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.”
Speaker Mike Johnson’s day will be consumed by the SAVE America Act — again.
President Donald Trump’s signature election security bill is on track to derail his chamber’s agenda for the rest of the week as a small group of hard-liners demand House GOP leaders somehow find a way to force the Senate to pass the measure.
Johnson Monday night tried to appease the group by leveraging an unusual procedural maneuver that would send the elections measure and the annual Pentagon policy bill to the Senate in a single package.
But Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, who has led the bloc halting House business, dismissed Johnson’s move, arguing it’d allow the Senate to easily strip out the SAVE America Act.
It “will not work,” Luna said Monday night after demanding “a full bakeage” into the must-pass defense bill earlier in the day.
To be clear: Her own proposal to simply add SAVE America as an amendment could be removed just as easily in the Senate as with Johnson’s plan.
But with the speaker needing a unified conference to unlock floor business for the rest of the week — he may be forced to deal with Luna and allied hard-liners regardless of legislative logic.
Meanwhile, a Supreme Court decision Monday only sharpened Trump and his allies’ fixation on the legislation, as the court ruled states may accept mail-in ballots that arrive after Election Day so long as they are postmarked by that day.
“In light of the tremendous loss in the Supreme Court today concerning Voter’s Rights, and the fact that ‘people’s’ votes are allowed to be counted LONG AFTER an Election is over, it is more important than ever to pass THE SAVE AMERICA ACT,” Trump said on Truth Social, reinvigorating hard-liners’ crusade despite his calls last week for them to stop threatening “No’s” on rule votes.
The court’s ruling spotlights another complication for Johnson: The version of the elections bill he is proposing to attach to the Pentagon legislation doesn’t include the latest demands from Trump — including a near-total ban on mail voting that is opposed by many Republicans.
Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, for example, was noncommittal Monday when asked about supporting Trump’s full demands for the bill.
“The voter ID part I’m fine with,” he said in an interview. “I’ve already voted for that.”
Even if the House somehow overcomes a tight rule vote and subsequently passes the merged bills, Senate Majority Leader John Thune has said the combo could not pass his chamber.
Senators are set to debate their own version of the defense bill next month, and it is all but certain the election overhaul would be removed in negotiations between the two chambers.
What else we’re watching:
— JOHNSON HUDDLES WITH TRUMP ON HOUSING BILL: Johnson said a landmark housing affordability package Congress cleared last week will become law, and that Republicans won’t have to take an uncomfortable vote to override a presidential veto to make that happen. Johnson in an interview Monday said he’d speak again with Trump Tuesday about signing the bipartisan housing bill. The president tanked plans last week to swiftly sign into law one of Republican lawmakers’ top priorities before the midterms, saying he’d hold the measure hostage until Congress passed his election security bill.
— RELATIONSHIP FRAYS BETWEEN SENATE’S TOP APPROPRIATORS: It’s getting harder and harder for the top Republican and Democrat overseeing government funding in the Senate to keep up the collegial working relationship they’ve long prided themselves on. Sens. Susan Collins and Patty Murray have been increasingly at odds as the midterms approach and spending priorities diverge. It comes after their successful collaboration on bipartisan legislation during Murray’s two-year reign as chair of Senate Appropriations, which continued when Collins took the gavel last year.
Meredith Lee Hill, Kelsey Brugger, Jennifer Scholtes and Jordain Carney contributed to this report.
Sens. Susan Collins and Patty Murray have long prided themselves on working together to advance government funding bills. That collegiality is now showing signs of decay.
The Maine Republican and Washington Democrat have been openly feuding about the path forward on spending measures this summer. It comes after their successful collaboration on bipartisan legislation during Murray’s two-year reign as chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, which continued when Collins took the gavel last year.
Democrats attribute the clash to Collins’ pursuit of President Donald Trump’s demands for a record military budget that eclipses domestic spending, as she fights to retain her Senate seat in November. Republicans say Murray is playing midterm politics by trying to prevent Collins from landing a deal before Election Day, when Democrats hope to regain House and Senate majorities — and the upper hand in year-end funding talks.
