Three Big Beautiful Delays

Trump on the verge of legislative victory.

Good morning, everyone! Let’s get you caught up on the drama here in Washington, with congressional Republicans on the precipice of passing their top legislative priority just in time for their self-imposed July 4th deadline.

Here’s a quick timeline of the last day or so in the U.S. House of Representatives:

Wednesday, 2:08 PM to 9:31 PM: The House held a procedural vote to amend the rules resolution for the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the GOP plan to cut taxes, slash the social safety net, and boost border security and defense spending.

Remember: Any time the House passes a piece of legislation by majority vote, the chamber first must pass a “rule” outlining the terms of floor consideration for the measure. In this case, though, an extra step was needed first tweaking the rule that passed out of the Rules Committee, because House Republicans left out several features that could have potentially made the process more painful for them.

As far as anyone can tell, these mistakes in the rules resolutions were first flagged by @ringwiss, the congressional procedural expert who I profiled in Politico Magazine last year, revealing him to be a university student in the UK.

This process vote was ultimately held open for seven hours and 24 minutes, longer than any vote in U.S. House history, as Republicans corralled their members back to Washington and slowly persuaded members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus to approve the fix. “Iconic that because of a mistake some guy on Twitter with a profile pic of Homer Simpson found we now have a new record for longest vote ever in the House,” a House Democratic staffer wrote.

The vote eventually succeeded along party lines, 220-212.

Wednesday, 9:34 PM, to Thursday, 3:23 AM: Then it was time for the House to vote on the rules resolution itself, once that it had been amended. This vote stayed open for 5 hours and 49 minutes, almost as long as the previous one. (No, there is no maximum for how long the majority party can keep a vote open in the House.)

At one point, five House Republicans were voting “nay,” which would have been enough to sink the rule and block the One Big Beautiful Bill from advancing to a final vote: conservative Reps. Andrew Clyde (GA), Thomas Massie (KY), Keith Self (TX), and Victoria Spartz (IN), plus moderate Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (PA). At the same time, other Freedom Caucus members, like Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX), refused to vote.

Ultimately, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) was able to whittle those five “nays” down to one, passing the rule 219-213, with Fitzpatrick the lone GOP dissenter.

Thursday, 4:53 AM to present: The House then moved to debating the GOP legislative package. According to the rule, there was only supposed to be one hour of debate — but House leaders are able to speak for as much time as they want, something known as a “magic minute.”

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) has been taking advantage of this ability, speaking since just before 5 a.m., the third major delay the bill has faced since yesterday. Ultimately, though, like the other ones, the delay will only be temporary: eventually Jeffries will stop speaking, and the measure will be virtually assured to pass.

The record for longest “magic minute” belongs to former Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), who spoke for eight hours and 32 minutes when he was House Minority Leader railing against a different BBB — the Democrats’ ill-fated Build Back Better Act — in November 2021. Jeffries would have to speak until around 1:30 p.m. to break that record.

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After all that sound and fury, if you’re wondering what changed about the One Big Beautiful Bill that one won over conservatives after the two hours-long procedural delays, the answer is nothing.

Once Jeffries is finished speaking, the House is now poised to approve the package exactly as it passed the Senate, a major victory for GOP leaders, as it means the bill can go straight from the House to the president’s desk, fulfilling his July 4th target.

Just a few days, ago Rep. Massie called the Senate-passed megabill a “lobotomized” piece of legislation, railing against the estimated $3.4 trillion deficit impact. Just yesterday, Rep. Self called it “morally and fiscally bankrupt.” Rep. Roy wrote on Tuesday that “we must fix” the Senate bill’s treatment of clean energy tax credits from the Inflation Reduction Act, which conservatives felt were slated to be phased out too slowly.

But, in the end, none of the changes they sought were made, and each of these lawmakers ended up voting to advance the package. (Technically, the package itself will still be able to pass if three House Republicans vote against it, so some or all of these members might cast “nay” votes in the end. But it will have been their “yea” votes on the rules resolution that made a final vote on the bill possible.)

All it took to change their minds, according to The Hill, was a 1 a.m. phone call with President Trump, plus undefined “commitments from the White House on a variety of topics, especially on how the megabill is implemented,” per Politico. Through all their hours of obstinance, they didn’t succeed in changing the text of the package one iota.

The whole process was a reminder — yet again — of Trump’s enduring power over the congressional GOP, even over the Freedom Caucus types who have spent years making life difficult for Republican leaders. As has been the case all year, there might be some hemming and hawing about fiscal responsibility, but at the end of the day, when Trump sets a deadline, the GOP meets it. And when he calls, they fall in line.

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What else you should know…

• The U.S. economy added 147,000 jobs last month, outperforming expectations. (Read more)

• A federal judge ruled that President Trump exceeded his authority by setting strict restrictions on asylum-seeking at the southern border. (Read more)

• Kilmar Abrego Garcia said in a court filing that he and other migrants deported by the U.S. — without due process — to a notorious El Salvador prison were kicked and beaten by guards and subjected to severe sleep deprivation. (Read more)