it would support NATO membership and would join NATO if Scotland ever becomes independent, provided the alliance respect Scotland's non-nuclear stance. This led to some senior members of the SNP to leave the party, including John Finnie and Jean Urquhart. During the Russo-Ukrainian crisis, the SNP's defence spokesmen Stewart McDonald reconfirmed the SNP's support for NATO. Other independence parties including the Scottish Socialist Party and the Scottish Greens as well as some in the SNP (mainly on the left) do not support Scotland's membership and would not want to join if Scotland becomes independent. Compared to the Scottish nationalists, the Welsh nationalist party Plaid Cymru is completely opposed to NATO membership and supports withdrawal from the alliance if Welsh independence is achieved. Instead the party advocates a defence position of non-alignment similar that of Ireland. The leader of Plaid Cymru at the time, Leanne Wood went even as far as criticizing her Scottish counterparts in an interview. Among the parties in Northern Ireland, NATO policy tends to follow along the unionist-nationalist axis using the basis of the UK's membership and Ireland's non-alignment. All the main parties that support Northern Ireland being part of the United Kingdom including the Ulster Unionists and the Democratic Unionist parties, support NATO membership. Meanwhile, the parties that advocate unification of Northern Ireland with the Republic of Ireland, including SDLP and Sinn Féin, support Irish neutrality. Among the non-sectarian parties which are parties are neither unionist nor nationalist; the Alliance Party supports NATO membership, while the Green Party is ambiguous in its viewpoint. Among British non-governmental organisations, both the pacifist Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and the Stop the War Coalition advocates British withdraw from the alliance. United States Donald Trump expressed interest in withdrawing from the organization during his 2016 presidential campaign. However, after he was inaugurated in 2017, he stated that the United States would protect allies in the event that Article V is invoked. Nevertheless, the New York Times reported in 2019 that a year earlier, he had already mentioned several times privately that he wanted the United States to leave NATO due to many members not paying the required 2% of GDP funding. Such concerns led the House of Representatives in January 2019, to pass the NATO Support Act (H.R. 676), confirming Congress' support for NATO and prohibiting Trump from potentially withdrawing from NATO. On December 11, 2019, the Senate's Foreign Relations Committee