“It’s not personal, but it is very frustrating,” Collins said last week, while insisting she and Murray are still on good terms.
All Murray would say about the state of their relationship was, “We’re talking.”
While that impasse doesn’t necessarily heighten the odds of a government shutdown this fall, it could delay any meaningful Senate appropriations action until after the elections. The outcome of congressional races — including Collins’ toss-up contest against Democrat Graham Platner — could change the power balance in government funding negotiations.
“It certainly looks to me like the Democrats don’t want to give Susan Collins a victory,” House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) said in an interview. “I really think it’s intensely political. She is a very reasonable legislator. If you can’t make a deal with Susan Collins, you don’t want to make a deal.”
Part of Collins’ campaign-trail pitch to Mainers is that she gets results in Washington, and her inability to advance the dozen annual appropriations bills through her committee undercuts that narrative.
Collins isn’t refuting the idea that Democrats might want to deprive her of legislative success as she competes against Platner in one of the closest and most-watched races in the country.
“That’s certainly a viable theory, which is pretty pathetic,” she said in an interview.
This month Collins publicly accused Murray of sending government funding offers that have “made it clear that Democrats are abandoning the appropriations process.” Murray, meanwhile, suggested Collins was at fault for the stalemate by divulging she hadn’t responded to Murray’s latest offer in more than two weeks.
It’s a major tone shift for the two lawmakers, who have earned a reputation for trying to stay out of the partisan fray since they became their party’s top leaders on the Appropriations Committee in 2023. They’ve consistently resisted broadcasting behind-the-scenes friction during tough negotiations and succeeded in reaching cross-party compromises to advance funding bills each year — even after the record government shutdown last fall.
But they’re now at loggerheads over funding totals for the military and domestic programs, along with votes on hot-button Trump policies. Senate Republicans are seeking a military funding boost more than four times larger than any increase in domestic spending, as Trump calls for a record $1.5 trillion defense budget.
“We do not have an agreement,” Murray said, because Republicans “are set on increasing defense in an increasingly huge way that we’ve never had to deal with before.”
GOP senators also want to avoid any amendment votes that could sink approval of appropriations bills, including some related to the Justice Department’s “Anti-Weaponization Fund” administration officials have promised not to pursue.
The result is that Collins has yet to hold a committee markup on a single government funding bill with just three months left before federal dollars expire. And some Republican appropriators acknowledge it’s possible the panel won’t vote on any of the spending measures this year given the deadlock.
“Obviously Susan is up this year. And Democrats, at every level and every opportunity, are playing politics with it,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune said in an interview. “The appropriations process used to be fairly bipartisan. … Murray and the Democrats have turned it into a partisan game.”
Some Democrats openly sympathize with Collins’ predicament in trying to represent politically moderate Maine while holding one of the most influential positions on Capitol Hill during Trump’s second term and unified Republican control of Congress.
“The chair of the committee is being squeezed in every direction,” Wisconsin Sen. Tammy Baldwin, a senior Democratic appropriator, said in an interview.
Many Senate Republicans don’t “give a damn” about funding domestic efforts like public education and biomedical research, Baldwin continued. “I believe that the chairwoman does care about those issues. But you know, she’s in an unenviable position.”
Since Trump was reelected, Collins has worked to negotiate funding bills that spend far more on domestic programs than the president sought. The result has been essentially flat funding for nondefense programs and a 17 percent increase in military spending, which includes the billions of dollars Republicans enacted along party lines last year.
“Chair Collins is very devoted to, or interested in, following through to help the president get more money for the Department of War and munitions, et cetera,” said West Virginia Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, a top Republican appropriator. “And I think Senator Murray is on the opposite page.”
“Rather than legislate and work these things out,” Capito added, “I think it’s been decided on the other side to just be obstinate and not participate and not negotiate.”
