Analysis | Fed-up House Republicans strike back (2024)

🚨Breaking overnight:

The Israeli military has carried out a strike inside Iran. The apparently limited strike was in retaliation for the barrage of missiles and drones Iran launched against Israel last weekend, per an Israeli official. It’s not clear what damage this latest strike caused, but Israeli officials said it was to signal to Iran that Israel has the ability to strike inside the country. Follow The Post’s coverage here.

And in a major development, the national security package backed by House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) moved one step closer to passage in the House. The House Rules Committee approved the rule for the four-bill plan to provide $95 billion in military aid assistance for Ukraine, Taiwan and Israel and humanitarian aid for Gaza and elsewhere. The package also includes Republican national security demands, including sanctions for Iran, a ban on TikTok and using seized Russian assets to pay for the war in Ukraine.

Democrats made the unusual move of voting for the majority party’s rule, in order to overcome opposition from the three Republicans who voted against it (more on that below). It’s the most significant sign yet that Democrats plan to back the rule on the floor — a decision leadership had been considering but waited to see the amendments and the structure of the rule before committing.

A handful of House Republicans are threatening to oust the Republican speaker for the second time in barely six months — and a growing number of their colleagues are sick of the endless intraparty standoffs.

They want Johnson to take forceful action to make the House work again. They want to raise the threshold for triggering a vote to oust the speaker, known as a motion to vacate. And some of them want to kick three of their colleagues off the powerful House Rules Committee.

But the speaker ruled out changing the motion to vacate on Thursday — and it’s unclear whether he’ll try to make other changes as the House stumbles toward an expected vote tomorrow on a package to send $95 billion in military aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan and humanitarian funding for Gaza that’s bitterly divided the party.

When eight Republicans pitched the House into chaos in October by voting to oust House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), some in their party started discussing changing the chamber’s rules to ensure a single lawmaker couldn’t trigger such a vote again.

But a rules change never happened. Greene’s effort to depose Johnson led some Republicans to try again.

There was universal support for raising the number of lawmakers needed to sign onto a motion to vacate among members of the Republican Main Street Caucus when they met with Johnson on Wednesday, according to Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.), the group’s chairman.

The Ukraine aid bill seemed to offer a rare chance for Republicans to change the motion to vacate because Democrats are expected to vote for the “rule” that governs debate over the bill — something members of the opposition party traditionally almost never do.

But the speaker ruled out changing the motion to vacate less than 24 hours later even though he acknowledged it had “harmed” the Republican majority.

The statement seems to imply not enough Democrats are willing to support the change, perhaps because they’re holding out for broader rules changes. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) called in October for changing the rules so they “reflect the inescapable reality that Republicans are reliant on Democratic support to do the basic work of governing” — a much bigger change than what Republicans want.

Some House Republicans are also pressing Johnson to kick Reps. Chip Roy (R-Tex.), Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) off the Rules Committee, where the three of them wield an effective veto over the House agenda. They can block any rules — which govern debate over bills that come to the floor --- if the three of them vote with the committee’s four Democrats.

McCarthy put the three lawmakers on the committee last year after Roy, Norman and other lawmakers refused to vote for McCarthy for speaker unless he agreed to concessions. Roy and Norman are members of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus, while Massie is an ally of the group.

All three of them voted against the rule for the Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan package late last night.

“When you’re a member the Rules Committee, it is a position where you’re carrying out the will of the conference,” D’Esposito, a freshman who represents a district that Biden won by nearly 15 points, told us. “And they're not. They're carrying out the will of themselves. And I think if that's the situation, then perhaps there needs to be new people on the Rules Committee.”

Rep. Michael Lawler (R-N.Y.) said he thought the overwhelming majority of House Republicans wanted Roy, Norman and Massie off the committee. Any deals that McCarthy struck to become speaker are no longer in force, he added.

Many Main Street Caucus members — though not all of them — feel the same way, Dusty Johnson said. There’s also a renewed appetite for other structural changes that might allow the House to function better.

Massie — the only Republican who’s said publicly he’ll support Greene’s motion to vacate Speaker Johnson if Greene calls it up — said he’s not bothered by the prospect of being kicked off the Rules Committee.

He was more upset by the prospect of changing the motion to vacate, which he described as a cynical attempt by Johnson to hold onto the speakership akin to “something Vladimir Putin would do.”

White House reporter Cleve R. Wootson Jr. files this week’s White House Notebook:

President Biden would like to make it abundantly clear that he hails from the middle class. On Tuesday, in his hometown of Scranton, Pa., he told would-be voters “when I look at the economy, I look at it through the eyes of Scranton, not through the eyes of Mar-a-Lago.”

Then, on Wednesday, he told steelworkers in Pittsburgh they had built and strengthened America’s middle class, and that his worldview comes “from Scranton, from Pittsburgh, from a thousand working, middle-class neighbors all across America.”

Even Thursday, when Biden received a political endorsem*nt from America’s most famous political family, the Kennedys, he talked about how their most celebrated members were champions of the middle class.

For the second election in a row, Biden’s campaign has gone all-in on his middle-class roots, particularly as he tries to win Pennsylvania voters who may be turned off by Trump. In 2020, Biden won the state by about 80,000 votes, but there are signs the coalition that put him in the White House has begun to fracture.

Leaning into his middle-class upbringing also becomes a shorthand for what Biden has said is a clear difference in the values of the two presidential candidates. As Biden was traipsing through the keystone state, Trump was in New York in a trial about whether he made hush money payments to an adult film actress. Biden only obliquely referenced the trial this week, but his values-based message allowed him to draw a contrast without ever saying the words “trial” or “felony” or “Stormy.”

Follow all of Cleve’s reporting here and follow him on X here.

We’re almost there: Five alternates still need to be seated today as the historic criminal trial of former president Donald Trump enters its fourth day.

Twelve jurors — seven men and five women — plus one alternate were sworn in on Thursday, hours after New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan dismissed two jurors who had been sworn in earlier this week. Juror No. 2 requested to drop out of the trial over concerns that her identity would be revealed which, in turn, could affect her ability to sit in judgment of the former president fairly and expose her to harassment. Juror No. 4 was dismissed after expressing similar concerns. He also had issues related to the criminal justice system that weren’t made public during the first round of questioning.

The trial is expected to last six to eight weeks.

Here’s what else you need to know:

Prosecutors say Trump violated his gag order seven times: “Lawyers have been sparring in the courtroom this week over whether Trump has repeatedly violated a gag order by making public comments and social media posts related to witnesses and others Merchan has said should be protected,” our colleagues report. “That discussion led to an extraordinary exchange late Thursday in which Trump’s lawyer pledged to keep his client from posting about witnesses and the judge said he did not think that was possible.”

How should the media balance public interest with the security of prospective jurors?: “The members of the jury are meant to be anonymous. But that effort has been undermined, Merchan said from the bench, by media reports that mentioned potentially identifiable information about the jurors — ranging from their physical appearances to their occupations,” our colleague Will Sommer reports. “The possibility that jurors could be outed — and face reprisal for their eventual verdict — has raised questions about how far the media can and should go in its reporting on the first-ever criminal trial of a former U.S. president, particularly when the defendant in question has demonstrated a hunger for retribution.”

How The Post is handling juror information: “In court, Merchan has permitted prospective jurors to share specific biographical details,” per The Washington Post. “Throughout the jury selection process, The Post will be assessing what information shared in court is in the public interest and balancing that against concerns about the security of potential jurors.”

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