The House of Representatives looks, operates, and negotiates much differently than it has within the last five years. The erosion of rules and precedent in committees, the numerous procedural votes held hostage on the floor, and last-minute bargains with small factions of the Republican conference have many lawmakers wondering what has happened to the historic body.
Some people blame the last two speakers, the incumbent Mike Johnson (R-LA) and his predecessor Kevin McCarthy, for giving members of the conservative, right-flank Freedom Caucus considerable sway over House procedure.
“There’s too many people leveraging their votes to get their own personal agenda items, and it’s not right to do that, it’s not fair to the other members,” Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY) told the Washington Examiner.
Other Republicans also blame a small majority for the “anarchy” that has descended on the House, leading to overnight votes and at-the-buzzer concessions that seem to reward bad behavior instead of admonish holdouts for delaying the GOP agenda.
“Unfortunately, there’s not a good way to enforce the discipline of the rules,” Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) told the Washington Examiner. “It used to be, when you had enough people, we kick people off committees, but we only have a three-seat majority.”
The week of July 4, Johnson achieved a considerable victory: passing a major tax and spending bill despite a narrow majority and pressure from every ideological bloc in his conference. His ability to secure wins at the last minute has earned him respect from his conference.
But that does not come without headaches, as members of the Freedom Caucus and their like-minded allies are frequently stalling Rules Committee votes, holding up floor action on measures they don’t like, and threatening to tank major legislation in the name of protecting the GOP trifecta.
All, in the end, to vote for the bill anyway.
“Sometimes you take a stand on principle,” Rep. Rich McCormick (R-GA) told the Washington Examiner. “You don’t want to put yourself in a situation where you lose your influence, either, and where they see you as part of the problem.
“So, this is a game of inches,” McCormick said. “We’ve got to be smart.”
Freedom Caucus members are insistent they have not “folded” on anything despite many denying a “yes” vote on legislation for hours or sometimes days until they get summoned to the speaker’s office or the White House for a private meeting with President Donald Trump.
“They claim to be big supporters of President Trump, and yet, at every turn, they’re slowing down his agenda and extorting him for whatever they’re asking when they go to the White House for their secret meetings,” Malliotakis said.
“What people don’t understand is we’re not folding, we’re making it better,” Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC), an HFC member, told the Washington Examiner. “We’ll hold out until we get it more conservative. That’s what liberals never understood. If you hadn’t been in the business arena, no one understands that.”
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Rules Committee becomes a battleground
Many of Johnson’s recent headaches have stemmed from two once-minuscule procedures: a vote in the Rules Committee and a vote on the procedural rule.
Republicans have become increasingly more comfortable voting against the rule, a procedural measure that sets debate time for a bill and allows legislation to advance to a final vote. It was once an exceedingly rare occurrence that was a test of party loyalty, and rarely would you see someone vote outside party lines.
But now, voting against the rule is a commonplace practice since the GOP took the House majority in 2023 to rebuke leadership and demand concessions in exchange for a vote.
“When I got elected in 2016, we were going through the immersion,” Bacon said. “I remember [Rep.] Pete Sessions, he was the chairman of Rules, he says, ‘You vote against the bill, vote your conscience. Vote against the rule, and I’ll kick your ass.’”
But under McCarthy, there were four failed rule votes, before he was ousted in the fall of 2023 by right-flank conservatives displeased with deals that he made with Democrats to pass spending legislation — bills that rarely get the green light from Freedom Caucus members and their allies.
Johnson, who has been speaker for almost two years, has had six rule votes fail under his leadership. The most recent one occurred on July 15, when 13 conservatives tanked a rule vote for a slate of cryptocurrency bills and an appropriations bill over problems with some of the crypto legislation.
The drama concluded after the longest roll call vote in the House’s history. That record had been broken a few weeks prior during votes on President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill.”
Afterward, the crypto bills passed, Johnson expressed his exhaustion with leading many firsts.
“I will say again, I am tired of making history, I just want [a] normal Congress,” Johnson said at the time. “Some people have forgotten what that looks like.”
Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) brushed off the fact that under Johnson, there have been six failed rules votes, attributing it heavily to the three-seat majority Republicans hold due to vacancies and a handful of losses in the 2024 election.
“We’ve come back and gotten those rules passed,” Scalise said. “You know, when you’ve got sometimes a two-seat majority, maybe a four-seat majority on a good day, and members that have very different points of view on how to approach things — so we’ve never accepted failure as an option.”
