Congress

House rules would make it harder to oust speaker in next Congress

Published

1 year ago

January 1, 2025

Republicans will make it harder to remove the speaker in the 119th Congress under a rules package unveiled Wednesday.

The proposed rules package would require nine GOP members to back making a motion to vacate to trigger a vote on ousting the speaker. That’s an increase from the current rule, which allows any single GOP member to force a vote.

The deal to increase the threshold was negotiated in November by members of the House Freedom Caucus and the small business-oriented Main Street Caucus last year — an agreement that was first reported by POLITICO. Even after a vote is triggered, it still requires the support of a majority of the House in order for a speaker to be removed.

The release of the rules package, which includes proposed changes to the House’s general order of operations, comes ahead of Friday’s start to the new Congress. Republicans will need to formally adopt the package on the House floor, which they can’t do until they elect a speaker. In addition to the change to the motion to vacate, the rules package also tweaks the names of two House committees, allows committees to adopt rules on electronic voting, and tees up votes on 12 GOP bills including legislation related to immigration, voter ID and transgender student athletes.

Speaker Mike Johnson, during a recent Fox News interview, predicted that he will have the votes to become speaker despite his party’s thin margin. But Johnson has yet to lock down the votes he’ll need from his conference. Republicans are expected to have a 219-215 majority at the start of the new Congress, meaning Johnson must have nearly unanimous support from GOP lawmakers to win the gavel.

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) became the first Republican to vow to vote for another candidate — though he hasn’t said who — and roughly a dozen others remain on the fence about if they will support him on Jan. 3. Johnson can afford to have only one House Republican vote for someone else, meaning any additional GOP lawmaker who joins Massie in supporting another candidate could derail the speaker’s race.

Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), a member of the Freedom Caucus, wrote on X on Wednesday that he remains undecided on the speaker vote but indicated that he isn’t a “hard no” against Johnson.

“The reason I am still undecided on the Speaker vote (as opposed to hard no) is it’s not ALL the fault of [Johnson] & my desire is to give him grace & [Trump] room to deliver on a strong agenda for which we were elected. But something MUST change,” Roy wrote online.

Some holdouts have continued to float changes to the rules, or indicated they want commitments from Johnson particularly on spending, as they mull their speaker vote. Roy has also reached out to other GOP members to check the viability of Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and other possible candidates if Johnson can’t win the gavel.

Johnson’s team and his allies are tracking roughly a dozen GOP holdouts ahead of Friday’s vote, according to three people familiar with the conversations who were granted anonymity to discuss them.

Johnson also told a Louisiana radio station that he would be meeting on Wednesday with President-elect Donald Trump, who recently reiterated his support for Johnson’s speakership, to discuss strategy for 2025.

“Many of them are pretty soft holdouts,” said one of the people familiar with the conversations. But, they added: “Of course, it doesn’t take very many hard holdouts to cause problems.”

Congress

Thune is ‘hopeful’ Mitch McConnell will return this week

Published

49 minutes ago

June 15, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Monday he hopes his predecessor as top Republican, Mitch McConnell, returns this week from a hospitalization.

Thune said he had not yet spoken directly with the 84-year-old Kentuckian but is getting “readouts from his staff.”

Asked about McConnell’s condition or if he knew if he would be back this week, Thune told reporters, “I’m hopeful that he’ll be back this week.”

A McConnell spokesperson said Sunday that he had been admitted to the hospital but did not provide details on his condition or why he was hospitalized — a break from recent prior instances where the seven-term senator was hospitalized.

A former McConnell staffer who spoke on the condition of anonymity was told the senator was doing much better Monday without any further details on what put him in the hospital.

Daniel Desrochers contributed to this report.

Congress

Senate to confirm Jay Clayton as soon as Thursday

Published

3 hours ago

June 15, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

The Senate could vote as soon as Thursday on Jay Clayton’s nomination to serve as director of national intelligence — a lightning speed pace that will necessitate buy-in from all 100 senators.

