Inside the GOP’s barely functioning Congress

(CNN) — Republicans will control Washington for at least six more months, but they’ve already lost control of one-half of Congress.

Marred by infighting in his razor-thin majority, Speaker Mike Johnson no longer has a functional majority in the House. GOP leaders are struggling to fulfill the chamber’s most basic role on issues from government funding to authorizing critical spy powers that President Donald Trump himself has demanded, all just months before a critical midterm election.

“We can’t really agree on much of anything,” Rep. Troy Nehls, a Republican from Texas, said on Wednesday as leadership was trying to convince members to clear a procedural hurdle on the House floor to move ahead on key priorities, including the surveillance program extension. “This is our time to actually pass conservative legislation. That the American people gave us the gavel. They gave us the White House. … They gave us the Senate. And we have squandered an enormous amount of time away. We’ve squandered these opportunities.”

Johnson has tried to blame Democrats for the chaos, but frustrations are rising inside the US Capitol and at the White House – with many pointing to the House disarray for prolonging a 75-day shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security that is threatening more chaos at airports in the coming weeks.

“The fact that this has gone on, what are we at? 70-something days? It’s a stunning testament to congressional dysfunction,” Rep. Kevin Kiley of California, an independent who formally left the party this year but still largely votes with the GOP.

And scrapped bills, venting behind closed doors and stalled floor activity this week has ratcheted up tensions in the conference.

On Wednesday alone, House GOP leaders held open a contentious procedural vote for three hours. They pulled one huge priority — the farm bill — from the floor and then brought it back hours later after a revolt from members. (“This place is insane,” Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky griped on X, when he learned of the switch.)

Late Wednesday evening, the House took a step forward in a GOP effort to fund immigration enforcement amid the ongoing DHS shutdown – a vote that succeeded but only after hours of arm twisting.

Johnson’s weakening grip on his members throws into doubt whether Trump and Hill GOP leaders will be able to deliver on any other major priorities ahead, including a funding package for the Iran war that could cost as much as $100 billion.

The speaker’s ability to keep his fractious House GOP in line was never simple in the smallest majority since the Great Depression. While he has tried to give his members space to work through their concerns, the mood in the chamber has dramatically soured in recent days. Republicans are coming to terms with Trump’s poor approval ratings, an unending war in the Middle East and spiking gas prices — with no apparent strategy in Congress to fix any of it.

Then there’s the group of increasingly rogue actors within the conference who are empowered in the narrow majority and seem willing to shirk both Trump and Johnson to achieve personal priorities — on top of a seemingly perpetual struggle with absences and ethics issues.

“Look, all it takes is two to shut this whole thing down,” House budget chief Jodey Arrington told CNN of the DHS funding standoff.

Rep. Steve Womack characterized the narrow majority as “chaos, that’s what we are.” “We are good at that,” the Arkansas Republican added.

Perhaps the biggest headache for leadership are hardliners like Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida or Nancy Mace of South Carolina, who have elevated their personal profiles as they force the House to take tough votes and join groups willing to hold up procedural ones. Then there are the scores of rattled Republicans in competitive seats this fall who are anxious to take big votes.

GOP Rep. Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey, who sits in one of those potentially in-play seats, has been pleading with his colleagues to simply agree to compromise for the sake of the party. If members don’t agree to a major attitude shift, he warned, voters would take notice – and potentially revolt in November.

“We’ve got to get together. We’re going to have a really hard, tough election. We’re either going to win by a little, lose by a little or lose by a lot. And we got a decision to make,” he said.

Retiring Sen. Thom Tillis, who has spent 11 years across the Capitol, offered a similar reproach.

“I think my colleagues over there need to start playing team ball. Their behavior is starting to be noticed by people. We can’t blame Democrats for the dysfunction that is going on over there right now and it’s a really bad look for people going into at-risk districts in November,” the North Carolina Republican said. “They’re gonna live to regret it”

A floor outburst and a ‘test of the wills’

Just moments after Johnson and his team successfully quelled a three-hour floor revolt on Wednesday, the speaker was thrown back into tumult.

Rep. Zach Nunn of Iowa – whose state relies on biofuel that’s at the center of a contentious farm bill – stormed onto the House floor to confront the speaker and Luna for making side deals on the sprawling package.

As Johnson ushered Nunn and Luna into a private room, Luna shouted her own defense: “We want the farm bill with no pesticide provision!” (Luna later told CNN she’d received such “nasty” messages from some of her Republican colleagues that she felt the need to get Johnson involved to stop what she characterized as threatening behavior.)

