House Republican leadership returns to Capitol Hill on Tuesday with several efforts to rebuke the Trump administration at its doorstep, all while a government shutdown hovers over Congress.
After a week of recess, Democrats and Republicans are preparing to force votes on a measure that would curtail President Donald Trump’s use of executive authority to sidestep Congress on things such as war powers. A Republican duo is also pushing the House to take a firm stand backing Ukraine in its war against Russia.
The votes come as Congress is still under a partial shutdown. Funding for the Department of Homeland Security is at a standstill as Senate Democrats and Republicans work through negotiations, with Democrats demanding stronger restrictions on immigration enforcement agencies.
The shutdown is expected to continue this week, including during Trump’s State of the Union address on Tuesday evening.
Leadership will benefit from a short week, however. Votes in the House and Senate were canceled on Monday due to weather, and the House is only scheduled to be in session until Wednesday.
Bipartisan duo eyes vote to rein in Trump war powers
Reps. Ro Khanna (D-CA) and Thomas Massie (R-KY), a bipartisan duo who teamed up to force a vote to release the Jeffrey Epstein files, are once again partnering to try and bring a resolution up that would require authorization from Congress if Trump can use military force against Iran.
Khanna wrote in a post to X last Wednesday that he plans to force a vote on the bill this week.
“Trump officials say there’s a 90% chance of strikes on Iran. He can’t without Congress,” Khanna wrote. “[Thomas Massie] & I have a War Powers Resolution to debate & vote on war before putting U.S. troops in harm’s way.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) currently holds a one-seat majority. Given the likelihood that all Democrats and Massie would vote for the bill, the resolution could pass if at least one other Republican voted in favor.
The House has already attempted to restrict Trump’s war power authority, with a measure narrowly failing in January to restrict military action in Venezuela. Republicans successfully blocked the measure in a 215-215 vote, with House rules dictating that a tied vote fails. Two Republicans, Massie and Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE), joined all Democrats in voting for the resolution.
But Bacon is not signaling he is a definite “yes” vote on a resolution targeting military action in Iran.
“I’ll study the bill before committing on how I’ll vote,” Bacon told the Washington Examiner in a statement. “But, I do think the President must take military action. He promised the Iranians that we would support them if they stood up against the regime. The Iranians did and now an estimated 50,000 people have been executed. There cannot be empty promises.”
House Republicans threaten vote on Russia sanctions
Bacon is, however, eyeing a petition to force a vote on sanctioning Russia for its war against Ukraine, which marks its fourth anniversary on Tuesday. The congressman told the Washington Examiner in an interview that he and Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA) are preparing to launch a “discharge petition” this week if House GOP leadership does not commit to bringing the bill to the floor for a vote. Fox News Digital first reported the movement.
Fitzpatrick’s bill, which he introduced in December 2025, “ripens,” or becomes eligible for a vote, this week. Bacon said they would like to submit a petition as early as Tuesday to fast-track the bill to the floor, but he deferred to Fitzpatrick on the exact timing.
The Washington Examiner reached out to Fitzpatrick for comment.
Whether the discharge petition will be necessary remains to be seen. Bacon said he’s hearing the White House and Johnson are “amenable” to a vote after the Fox News Digital story dropped. But he’s “skeptical” of that, because Trump has “been on and off again with aid to Ukraine.”
“I always feel like it’s probably appropriate and smart on our part to keep pressure on it, because ultimately, I’m more focused on getting success in Ukraine than I am pleasing the president or the speaker,” Bacon said. “I want to get this done because I think history is going to record who is on the right side of this with Ukraine.”
“It’s a terrible thing what Putin has done,” he added. “And I think we should be clearly on the right side of that, and I know that someday, I hope my kids and my grandkids read that their granddad was trying to do the right thing in history on this.”
A discharge petition requires 218 signatures in order to force a vote on a bill or resolution. Democrats currently have 214 members, so four Republicans would need to sign on to the petition for the House to vote on Russia sanctions.
Discharge petitions have been blasted by Johnson and other Republicans as a “tool of the minority” because they force leadership to bring a bill they would otherwise oppose to the floor. These bills often put the GOP at a crossroads by forcing members to go on record on politically inconvenient topics.
Johnson has said multiple times he supports sanctioning Russia, with Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) signaling the process must start in the House. But the speaker has been loath to put anything that could be politically damaging on the floor without a green light from the White House.
Bacon acknowledged that passing the bill through a discharge petition would be an uphill battle, due to both the political implications and the slim majority.
“I believe the speaker, intellectually, if it was just Mike Johnson, agrees with me,” Bacon said. “But I also know that he’s a speaker with a [one]-seat majority, and so he’s got some political realities that maybe make it tougher … Regardless, I know what’s right … and I’m willing to push this over the objections of the speaker.”
In the 119th Congress, two petitions have been successful: one on the Epstein files and another on a three-year extension of COVID-19 era subsidies to the Affordable Care Act. The signatories and sponsors of the petitions have mostly been centrist Republicans, but right-wing conservatives such as Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) have also launched discharge petitions on issues such as banning stock trading by members of Congress.
Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY) also has a discharge petition regarding sanctions on Russia, but it is one signature short of the 218-vote threshold. Bacon said he believes he has a Republican willing to sign onto the petition, but declined to say who because “I don’t want to cut my chickens before the eggs hatch.”
Trump escapes votes to repeal tariffs after Supreme Court ruling
Democrats were expected to force votes as early as this week to repeal more of Trump’s tariffs on numerous trade partners. But those plans have now been suspended, the Washington Examiner learned, after the Supreme Court invalidated most of Trump’s sweeping tariffs on Friday.
A source familiar with the Democratic push from the House Foreign Affairs Committee to call up votes repealing the tariffs said the Supreme Court “affirmed [ranking member] Meeks’ view that tariffs imposed by the president are illegal.” Given that court decision, there are no votes currently planned in the House on resolutions to undo tariffs on countries such as Mexico and Brazil.
The House successfully repealed a national emergency levying tariffs against Canada last week. Six House Republicans — Reps. Bacon, Fitzpatrick, Jeff Hurd (R-CO), Kevin Kiley (R-CA), Massie, and Dan Newhouse (R-WA) — joined every Democrat except Rep. Jared Golden (D-ME) in repealing tariffs against the United States’ northern neighbor on Feb. 11.
Hurd said in an interview with the Washington Examiner that his vote on Canada tariffs “came down to the Constitution” and the tariffs’ impact on his constituents.
Trump has since yanked his endorsement of Hurd and threatened to follow suit against any Republican who voted to repeal tariffs. The president threw his support behind the Colorado Republican’s primary challenger.
Bacon had cautioned that Democrats may use the lapse in a House ban, which prevented members from calling up bills to repeal Trump’s tariffs for a vote, as a political tool. He was one of a handful of Republicans who celebrated the Supreme Court’s decision invalidating Trump’s tariffs, even though many have noted that the legislative branch has the power to impose tariffs.
TRUMP WON’T ASK CONGRESS TO IMPOSE TARIFFS AFTER SUPREME COURT REBUKE
“I think the Democrats would like to do one every week until November,” Bacon said, referring to the 2026 midterm elections. “I don’t want to play into those kind of hands. I’m not looking at it as a political club. I’m doing it because I believe Article I [of the Constitution] gives us this authority, and I believe it’s also bad policy.”
“So at some point I’m willing to support the speaker and say, ‘Hey, let’s, let’s limit debate on this again,’” Bacon added. “But we had to have some of these votes to do our job.”