Confirming Clayton could help shore up enough votes from Democrats to extend a government surveillance program that expired last Friday over opposition to Trump’s pick for acting director, Bill Pulte.

“He will come out of the committee Thursday, at least hopefully, and then if we get consent, we can move,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune said in an interview Monday about Clayton, who Trump only nominated for the job late last week.

Democrats “ought to be happy with Clayton,” said Thune, adding that he’s a “good” and “solid” pick.

Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, floated Sunday to CBS News that Clayton could be confirmed this week if every senator cooperates.

Senate Intelligence will hold a hearing Wednesday on Clayton’s nomination. If every member of the panel agrees, he could then get a committee vote Thursday. Confirming Clayton on the Senate floor hours later would require getting agreement from every senator to speed up the process. Opposition from a single member will punt Clayton’s confirmation to next week.

Confirming Clayton Thursday would, crucially, limit — and potentially circumvent — Pulte from becoming acting director of national intelligence, which Trump has slated to take place Friday, June 19.

The president’s decision to put Pulte in charge after Tulsi Gabbard’s departure at the helm of the Office of National Intelligence sparked bipartisan pushback, with Democrats saying they will withhold support for extending Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act while Pulte is in the acting role. Congress allowed the key government spy authority lapse last Friday without a deal.

Trump threw another curveball into a FISA extension over the weekend when he posted on social media that he was against reauthorizing Section 702 unless a GOP elections bill is attached. That bill, known as the SAVE America Act, does not have the votes to get through Congress.

Thune threw cold water Monday on tying the two issues together.

“Yeah, he’s, as you know, passionate about getting that done and wants to use every opportunity to take a shot at it,” Thune said of Trump and his desire to enact the elections bill.

But, Thune said, “we can’t get FISA done” if the policies are linked.

Congress

Senate eyes vote on updated housing affordability legislation

Published

5 hours ago

June 15, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Senate Majority Leader John Thune is planning to put an updated version of a bipartisan housing affordability bill on the Senate floor for a vote this week, according to two people familiar with the bill dynamics and two Senate Democratic aides granted anonymity to discuss ongoing plans.

The version of the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act that the Senate will vote on will include most of the House-passed language, including a provision restricting large institutional investors from buying single-family homes. The legislation would also add back Senate bills that were dropped from the House package that passed last month, the two people and the two aides said.

The Senate legislation comes after talks between Thune, Senate Banking Chair Tim Scott (R-S.C.) and ranking member Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). The updated Senate package was also discussed with the House and the White House, the aides said.

Still, it’s unclear if House leadership and the White House have signed off on the legislation.

The Senate and House have gone back and forth for months on language for a housing affordability bill as lawmakers on both sides look for a win to tout during a midterm election season dominated by cost-of-living issues.

Both chambers overwhelmingly passed their own versions of the housing bill — the Senate 89-10 in March, and the House 396-13 in May. The White House supported the Senate-passed bill and then backed the House-passed bill after it retained most of the Senate’s language on reining in private equity and other large Wall Street investors in the housing market — a top priority for President Donald Trump.

The Senate’s updated legislation would remove two of the House’s community banking deregulation bills due to budget scoring concerns, said two of the people familiar: two bills that would modify the Federal Deposit Insurance Act around failed insured depository institutions. The Senate bill also added back a provision to authorize the Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery program for seven years, as opposed to a permanent reauthorization in the Senate’s March legislation.

The Senate additionally re-inserted several upper-chamber priorities, including the BUILD NOW Act, which would incentivize communities to build more housing through the Community Development Block Grant program; the Rental Assistance Demonstration bill, which would raise the cap on housing authorities to convert voucher-based assistance; the Moving to Work bill, which would aim to add a new cohort of MTW public housing agencies; and the VALID Act, which would require Federal Housing Administration mortgage disclosures to include cost comparison information for veterans.

The package retains core wins for the leaders of both the Senate Banking and House Financial Services committees and their members and reflects input from all four leaders of those panels, one of the people familiar said.