Congress
The House is scrambling to avoid a censure death spiral
As he reconvened the House this month after a seven-week recess, Speaker Mike Johnson promised to recommit lawmakers to making laws — adding session days and keeping them voting into the night to catch up on lost time.
His members instead spent much of their first full week back after the shutdown sniping at each other and using the House floor to carry out attacks on colleagues. Lawmakers voted five times on measures to rebuke other members, eating up hours of floor time.
The spasms of personal pique crossed party lines, with Democrats targeting Democrats and Republicans targeting Republicans in some cases. It left at least a few lawmakers fuming about the depths of the House’s dysfunction and looking for ways to address it.
“The only thing we can apparently do is condemn each other,” said Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), slamming the legislative agenda. “I’ve not seen the House hit this low of a point since I’ve been here.”
An effort by a fellow Democrat to rebuke Rep. Jesus “Chuy” Garcia (D-Ill.) over his apparent scheme to install his top aide as his successor succeeded Tuesday. A Republican effort targeting Del. Stacey Plaskett (D-V.I.) over her communications with the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein narrowly failed, as did a GOP-led effort to censure Rep. Cory Mills(R-Fla.) over various alleged ethical misdeeds.
The Plaskett and Mills measures failed in part because of a small but vocal group of lawmakers determined to put a stop to the tit-for-tat floor antics before they spiraled into something even more disruptive.
Two of them — Reps. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) and Don Beyer (D-Va.) — introduced legislation Thursday that would change House rules to make it harder for members to target colleagues, warning that the chamber is at risk of devolving into an irreparable cycle of caustic personal brawling.
“The institution needs some protection,” Bacon said in an interview.
The Bacon-Beyer proposal would require 60 percent of the House to approve the censure of a lawmaker, disapprove of their conduct or remove them from their committee assignments — up from the current simple majority threshold.
“The censure process in the House is broken — all of us know it,” the two wrote in a letter to colleagues, saying the back-and-forth battles “impair our ability to work together for the American people, pull our focus away from problems besetting the country, and inflict lasting damage on this institution.”
Johnson called the general suggestion of rules changes “an intriguing idea” this week. He made no commitments to act but said he’d be “open to having that conversation.”
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries also told reporters he was “open-minded about what the possibilities are in terms of getting the Congress out of this repeated effort by Republicans to censure members.”
In addition to the five votes on Garcia, Plaskett and Mills, House leaders also worked to try and fend off an effort to censure or expel Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (D-Fla.), who was indicted Wednesday on federal fraud charges. She has called the indictment an “unjust, baseless sham.”
Rep. Greg Steube (R-Fla.), who publicly teased the effort to sideline his indicted colleague, said in an interview Thursday that he would hold off until the House Ethics Committee releases its report on Cherfilus-McCormick.
That’s at least a nod to how things used to be done in the House, where members were given a chance to make their case in court or to an effective jury of their peers on the Ethics panel before being subjected to public discipline.
Steube said he was ready to follow a more recent precedent: the House’s 2023 ouster of then-Rep. George Santos over claims of fraud and campaign finance irregularities.
Efforts to punish the New York Republican erupted soon after revelations of his checkered personal history emerged following his 2022 election. But it was only following the release of a scathing Ethics report that members acted overwhelmingly to expel him.
“If [Cherfilus-McCormick] does not resign by the time the Ethics Committee releases its report detailing their investigation, then I’ll move forward,” Steube said.
Lawmakers now expect that report to be released in a matter of weeks, according to two people granted anonymity to describe internal House conversations.
Extreme cases involving allegations of criminal conduct like Santos and Sherfilus-McCormick are not primarily what Bacon and Beyer are seeking to curtail.
Instead, they are registering more concern about a recent spate of censures that have been doled out across party lines to lawmakers who have engaged in behavior that is crude, distasteful or simply objectionable to their political enemies.
Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), for instance, was censured in 2021 under a Democratic majority for posting an animated video depicting the murder of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.). When Republicans retook the chamber, GOP members targeted Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) for his role in investigating President Donald Trump’s alleged connections to Russia and Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) for comments about Israel, among others.
Once a rare and embarrassing rebuke, censure has now become commonplace — in no small part because it has become a political rallying cry and fundraising boon for the lawmakers who lead the disciplinary efforts as well as those they target.
Without new protections, lawmakers fear the censure wars will continue to escalate.
“It’s an easy way for an individual member to elevate his or her profile, throw a rock at the other side and force your way onto the floor,” said one House Democrat granted anonymity to speak candidly about his colleagues’ motivations. “There doesn’t appear to be any kind of mutually assured destruction kind of deterrence on this. So my guess is, it’ll just keep going and going and going.“
A handful of members have stood against that trend. Bacon was among six House Republicans who saved Plaskett from censure and removal from the House Intelligence Committee this week by voting no or present on the resolution targeting her.
That sparked accusations from some colleagues that they had struck a corrupt bargain to protect Mills. But Bacon said there were larger principles at stake and many more than six who wanted to avoid a doom spiral of retribution.
Several Republicans told Bacon they “were voting yes but hoping I was a no,” he said. “Most of us know this isn’t good for the institution.”
Congress
Mike Johnson says House can end government shutdown ‘by Tuesday’
House Speaker Mike Johnson said he is confident Congress can end the partial government shutdown “by Tuesday” despite steep opposition from Democrats and turmoil within the GOP conference.
Johnson is under pressure to unite his caucus, with lawmakers raising concerns about funding for the Department of Homeland Security as the Trump administration faces scrutiny over its nationwide immigration crackdown that has at times turned violent.
House Republicans are hoping to take up the $1.2 trillion funding package passed by the Senate on Tuesday following a House Rules Committee meeting Monday. The partial shutdown began early Saturday.
