firebrand Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene threatened to call a vote of no confidence in his speakership. On Tuesday, Thomas Massie, a Republican from Kentucky, said he would join Greene’s effort and called on Johnson to resign.

But Johnson vowed to fight on, telling reporters it was an “absurd notion that someone would bring a vacate motion when we are simply here trying to do our jobs”, He said he considered himself a “wartime Speaker”, adding: “I didn’t anticipate this would be an easy path.”

House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mark Green, R-Tenn., Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., and their fellow Republican impeachment managers walk back through the U.S. Capitol Rotunda after transmitting articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to the Senate on Tuesday.

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House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mark Green, R-Tenn., Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., and their fellow Republican impeachment managers walk back through the U.S. Capitol Rotunda after transmitting articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to the Senate on Tuesday.

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To debate or not debate?

That’s the question facing the upper chamber Wednesday ahead of afternoon plans to swear in all 100 senators as jurors in the impeachment trial against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer was expected to dispose of the charges, with either a motion to dismiss or by tabling them, but discussions continued late Tuesday for a potential bipartisan deal for debate. A deal had yet to be reached by early Wednesday.

“We want to address this issue as expeditiously as possible,” Schumer said Tuesday. “Impeachment should never be used to settle a policy disagreement. Talk about awful precedents.”

The trial comes roughly two months after House Republicans voted to impeach Mayorkas by one vote, the tightest of margins. The House impeachment managers delivered the articles to the Senate on Tuesday, triggering the next steps in a trial.

“Alejandro N. Mayorkas thus warrants impeachment and trial, removal from office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust, or profit under the United States,” the lead House impeachment manager, House Homeland Security Committee Chair Mark Green, R-Tenn., read from the resolution to the Senate chamber.

The Democratic-led Senate is not expected to convict or remove Mayorkas.

What the charges are

The House impeachment resolution includes two charges — willfully ignoring the law and breaching the public’s trust.

At the center of the procedural fight is the U.S.-Mexico border and the people who have crossed it in record numbers. Republicans accuse Mayorkas of refusing to enforce immigration laws, Democrats and the Biden administration say Republicans have a policy disagreement with the White House and impeachment isn’t the way to address it.

Republicans in both chambers are eager to put the issue of border security front and center during this election year. President Biden’s handling of the situation at the U.S.-Mexico border remains a weak spot politically for him, according to recent public opinion polls.

Republicans demand debate

No other legislative business can be taken up during the trial, unless all 100 senators agree otherwise. That’s a concern for Democrats, with Congress facing a Friday deadline to renew legislation to extend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, which remains quite controversial. Congress is also debating additional aid for Israel, following the attack from Iran over the weekend.

However, a conservative wing of Senate Republicans has joined their House counterparts in calling for debate on the charges facing Mayorkas. On Tuesday, Utah Republican Sen. Mitt Romney, a moderate, joined the calls.

“I far prefer having a debate and discussion of some kind or a trial or a committee discussion,” Romney told NPR. “I think a motion to table sets a very unfortunate constitutional precedent.”

Democrats are watching moderate Republicans like Romney very closely in the narrowly controlled chamber because he is a key swing vote who could help wrap the effort up as quickly as possible.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said Tuesday on the floor that “history and precedent dictate” that the Senate hold a trial.

“It would be beneath the Senate’s dignity to shrug off our clear responsibility and fail to give the charges we’ll hear today the thorough consideration they deserve,” he said.

House Speaker Mike Johnson had earlier urged Schumer in a written statement to hold a public trial.

“The catastrophe at the southern border is the number one issue for the American people. We must hold those who engineered this crisis to full account,” he said.

Electricity supply is becoming the latest chokepoint to threaten the growth of artificial intelligence, according to leading tech industry chiefs, as power-hungry data centres add to the strain on grids around the world.

Billionaire Elon Musk said this month that while the development of AI had been “chip constrained” last year, the latest bottleneck to the cutting-edge technology was “electricity supply”. Those comments followed a warning by Amazon chief Andy Jassy this year that there was “not enough energy right now” to run new generative AI services.

Amazon, Microsoft and Google parent Alphabet are investing billions of dollars in computing infrastructure as they seek to build out their AI capabilities, including in data centres that typically take several years to plan and construct.

But some of the most popular places for building the facilities, such as northern Virginia, are facing capacity constraints, which in turn is driving a search for suitable sites in growing data centre markets globally.

“Demand for data centres has always been there, but it’s never been like this,” said Pankaj Sharma, executive vice-president at Schneider Electric’s data centre division.

At present, “we probably don’t have enough capacity available” to run all the facilities that will be required globally by 2030, said Sharma, whose unit is working with chipmaker Nvidia to design centres optimised for AI workloads.

“One of the limitations of deploying [chips] in the new AI economy is going to be . . . where do we build the data centres and how do we get the power,” said Daniel Golding, chief technology officer at Appleby Strategy Group and a former data centre executive at Google. “At some point the reality of the [electricity] grid is going to get in the way of AI.”

The power supply issue has also fuelled concerns about the latest technology boom’s environmental impact.

Countries worldwide need to meet renewable energy commitments and electrify sectors such as transportation in response to accelerating climate change. To support these changes, many countries will need to reform their electricity grids, according to analysts.

The demands on the power grid are “top of mind” for Amazon, said the company’s sustainability chief, Kara Hurst, adding that she was “regularly in conversation” with US officials about the issue.

Data centres — industrial buildings, often covering large areas of land, that house the physical components underpinning computer systems, such as cabling, chips and servers — are part of the backbone of computing.

Research group Dgtl Infra has estimated that global data centre capital expenditure will surpass $225bn in 2024. Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang said this year that $1tn worth of data centres would need to be built in the next several years to support generative AI, which is power intensive and involves the processing of enormous volumes of information.

Such growth would require huge amounts of electricity, even if systems become more efficient. According to the International Energy Agency, the electricity consumed by data centres globally will more than double by 2026 to more than 1,000 terawatt hours, an amount roughly equivalent to what Japan consumes annually.

“Updated regulations and technological improvements, including on efficiency, will be crucial to moderate the surge in energy consumption from data centres,” the IEA said this year.

US data centre electricity consumption is expected to grow from 4 per cent to 6 per cent of total demand by 2026, while the AI industry is forecast to expand “exponentially” and consume at least 10 times its 2023 demand by 2026, said the IEA.

Even before the generative AI boom, some major markets were struggling to keep up with demand. It can take years for new renewable energy projects such as wind farms to gain regulatory approval and be connected to the grid. There is also a need in some places to build new transmission lines that carry electricity from one point to another.

In northern Virginia, the world’s largest data centre hub, power provider Dominion Energy paused new data centre connections in 2022 while it analysed how to deal with the jump in demand, including by upgrading parts of its network.

In October, the company said in filings to a Virginia regulator that it was experiencing “significant load growth due to data centre development” and that growing power demands presented a “challenge”.

In response to the demand, authorities in jurisdictions including Ireland and the Netherlands have sought to limit new data centre developments, while Singapore recently lifted a moratorium.

Developers are looking to build sites in growing areas such as the US states of Ohio and Texas, regions of Italy and eastern Europe, Malaysia and India, according to analysts.

Finding appropriate sites can be challenging, with power just one factor to consider among others such as the availability of large volumes of water to cool data centres.

“For every 50 sites I look at, maybe two get to the point where they may be developed,” said Golding from Appleby Strategy Group. “Folks are sifting through large numbers of properties.”

The concerns have driven interest among data centre developers in options such as onsite power generation and nuclear energy, with Microsoft this year hiring a director of “nuclear development acceleration”.