Trump is calling this year for boosting Pentagon spending by more than 40 percent while slashing domestic programs by 10 percent. Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, a senior Democratic appropriator who has served in Congress for more than 40 years, calls it “a massive change” in the way government funding has been divvied up for decades — by negotiating matching dollar-for-dollar increases in both military and nondefense funding.
“We’re so far apart. We haven’t faced anything like that in recent memory,” Durbin said in an interview. “And to accept the premise of it — what’s left for nondefense is terrible.”
Collins could proceed with markups this summer without an agreement with Democrats, as the House Republican majority has done for years. But Republican senators would need to be willing to vote on controversial amendments Democrats might offer — including proposals that defy Trump.
Senate Republican appropriators faced that issue last summer, when the panel unexpectedly adopted an amendment barring the Trump administration from repurposing cash intended for relocating the FBI headquarters. That outcome prompted several GOP senators to withdraw support for the funding bill.
“The challenge is that, if you have every Democrat voting against reporting the bill out — and then they also are offering poison pills — it’s hard to move those bills,” Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.), chair of the Appropriations subcommittee that funds the FBI, said in an interview.
During the two years Murray chaired the full committee, Moran recalled, “We had members who wanted to offer what would probably be considered poison pills by Democrats. And Senator Collins talked Republicans out of doing so, to move the process.”
The two sides could easily reach an agreement on amendments and policy stipulations, some Democrats contend, if only Collins and Murray could bridge the divide between the president’s military funding demands and their own domestic priorities.
“Senator Collins is carrying out the administration’s wishes,” Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley, another senior Democratic appropriator, said in an interview. “And Senator Murray is noting that a reckless increase in defense spending is not in the best interest of Americans.”
“So they’re both advocating for their viewpoint,” Merkley added. “That’s what we do in a democracy.”
Katherine Tully-McManus contributed to this report.
The House Rules Committee advanced a procedural measure aimed at breaking an intra-Republican deadlock Monday night. But GOP leaders are still facing a major battle Tuesday to regain control of the House floor.
The panel approved on party lines a measure to set up Republicans’ $1.1 trillion defense policy bill, a government funding bill and other GOP bills for floor debate. It would then combine the Pentagon bill, once passed, with the contentious elections overhaul known as the SAVE America Act and send it to the Senate as one piece of legislation.
That maneuver, telegraphed by Speaker Mike Johnson earlier Monday, is aimed at appeasing House GOP hard-liners who have blockaded the floor, demanding the Senate pass the elections bill that has languished there for months.
However, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida, the Republican leading the blockade, said in an interview Monday before the Rules Committee acted that Johnson’s plan is not sufficient — raising the possibility she and allies could vote down the measure on the floor. Other House GOP hard-liners say there are other outstanding issues to battle over Tuesday.
Rep. James McGovern of Massachusetts, the top Rules Democrat, called the merger move “a big waste of time.” The panel voted down a motion by McGovern to remove the provision to combine the two bills in a party-line vote.
The Senate is set to debate its own version of the defense bill next month, and it is likely that the elections overhaul will be removed in negotiations between the two chambers — as McGovern acknowledged Monday and House GOP leaders privately concede.
“The Senate will just strip the SAVE Act out,” he said at the meeting. “There is a zero percent chance SAVE ends up in the [Pentagon bill] because of this rule today.”
The defense bill faces a tight vote if Republicans can pass the procedural measure. Most Democrats are expected to oppose the measure over its massive price tag, which they contend is wasteful.
The panel is set up debate on 312 amendments to the bill. The slate includes GOP measures to codify a Trump executive order to block transgender people from serving in the military, prohibit coverage of gender-affirming care, block aid to arm Ukraine and strip Democratic-backed protections for collective bargaining for Pentagon civilian workers.
The committee also voted down Democratic proposals to slash $150 billion from the bill’s topline and limit the war against Iran.
Mia McCarthy contributed to this report.
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