‘Shooting ourselves in the foot:’ Johnson’s growing crisis over his unruly majority

By Sarah Ferris, CNN

(CNN) — Speaker Mike Johnson had just delivered President Donald Trump his biggest legislative win of the year, but as he sat in his office in mid-June surrounded by a group of furious senior Republicans, the mood was sour.

To secure that win, Johnson had been forced to make a deal with a gang of hardliners, led by firebrand Rep. Chip Roy, to help bring a bill cracking down on border security to the floor. Roy and others said he’d vowed to do so before the July 4 recess.

But now, just ahead of that deadline, Johnson was receiving a stark warning from his powerful center-right faction, including several high-ranking Republicans, three people familiar with meeting told CNN. If Johnson brought the bill to the floor, these members threatened to raise their own demands — namely, a list of long-awaited bills to overhaul the US immigration system, making it easier for certain groups to gain lawful entry into the country.

That previously unreported sit-down helps explain the House GOP’s descent into chaos in recent weeks as the fractious GOP conference repeatedly derails the speaker’s agenda. Johnson and his team lost an ugly floor fight last week, in part, because the speaker chose not to put that border security bill on the floor — sparking a revolt by Roy and other hardliners that paralyzed the chamber and forced leadership to scrap their agenda and send members home early instead.

In a narrow House majority where just two or three members can effectively seize control of the floor, Johnson is facing a governing crisis unlike what any speaker has seen in modern history. And some of his members fear those floor blockades will only get worse as his party approaches a critical midterm election, with Trump fiercely leaning on his members to enact his agenda before a possible change in control of Congress in November — at the same time that dozens of Republicans’ fear their political future is at stake.

The border crackdown bill is not the only thing thwarting Johnson’s agenda. Another group of hardliners, led by Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida, is still refusing to unjam the floor until GOP leaders can find a way to pass Trump’s elections overhaul bill. (The passage of that election bill, under current rules, is essentially impossible with the tight GOP margins in Congress and many Republicans quietly grumble that Luna continues to misinterpret Hill procedure in her quest.) Then there’s a pair of Ohioans demanding a vote on a major pension shortfall issue back home.

“It’ll be on everything we do from now until the end of this Congress,” fumed House Armed Services Chairman Mike Rogers, whose massive defense policy bill was stymied by the hardliners’ floor antics.

“Leadership needs to give those attention divas a little attention. That’s all they’re asking for. That’s what they do repeatedly,” Rogers said. Asked whether party leaders can fix the situation, Rogers replied: “I don’t have an answer for you.”

Johnson said Sunday that he plans to move quickly to advance the elections overhaul bill through a complex process known as reconciliation that wouldn’t require Democratic votes in the Senate. That plan would likely face a number of hurdles, however, and it’s unclear whether GOP leaders would be able to pull it off.

Even as frustrations spike, multiple Republicans told CNN there’s no appetite to replace their party leaders in this moment — or even to punish the leadership-bucking GOP defectors. They simply can’t afford to alienate any GOP votes and still have any hope of passing spending bills and other must-pass legislation this year.

Johnson allies point to the fact that the House was recently still able to pass a bipartisan housing bill and a bipartisan kids’ Internet safety bill – but major agenda items like that Pentagon policy bill and appropriations bills remain in limbo.

Many Republicans, like Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska, have made clear that they are putting the blame squarely on Johnson’s far-right agitators for freezing the floor.

“We got a handful of people who are, I’ll call them double digit IQ strategists,” Bacon said, taking a swipe at the hardliners who have jammed up the House floor. “We’re shooting ourselves in the foot, it’s not helpful. You would think that the Democrats are telling them what to do, that’s how dumb it is.”

And while immigration is one of the GOP’s strongest domestic policy issues, some Republicans believe that Johnson’s problems with the border bill may end up being the most intractable. In a call on Wednesday, Johnson assembled a group of Republicans — members of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus as well as key center-right Republicans — to try to come up with a compromise.

That conversation, however, did little to quell tensions, according to one person on the call. Center-right Republicans argue that it makes no sense to use precious floor time on a messaging bill that would go nowhere in the Senate. But conservatives, including House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, demanded to see the bill come to the floor, the person said. (The border bill, known as HR 2, has not yet passed out of the Judiciary Committee.)

But the hardliners also firmly oppose the push made by the party’s center-right, pro-immigration Republicans. Many of those more moderate Republicans hail from agriculture states or heavily Latino districts whose constituents have been dealing with a broken system for decades.

Among their own policy demands: Creating a pathway to legal residency for undocumented immigrants already living here, improving the visa program for farmworkers and safeguarding the program for migrants who cannot safely return home to their countries, known as Temporary Protected Status, that Trump has sought to dismantle. Some also want to shore up the popular Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, which has also been under threat.

Conservatives, meanwhile, are clear about what they want.

“I want to see [Johnson] execute the promise to put HR 2 on the floor. It was supposed to be on this week,” Rep. Keith Self of Texas told CNN after helping to tank Johnson’s attempt to bring the sprawling defense policy bill to the floor last week.

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