The House leadership on Tuesday abruptly canceled votes and sent lawmakers home early for the holiday recess after a Republican revolt over the party’s agenda stalled business in the chamber. The people who were supposed to run the place couldn’t even keep the machine moving. So they shut it down and went home.
Who Has the Power
The deadlock centered on the annual defense bill, which includes pay raises for the troops and other matters at a time of war, while renegade Republicans pushed to attach President Donald Trump’s priority, the SAVE America Act, a strict voter ID bill. That’s the arrangement on display: war spending, pay for troops, and voting rules all jammed together in a chamber where hierarchy does the bargaining and ordinary people get the bill.
Speaker Mike Johnson’s majority ground to a standstill. The House had already passed the SAVE America Act three times, Johnson said over the weekend on Fox News, but by Tuesday a House vote to advance the legislation collapsed. Republicans led by Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida argued that Johnson’s plan to attach the voting bill to the defense bill was a doomed strategy that would be rejected in the Senate. The chamber’s own members were openly admitting the stunt wouldn’t survive the next gatekeeper.
Trump has refused to sign a popular bipartisan housing bill that cleared both chambers until the voting bill is also approved. He called the housing bill a “yawn.” Johnson spent four hours last week at the White House and said he spent another two hours with the president this week on a path forward. “I told him, ‘Mr. President, I don’t have any tattoos, but if I did, it’d say SAVE America on my shoulder,’ OK?” Johnson said. “We passed it three times in the House already. We’re going to pass it again.”
Who Gets Crushed
The shutdown of House business came as the nation celebrates its 250th birthday this weekend and as the legislative branch, as the report put it, has momentarily called it quits. The emptying Capitol was described as another snapshot of the imbalance of power in Washington as a headstrong executive confronts a weakened Congress. Last week, the Senate similarly shuttered after Trump’s demands. The people outside the marble halls keep living with the consequences while the officials inside argue over whose agenda gets stapled to what.
Republican Majority Leader Steve Scalise of Louisiana said, “That’s disappointing,” and insisted the GOP would try again. “We’re going to keep trying because we have to,” he said. “We’re not done doing big things.” Big things, in this case, meant more procedural games while the chamber stopped functioning.
Republican Rep. Dusty Johnson of South Dakota said recently, “It’s a relatively bad time in Congress. A lot of my colleagues have forgotten how to govern.” Democratic Rep. Pete Aguilar of California, the caucus chairman, said, “We’re not dealing with Speaker Mike Johnson. Unfortunately, Speaker Donald Trump does not want us in this week.”
What They Call Governance
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said, “Donald Trump is fighting with Senate Republicans, Senate Republicans are fighting with House Republicans, and House Republicans are fighting with each other.” He added, “It’s not the Congress that’s struggling. It’s House Republicans who are struggling,” and said Democrats are fighting “to make life more affordable for the American people.” That’s the language of the institution trying to describe its own collapse without naming the rot at the center: a system where power is concentrated upward, then sold back as order.
Rep. Kevin Kiley, who left the Republican Party to become an independent earlier this year, called the situation in the House “frustrating” and said, “It’s just like déjà vu where many times now we run into some sort of obstacle, then the solution is just to go home.” That’s the whole trick, stripped bare. The obstacle appears, the chamber stalls, and the answer is to clear out the building and wait for the next round of pressure from above.
Associated Press writer Joey Cappelletti contributed to the report.