House Republicans have opted to cut their workweek short by one day, holding their last votes Wednesday rather than Thursday and avoiding a contentious, longshot vote on whether to impeach Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
House Republican leadership had already canceled the last two weeks of September votes. After members depart Wednesday, they will not return until after the November midterm elections.
Speaker Mike Johnson denied that the change in schedule was due to the privileged motion made by Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky) on Tuesday to impeach Hegseth. Johnson would have had to put Hegseth’s impeachment up for consideration by Thursday, because privileged motions must be taken up within two legislative days of being introduced.
“It’s a publicity stunt by someone who wants attention,” Johnson said of Massie’s impeachment motion. “It will immediately be tabled, of course, but we probably won’t do that today. We’ll probably do it when we come back.”
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A contempt motion recommended by the House Oversight Committee against billionaire investor Leon Black for defying subpoenas related to the Jeffrey Epstein investigation “probably moves today, and I think it’ll move pretty quickly,” Johnson said Wednesday.
He said House lawmakers have already done their job, “so it’s time for our members to go home to their districts and make their case to the American people to go and explain all the great things we’ve done.”
The speaker added that the House passed more than 70 bills this week alone and has passed hundreds of pieces of legislation this session — though many of those bills are now waiting to be picked up in the Senate.
“The House has done so much of that for the last 19, 20 months or so, and a lot of it is just awaiting action in the Senate,” Johnson said — adding that he would bring the House back on 48 hours’ notice “if the Senate works together and moves some of these important pieces of legislation.”
The move was not a popular one in some circles on Capitol Hill. Rep. Ralph Norman (R-South Carolina) decried Republican leadership’s decision to send the House home even earlier than they had initially planned. Norman is not running for re-election in South Carolina’s 5th Congressional District after he lost a bid for both the governorship and a U.S. Senate seat.
“Canceling yet another day of votes is unacceptable,” Norman wrote Wednesday on X. “The House has now canceled at least 63 scheduled voting days this Congress, including nine days this month alone, and now we’re leaving Washington until after the election.”
Norman added that if members of Congress want to go home and focus on election day, “then their campaigns ought to be paying them, NOT the American taxpayer.”
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