WASHINGTON — Within the span of some hours, Home Republican leaders simply watched their already slim vote margin slip to about as weak as it may possibly get.
A day after Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R-Ga.) resignation from Congress took impact, information broke early Tuesday that Rep. Doug LaMalfa (R-Calif.) had suddenly died on the age of 65. Then, extra information broke that one other Republican congressman, 80-year-old Jim Baird of Indiana, was in the hospital after a automotive crash.
The Home, which has 435 members when each seat is stuffed, has already been working with two empty seats. Sylvester Turner (D-Texas) died final March, and Mikie Sherrill (D-N.J.) resigned in November after turning into her state’s governor.
Now, with Greene gone, LaMalfa useless, and Baird within the hospital, the Home may have a complete of 430 members in attendance, at most. That breaks right down to 217 Republicans and 213 Democrats. Assuming all 430 present up for each vote, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) will want a majority of them, or no less than 216, to vote his approach.
Put one other approach, Johnson can solely afford to lose one vote on something. And that’s assuming all members are current and all different Republicans vote his approach.
It’s a grim state of affairs for the speaker, who has already spent the previous yr being routinely rebuked by GOP colleagues who teamed up with Democrats to drive votes on payments he didn’t wish to carry up, not the least of which was laws to drive Trump’s Justice Division to release all of its files on the late little one intercourse trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
“I’ve not misplaced management of the Home,” Johnson declared last month, as average Republicans went round him to drive a vote to increase soon-to-expire Inexpensive Care Act subsidies.
President Donald Trump introduced up Republicans’ tight new vote margin throughout remarks on the Kennedy Middle on Tuesday.
Baird and his spouse “had a fairly dangerous accident and we’re praying that they get out of the hospital in a short time,” Trump mentioned. As for the GOP’s shrinking vote margin, the president mentioned, “It’s not an enormous majority however it’s a unified majority and it’s folks that know what it takes to make America nice once more.”
The mathematics of Home votes might be illusory. Some Republicans routinely discuss robust about opposing Johnson on key votes, however then cave ultimately (we see you, Rep. Victoria Spartz). Some are solely keen to buck Johnson if their vote doesn’t determine a invoice’s consequence.
The one Republican who has reliably mentioned he’ll vote no on one thing after which truly does it’s Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), who has been a thorn in each Johnson’s and Trump’s facet. His vote additionally simply turned considerably extra essential within the Home.
Trump didn’t do himself any favors by attacking Massie on Monday. In a social media post, the president re-upped his endorsement of a main challenger to the Kentucky lawmaker and referred to as Massie “the Worst ‘Republican’ Congressman we now have had in a few years.”
Massie responded by sharing the president’s put up and mocking it: “i ain’t studying all that. im completely satisfied for u tho or sorry that occurred,” he wrote Tuesday on social media.
Democrats will elect somebody to Turner’s former Home seat in a runoff election on Jan. 31. With that seat stuffed, and presuming Baird is again within the Home by then, the brand new Home whole could be 432 members. However the tiny vote margin would be the identical: with 218 Republicans and 214 Democrats, Johnson nonetheless can’t afford to lose multiple vote.
