Speaker Mike Johnson just proved that if you let a group of conservatives throw a tantrum on the House floor for nearly a month, eventually they will get tired and sit down. All it took was giving them what they wanted.
A group of House conservative holdouts finally ended their weeks-long blockade of the floor on Tuesday, allowing the House to approve a procedural rule in a 215-211 vote. The move cleared the way for a State Department appropriations bill, legislation to make daylight saving time permanent, and a measure to expand veterans' benefits, as Conservative Brief reported. The secret ingredient? Johnson agreed to pair the State Department funding bill with the SAVE America Act, a Trump-backed voter ID measure that the rebels had been demanding get its moment in the spotlight.
Rep. Randy Fine of Florida was the lone Republican to vote against the rule, because apparently there is always one guy at every party who refuses to eat the cake. All Democrats also voted no, making this a party-line procedural affair.
The blockade had been running since late June, with conservative lawmakers insisting Republican leaders schedule floor votes on the SAVE America Act and a broader border security package. With Republicans holding a razor-thin majority, Johnson could only afford to lose a handful of votes, which gave the rebels outsized leverage to basically park the entire legislative bus in the middle of the highway.
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, who helped lead the blockade, agreed to end the standoff once Johnson proposed the pairing. She issued a warning on social media Monday: "If John Thune strips it out in the Senate, that will be on him and the entire country should be watching what he does." Senate Majority Leader Thune, for his part, has repeatedly said the bill lacks the votes to pass the Senate because of unified Democratic opposition. So this is shaping up nicely for a dramatic sequel.
Fox News reported that Johnson had previously tried to attach the SAVE America Act to the annual defense authorization bill before the July 4 recess, but Luna and her allies kept the blockade going anyway. Nothing says "Happy Independence Day" like grinding your own party's agenda to a halt.
Meanwhile, members of the House Freedom Caucus have been pushing for consideration of the Permanent Trump Secure Border Act, which would codify several of the president's executive orders on immigration. Rep. Chip Roy of Texas told Fox News, "We need to deliver on codifying border security, deal with the birthright citizenship issue. These are all issues people that I represent care about intently and that we've talked about doing, and we need to deliver."
Perhaps the best moment of the whole saga came from Rep. Keith Self of Texas, who posted on social media, "Making Daylight Saving Time permanent won't matter at all if we don't have election integrity." He then added, referring to the SAVE America Act: "Priorities." He did, however, vote yes on the procedural rule, proving that sometimes you can have your outrage and eat it too.
Republican leaders still have a mountain of work ahead, including assembling a third reconciliation bill, passing government funding before the Sept. 30 deadline, and preparing a possible supplemental spending package related to the Iran conflict. But at least now they can actually hold votes again, which is a pretty low bar that they are celebrating like a championship.
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