Sunday US — Republicans Limp Into Recess: A Conservative Revolt Sank the Defense Bill and the Court Handed the President the Rest
Behind the fireworks and the flag-waving, the congressional majority had a miserable week. Republicans left Washington for the recess with their legislative agenda stalled and their majorities openly described as in peril, after a conservative rebellion so paralysed the House that Speaker Mike Johnson sent members home early without acting on a must-pass defense policy bill. The failure would sting in any year. It stings more in one where the Supreme Court has just closed a term that shifted power decisively away from Congress and toward the presidency — leaving the branch that is supposed to hold the purse and the pen looking like a spectator to its own diminishment.
A Defense Bill No One Could Pass
The annual defense authorisation is the closest thing Congress has to a bill that must move; it has passed for decades on the theory that funding the military is the one thing a divided chamber can always agree to do. This year it did not. A bloc of hardliners, extracting concessions on spending and on unrelated culture-war riders, held the floor hostage until the Speaker concluded he lacked the votes and adjourned rather than absorb a public defeat. Sending lawmakers home without a defense bill is not a scheduling quirk; it is a confession that the majority cannot govern its own members, and it hands Democrats a ready-made line about competence heading into the autumn.
The Court Enlarges the President
The legislative paralysis lands atop a judicial one. The Supreme Court spent its just-completed term, by the accounting of several analysts, sidelining Congress and amassing authority for the presidency and for itself — clearing the way, among other rulings, to weaken Congress’s ability to insulate regulators from presidential control and to limit how the legislature can structure elections and campaign spending. For a Republican majority that might once have welcomed a friendly Court, the term is double-edged: the power flowing to the executive flows to a President, not to them, and a Congress that cannot legislate has fewer tools to shape how that power is used.
Majorities in Peril
The phrase now attached to the House majority — in peril — is not idle. A caucus that cannot pass its signature defense bill, that spent the week before the nation’s 250th birthday in visible disarray, and that is watching its authority migrate to the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue is a caucus with a governing problem and, increasingly, a political one. The hardliners who forced the standoff will argue they were holding the line on principle. Leadership will argue they were held hostage. Voters, if the pattern holds into the autumn, may simply conclude that the majority does not work.
The President Is Content
None of this troubles the White House. A Congress that cannot act is a Congress that cannot constrain, and a Court that keeps enlarging executive power is a gift a President will happily accept. The administration spent the week presiding over the 250th as master of ceremonies while the legislature that shares its party tied itself in knots — a contrast in command that the West Wing did nothing to discourage. The optics of the semiquincentennial, whatever the Democrats’ new report alleges about its financing, were of a strong presidency and a weak Congress. That is a picture this administration is glad to have painted.
What to Watch
The recess buys the majority time to regroup, but the problems travel home with it. Watch whether leadership can assemble the votes for a defense bill when members return, whether the hardline bloc extracts still more for its cooperation, and whether the drift of power to the executive becomes a campaign argument that cuts against the very majority that enabled it. Congress adjourned this week. Whether it can still legislate is the open question of the summer.