The outburst on the floor was an extraordinary display of the many competing factions in Johnson’s party. Any agreement he makes with one bloc of members risks enraging a separate – but equally powerful – group.

That was not the Republican leader’s only headache.

Conservatives and party leaders have been embroiled in a tense standoff over a powerful surveillance law that teetered on expiration. In meeting after meeting over the last few weeks, leadership repeatedly sought to force the extension of the critical spy powers bill without making the changes pushed by conservatives.

“This is a test of the wills,” GOP Rep. Keith Self, one of the conservatives pushing for changes to the bill, told CNN on Wednesday. “Are we going to protect our American citizens or are we not? It’s that simple a question.”

Even President Donald Trump’s call for a clean reauthorization and direct pressure campaigns from CIA Director John Ratcliffe and White House adviser Stephen Miller did little to move the party.

When Johnson thought he had clinched a breakthrough last week, members of the far-right House Freedom Caucus privately scoffed. That hardliner group sent around a memo calling his latest proposal “weaker sauce in a new bottle,” according to a source familiar with the document.

Ultimately, those privacy hawk Republicans forced leadership to tack on an unrelated crypto measure to the must-pass spy powers bill – effectively tanking its chances in the Senate and upending the road to final passage just a day before the midnight deadline. Senate leaders, who looked on from across the Capitol, were left scrambling and ultimately suggested another short-term extension, which will only prolong the drama.

“This has been a game of chicken where neither side has wanted to blink,” a source familiar with the negotiations told CNN.

The two episodes underscore how Johnson has taken hits from all sides this week as he’s tried to maneuver bills in one of Congress’ most intense weeks of legislating so far before the midterms. He aimed to convince his members to reauthorize the critical government spying program, to back a farm bill measure and support a procedural vote that would eventually allow Republicans to end the DHS budget standoff.

But on all of those issues, Johnson was repeatedly forced to recalibrate his plans in real time. On the farm bill – which was expected to be the least controversial vote of the week – Republican leaders were forced to scrap plans to consider the bill altogether, with a slew of members still disgruntled over key provisions over biofuels and pesticides. But hours later, they were forced to reverse course.

“There’s a lot on our plates. It’s a lot of high stakes, and it’s one of the most controversial matters in public policy,” Johnson said of this week’s agenda as he entered the Capitol Wednesday.

Later in the day, he expressed optimism, despite having to forfeit agenda items this week. “You have very different opinions about all of these things across the conference from different regions of the country who see these issues differently. Sometimes it goes quicker than others, but we will get there,” he said.

Johnson’s momentum

Since he took the gavel in fall 2023, Johnson has navigated his slim margins and still pulled out at-times shocking wins, including a massive border and tax bill that earned him the reputation “Magic Johnson” in some circles.

“I don’t think it’s a leadership problem over here. Mike Johnson has won like the medal of honor legislatively three times,” Rep. Mark Amodei of Nevada said.

But that momentum has been blunted as the midterms approach and as Trump is engulfed in managing challenges at home and conflict abroad.

A record number of Republicans have announced they’re retiring. And many of those who are staying have been rattled by Trump’s coast-to-coast redistricting war.

Florida lawmakers, for instance, were so anxious about their state’s map redraw that a small gang of lawmakers recently forced GOP leaders to pull an endangered species bill from the floor out of concern it could hurt them politically in new seats, according to a person familiar.

Johnson’s job has only been made more complicated by Democrats’ eagerness to cause further pain for Republicans wherever possible. This week, Democrats were so furious at the Republicans’ struggle to set the weekly agenda – calling late-night meetings of the House Rules Committee only to postpone them at the last minute – that they pushed dozens of politically difficult amendment votes in that same hearing after a sarcastic comment from one of their GOP members.

“Bare margins make things more difficult. The family has a divergent set of views. Our friends in the majority obviously realize the more chaos they can contribute to, the better off – they think – for them in the fall. I see all those pieces coming together,” Republican Rep. Frank Lucas of Oklahoma, who’s spent 32 years in the House, told CNN.

On the other side of the building, GOP senators has been left scratching their heads.

Twice, the Senate unanimously passed a bill that would fund every part of DHS besides US Immigration and Customs Enforcement and US Customs and Border Protection, which were separately funded through the president’s signature policy bill last summer. But Johnson has sat on the legislation to reopen large swaths of the department for nearly a month as conservatives in his conference balked at putting anything on the floor that zeroed out immigration funding even as they understood the department would soon be covered by a GOP-only bill.

“I don’t think the phone lines go from the north to the south end of the building,” Amodei quipped of the lack of clear communication over how the funding would ever be passed in both chambers.

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