House GOP Deadlocks Over Trump Demands 07/01 06:11

   The House leadership on Tuesday abruptly canceled votes and sent lawmakers 
home early for the holiday recess, Speaker Mike Johnson 's majority once again 
ground to a standstill by a Republican revolt over their own party's agenda.

   WASHINGTON (AP) -- Whither the U.S. House?

   As the nation celebrates its 250th birthday this weekend, the legislative 
branch has momentarily called it quits.

   The House leadership on Tuesday abruptly canceled votes and sent lawmakers 
home early for the holiday recess, Speaker Mike Johnson 's majority once again 
ground to a standstill by a Republican revolt over their own party's agenda.

   In this case, it's a standoff blocking the annual defense bill -- with pay 
raises for the troops and other matters at a time of war -- as the renegade 
Republicans push to include President Donald Trump's own priority, the SAVE 
America Act, a strict voter ID bill. Last week, the Senate similarly shuttered 
after Trump's demands.

   The emptying Capitol provides another snapshot of the imbalance of power in 
Washington as a headstrong executive confronts a weakened Congress.

   For the second time in as many weeks, the House has simply given up.

   "It's a relatively bad time in Congress," Republican Rep. Dusty Johnson of 
South Dakota said recently. "A lot of my colleagues have forgotten how to 
govern."

   The scene is far different than last year's Fourth of July

   A year ago this weekend brought a wholly different scene in Washington, as 
Trump gathered Republican lawmakers outside the White House for an ebullient 
July Fourth ceremony to sign what they called the "One, Big, Beautiful Bill" of 
tax breaks and spending cuts.

   It was a celebratory moment for Trump and the slim Republican majority -- 
and for Johnson, who many doubted could pass the bill over the objections of 
Democrats who viewed it as tax giveaway at the expense of billions of dollars 
in cuts to health care and food stamps for Americans in need.

   Johnson was so reliant on Trump's power to help push the bill to approval 
that he gifted the president a speaker's gavel, which Democrats and others saw 
as a worrisome symbol of the transference of power from one branch of 
government to the other.

   "We're not dealing with Speaker Mike Johnson," Democratic Rep. Pete Aguilar 
of California, the caucus chairman, said in a recent interview. "Unfortunately, 
Speaker Donald Trump does not want us in this week."

   Trump makes conflicting demands on his party in Congress

   As Johnson works to keep Trump close, the president's demands seem to grow 
in ways the Republican speaker can't always deliver.

   The president's insistence on the SAVE America Act, which doesn't have 
enough support in the Senate to pass, has interrupted almost all other business 
in Congress. Trump has refused to sign a popular bipartisan housing bill that 
cleared both chambers until the voting bill is also approved. He calls the 
housing bill a "yawn."

   Johnson spent four hours last week at the White House and said he spent 
another two hours with the president this week on a path forward.

   "I told him, 'Mr. President, I don't have any tattoos, but if I did, it'd 
say SAVE America on my shoulder,' OK?" Johnson said over the weekend on Fox 
News.

   "We passed it three times in the House already. We're going to pass it 
again."

   But by Tuesday, a House vote to advance the legislation collapsed. 
Republicans led by Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida argued that Johnson's plan 
to attach the voting bill to the defense bill was essentially a doomed strategy 
that would be rejected in the Senate.

   "That's disappointing," acknowledged Republican Majority Leader Steve 
Scalise of Louisiana, who insisted the GOP would try again.

   "We're going to keep trying because we have to," he said. "We're not done 
doing big things."

   As America celebrates its 250th birthday, Congress is adrift

   The founders of the new democracy clearly had aspirations for the Congress, 
putting it first in the Constitution as the Article One branch of government, 
ahead of the executive and judicial branches.

   But as lawmakers face voters this fall, they will have to answer for these 
dwindling days on their calendar.

   House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said the problem is not the 
Congress, it's the GOP.

   "Donald Trump is fighting with Senate Republicans, Senate Republicans are 
fighting with House Republicans, and House Republicans are fighting with each 
other," said Jeffries, who is in line to become House speaker if Democrats win 
control in fall.

   "It's not the Congress that's struggling. It's House Republicans who are 
struggling," he said.

   Jeffries said Democrats are fighting "to make life more affordable for the 
American people."

   As they left the Capitol for an extended recess, lawmakers voiced 
frustration with the House's dysfunction.

   Rep. Kevin Kiley, who left the Republican Party to become an independent 
earlier this year, said the situation in the House is "frustrating."

   "It's just like dj vu where many times now we run into some sort of 
obstacle," he said, "then the solution is just to go home."