GOP leadership in the House originally hoped to pass the bill under suspension of the rules, an expedited process that requires a two-thirds-majority vote, but Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told Johnson on Saturday that Democrats would not help Republicans acquire the necessary support for the spending bill.
“I’m confident that we’ll do it at least by Tuesday,” Johnson said in a Sunday interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “We have a logistical challenge of getting everyone in town, and because of the conversation I had with Hakeem Jeffries, I know that we’ve got to pass a rule and probably do this mostly on our own. I think that’s very unfortunate.”
The Senate voted Friday to pass a compromise spending package after Senate Democrats struck a deal with President Donald Trump to extend DHS funding for two weeks. The move bought Congress more time to work out a compromise on reforms for Immigration and Customs Enforcement after federal officers fatally shot two people in Minnesota earlier this month.
Speaking to host Kristen Welker on “Meet the Press,” Johnson acknowledged that “there’s been tragedies in Minnesota” — but he also blamed Democrats in the state for “inciting violence,” even as the Trump administration attempts to tamp down pressures in the state.
Johnson praised Trump’s decision to send White House border czar Tom Homan to Minneapolis, a step widely seen as a deescalation from the aggressive tactics favored by Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino.
“[Trump] was right to deputize him over that situation,” he said of Homan on NBC. “He has 40 years of experience in Border Patrol and these issues. So I think that this is going to happen, but we need good faith on both sides. Some of these conditions and requests that they’ve made are obviously reasonable and should happen. But others are going to require a lot more negotiation.”
Johnson pushed back in particular on Democratic calls to bar federal immigration enforcement officers from wearing masks and require them to wear identification, telling Fox’s Shannon Bream: “Those two things are conditions that would create further danger.”
He also signaled an unwillingness to negotiate on Democratic demands to tighten requirements for judicial warrants for immigration operations.
Still, House Democrats remained opposed to passing the funding package as is, with Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) saying Sunday: “I’m not just a no. I’m a firm no.”
“I just don’t see how in good conscience Democrats can vote for continuing ICE funding when they’re killing American citizens, when there’s no provision to repeal the tripling of the budget,” Khanna said in a Sunday interview with Welker on NBC. “I hope my colleagues will say no.”
Jeffries also signaled Sunday that a wide gap remains between his conference and House Republicans, telling ABC’s George Stephanopoulos that the House must reach an agreement on judicial warrants “as a condition of moving forward.”
“The one thing that we’ve said publicly is that we need a robust path toward dramatic reform,” Jeffries said on ABC’s “This Week.” “The administration can’t just talk the talk, they need to walk the walk. That should begin today. Not in two weeks, today.”
Congress
Shutdown likely to continue at least into Tuesday
The partial government shutdown that began early Saturday morning is on track to continue at least into Tuesday, which is the earliest the House is now expected to vote on a $1.2 trillion funding package due to opposition from Democrats and internal GOP strife.
House Republican leaders have scheduled a Monday meeting of the House Rules Committee to prepare the massive Senate-passed spending bill for the floor. According to two people granted anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, the procedural measure teeing up a final vote would not happen until Tuesday, with final passage following if that is successful.
That’s one day later than GOP leaders had hoped. Their previous plan was to pass the bill with Democratic help under suspension of the rules, a fast-track process requiring a two-thirds-majority vote.
But that plan was complicated by Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries telling Speaker Mike Johnson in a private conversation Saturday that Democratic leadership would not help Johnson secure the 70 or so Democratic votes to get the measure over the line, according to the two people and another person granted anonymity to discuss the matter.
The Tuesday plan remains tentative as GOP leaders scramble to navigate tensions inside their own conference, which could make passing the procedural measure difficult. Some conservative hard-liners, for instance, want to attach a sweeping elections bill to the package.
Jeffries said in a MS NOW interview Saturday that Republicans “cannot simply move forward with legislation taking a my way or the highway approach” while noting that House Democrats are set to have “a discussion about the appropriate way forward” in a Sunday evening caucus call — first reported by Blue Light News.
He did not rule out that Democrats might support the Senate-passed spending package, which funds the majority of federal agencies through Sept. 30 while providing a two-week extension for the Department of Homeland Security — including controversial immigration enforcement agencies.
Democrats, Jeffries said, want “a robust, ironclad path to bringing about the type of change that the American people are demanding” in immigration enforcement.
Congress
Here’s what federal programs are headed for a (possibly brief) shutdown
Government funding is set to lapse at midnight Friday for the military and many domestic programs, but cash will continue to flow at a slew of federal agencies Congress already funded.
House leaders are aiming to send a funding package to President Donald Trump Monday, days after the Senate passed the legislation just before the deadline to avert a partial shutdown.
The effect on most federal programs is expected to be minor, and employees who are furloughed would miss just one day of work if the House acts on schedule — which is not assured.
This time, many of the services that have the greatest public impact when shuttered — like farm loans, SNAP food assistance to low-income households and upkeep at national parks — will continue. That’s because Congress already funded some agencies in November and earlier this month, including the departments of Energy, Commerce, Justice, Agriculture, Interior and Veterans Affairs, as well as military construction projects, the EPA, congressional operations, the FDA and federal science programs.
Still, the spending package congressional leaders are trying to clear for Trump’s signature next week contains the vast majority of the funding Congress approves each year to run federal programs, including $839 billion for the military.
Besides the Pentagon, funding will lapse for several major nondefense agencies beginning early Saturday morning.
That includes federal transportation, labor, housing, education and health programs, along with the IRS, independent trade agencies and foreign aid. The departments of Homeland Security, State and Treasury will also be hit by the shutdown.
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