House Republican leadership is eyeing the exits, planning to send lawmakers home to campaign rather than risk more embarrassing floor fights over legislation that's going nowhere, according to a new report.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) is expected to call a halt to the pre-election session no later than Sept. 17, freeing members to hit the campaign trail, Politico reported Thursday.
The House is on recess this week for Labor Day, set to reconvene Sept. 14, work for roughly a week, then head home again until after the November midterms — a sharp scale-back from the three weeks of session leadership had originally penciled in before Election Day, with October largely off the calendar.
The retreat reportedly comes as Republican candidates "agitate" to get back to their districts and as GOP leaders struggle to "keep control" of the House floor.
Just this week, a procedural rule setting up votes on several GOP-backed bills was on track to fail before Reps. Jared Golden of Maine and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington, both Democrats representing Trump-won districts, crossed the aisle to save it.
Without their votes, the chamber likely would have shut down for the week — House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) said he'd gotten no advance warning of the defections.
