Two Democrats helped Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., score a commanding victory Tuesday after overcoming a House GOP rebellion to advance a resolution to condemn socialism.
House conservatives had threatened to tank a procedural vote, called a “rule vote,” meant to unlock debate on several bills GOP leaders wanted lawmakers to vote on this week.
That rebellion would have been successful if not for two moderate left-wing lawmakers coming to the GOP’s rescue. It’s almost unheard of for the minority party to help their political rivals pass a rule.
It appears to have blindsided House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., who later told reporters he was not notified beforehand.
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Five Republicans voted against the rule, which was poised to fail until Reps. Jared Golden, D-Maine, and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, D-Wash., provided two critical votes to get the GOP over the finish line in a narrow 209 to 208 vote.
The five House Republicans who voted against it were Reps. Pete Sessions, R-Texas; Chip Roy, R-Texas; Ralph Norman, R-S.C., Clay Higgins, R-La.; and Andy Harris, R-Md.
The rebels’ issue was not with the measure itself, nor the bills it would have allowed the House to pass. Their votes were a protest against how their leaders handled a plan to avert a government shutdown just before the midterm elections, a short-term funding bill called a continuing resolution (CR). That measure passed just before the rule vote began.
“NO ON CR. NO ON RULE THAT DOES NOT ALLOW US TO AMEND AND FIX THE CR: The House of Representatives will be voting for a government funding continuing resolution TODAY that FAILS to deliver on common-sense policies for the American people,” Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, wrote on X.
Harris, chair of the House Freedom Caucus, also told reporters he would vote against the rule in protest of the CR.
A handful of GOP lawmakers took issue with how the Senate modified an original House-passed CR, including adding an unrelated measure to delay a congressionally approved hemp product ban by 30 days and a provision curbing the Trump administration’s control over federal grants.
“The Senate did violence to our bill,” Rep. Keith Self, R-Texas, told Fox News Digital. “Hemp and the grants are the two big ones … and, frankly, I just don’t think CRs ought to be on suspension. … When you put it on suspension, you’re not asking for my vote, OK. You’re going to get Democrats.”
Roy also criticized the bill for not cutting off funding to sanctuary jurisdictions or abortion providers like Planned Parenthood.
Self wound up voting for the rule, but not the CR.
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Voting on a bill under “suspension” means it gets fast-tracked past multiple procedural hurdles in exchange for raising the threshold for passage from a simple majority to two-thirds. That means the rule vote’s survival does not affect whether the CR passes or fails.
A CR is a short-term extension of current federal funding levels. It’s normally used to give lawmakers extra time to cobble together a new budget for the next fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1.
The CR up for a vote Tuesday would kick the government shutdown fight to a Dec. 11 deadline.
A rule vote traditionally falls along party lines and, until recently, it was unheard of for lawmakers to defy their leaders by joining the other side to defeat it. But it’s become increasingly common in recent years for lawmakers, specifically on the right, to weaponize it as a form of protest.