“So even when you get a bump in the road, you come right back and get it done the next day, in many cases, and that’s why we’ve been able to deliver such an important agenda for the American people,” the leader added.
Ironically, Johnson’s predecessor caused many of the problems the speaker is dealing with now.
To become speaker, McCarthy cut deals with the right-wing members of his conference. He altered House rules, most infamously installing the procedure allowing a single member to call a motion to vacate, and promised to put members of the Freedom Caucus in positions of power — including on the Rules Committee.
The Rules Committee once served as an obsolete panel that was an extension of leadership’s agenda, due to the common practice of speakers appointing nine of their most loyal allies. Rules easily sailed out of the committee due to the 9-4 balance, with four minority seats only.
But McCarthy allowed the Freedom Caucus, notorious for being rabble-rousers and bucking leadership, to nab three seats on the panel. Two of those appointed, Norman and Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX), remain on the panel. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), appointed to Rules by McCarthy but a consistent thorn in Johnson’s side, was removed shortly after being the sole “no” vote against his speakership in January.
Massie is not secretive about his disagreements with leadership’s style, particularly as leaders are refusing to let a bill to release the Jeffrey Epstein files come to the House floor for a vote.
Leadership has repeatedly argued there is “no daylight” between the White House and the House, which has led them to increasingly take steps to avoid votes that display infighting among the GOP and disunity over how best to implement Trump’s agenda.
Not all Republicans agree.
“I don’t think he’s got a solid approach for this institution,” Massie told reporters, referring to Johnson. “His strategy is just do whatever the White House tells him, and that can be OK sometimes, and sometimes it’s not good.”
Freedom Caucus ‘political games’ disrupt House precedent
Rank-and-file Republicans are growing tired of the “political games” the Freedom Caucus and their allies are playing, arguing that a small minority bloc is doing more damage to the GOP majority than the legislation the fiscal hawks warn will do.
In the spring, Republicans on the Rules Committee quietly pushed language into a procedural rule vote to block votes on bills that sought to rein in Trump’s tariff policies — legislation that would have possibly passed on the floor with all Democrats and a handful of centrist GOP lawmakers likely to vote in favor. The rule vote passed with three Republicans, including Massie, opposing.
In April, nine Republicans caused Johnson’s first rule vote failure in a revolt against Rep. Anna Paulina Luna’s (R-FL) proxy voting for the new parents bill. This came after a rule almost failed the week prior when a select group of Freedom Caucus members held up floor proceedings to argue with leadership, letting them know they would continue to do so if Johnson allowed Luna’s petition to come to the floor. The “backroom deals” pushed Luna to leave the caucus.
“There’s new members who are kind of testing the leadership,” Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-NY) told the Washington Examiner. “I guess I don’t know how else to put it.”
Have the failed rule votes assisted the Freedom Caucus in gaining leverage with leadership?
“Absolutely,” Rep. Eli Crane (R-AZ) told the Washington Examiner.
“Unfortunately, there’s only a couple methods that this town understands, and political force is one of them,” Crane said.
But several Republicans have argued that these methods are not the way to prevent legislation from coming to the floor.
“There’s obviously a lot of anger amongst the vast majority of us,” Bacon said. “I mean, I’ve voted against Republican bills, but I’ve always voted for the rule. And these guys act like they’re better than the rest of us, that they can just do what they want. And so they’ve lowered, I don’t know, I think they’ve hurt the majority, they’ve weakened the majority.”
Both Bacon and Malliotakis said they’ve “called out” House leadership for allowing the Freedom Caucus and other conservatives to behave this way.
“How long is this going to continue? If it’s one time, two times, OK, they want attention. They want to be heard. I get it,” Malliotakis said. “But this has become a regular occurrence, and it’s disruptive to the institution. It’s preventing us from being able to do our work in a timely fashion. And it’s just, it’s disrespectful to your colleagues.”
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Rep. Jeff Hurd (R-CO), a freshman GOP member, said he’s “discouraged” by the votes against the rule, given he was told it was a staple of the institution to vote for the rule when he entered Congress in January.
“Certainly, in some ways, it can be frustrating,” Hurd said. “But ultimately, I trust that leadership has a handle on who’s doing what, why they’re doing it.”
Lauren Green contributed to this report.