If House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) wants to get anything done in the United States House of Representatives, he'll have to go through two fellow Republicans who were holdouts against him during his week-long fight to win the speakership.
Punchbowl News reports that McCarthy will "likely" name Reps. Nick Langworthy (R-NY), Ralph Norman (R-SC), Thomas Massie (R-KY), Chip Roy (R-TX) and Erin Houchin (R-IN) to the House Rules Committee this week, despite the fact that both Norman and Roy repeatedly voted against him becoming House Speaker.
As noted by NBC News reporter Sahil Kapur, giving prominent roles to Roy and Norman, as well as obstruction-minded Republicans like Massie, could come to hurt McCarthy's efforts to get any bills passed.
"The Rules Committee is historically structured 9-4 and controls what bills get House votes," he writes. "This would mean the Norman-Massie-Roy bloc can veto anything McCarthy wants to put on the floor—unless Democrats support it (and the general expectation here is minority members vote no)."
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In other words, even though the GOP will out-represent Democrats on the committee by a ratio of more than two to one, the trio of Massie, Norman, and Roy would be enough to block any GOP bill from hitting the floor presuming all Democrats also vote against moving it.
