Dozens of House Republicans voting to defy Trump shows 'the limits of his power': report

21 December 2024

President-elect Donald Trump has already had to expend some of his political capital on pushing a government funding bill across the finish line — a month before his own inauguration. And according to a new report, some in Trump's inner circle are worried his influence over the House Republican Conference may be waning.

In a Saturday article, Politico's Lisa Kashinsky and Holly Otterbein observed that the president-elect was unable to unify his party around the most recent bill to keep the federal government open for the next three months, with 38 House Republicans voting against the bill despite his calls for Congress to pass it. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) once again depended on Democratic support to send the must-pass bill to the Senate, just as he has for the past several government funding bills.

"For a long time there were always calls for ‘who in the Republican Party will ever stand up to Trump?’ And now we certainly have it," GOP strategist and former Trump administration appointee Matthew Bartlett told Politico. "But it may not be in an ideal way."

One point of contention for several Republicans was the fact the bill that ended up passing the chamber didn't include the steep budget cuts some members were hoping for. Trump and Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) got into a heated back-and-forth on social media, with the latter publicly tagging both Trump and Johnson in a tweet vowing to not support any government funding bill that funded federal agencies at current levels. The president-elect fired off several Truth Social posts attacking Roy and threatening to endorse a primary challenger against him in 2026.

Kashinsky and Otterbein wrote that the defiance of those 38 Republicans — which includes far-right House Freedom Caucus members like Roy— could lead to an eventual standoff with Trump next year as they expose "the limits of his power." Republican strategist Doug Heye said the Thursday night vote in the House of Representatives shows the various factions within the Republican Party the president-elect will need to appease in order to govern — including those who vowed to go against Trump's calls to abolish the debt ceiling.

"We talk about MAGA, Freedom Caucus, etc., but there’s a sizable chunk of the conference that are OG Tea Partiers," Heye told Politico. "Raising the debt ceiling tests the boundaries of what is otherwise an enormous influence over the party."

The bill that averted a shutdown notably did not raise the federal debt ceiling, which virtually ensures a legislative confrontation in 2025 that could jeopardize the global economy. Trump turned heads earlier this week by agreeing with Democrats that the debt ceiling should be abolished, saying it would be the "smartest thing" Congress could do.

Click here to read Politico's full report.

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