Dem
47
GOP
53
We will begin this item by reminding readers of something we wrote yesterday, and that we also wrote many times before that: The SAVE Act cannot pass the Senate. Any attempt at doing so would be met by a Democratic filibuster. Yes, Senate Republicans could kill (or carve-out) the filibuster, but there clearly aren't 50 votes for that. And even if there were, there aren't 50 GOP votes for the Act itself, which many red-state senators know would be bad for red-state voters.
Donald Trump (apparently?) refuses to accept this reality, and so keeps demanding passage of the SAVE Act as a condition for... everything. This week, of course, he put the kibosh on the bipartisan housing bill at the last minute, and demanded that only the SAVE Act would be enough to secure his signature on the housing legislation.
Some of the Trumpiest Trumpers in the House have gotten the message. Leading the charge is Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL), who has convinced several of her colleagues to completely gum up the works in the House, in an effort to force passage of the SAVE Act. Note that the SAVE Act has already passed the House, so Luna's looniness is aimed only at putting pressure on the Senate—pressure that, again, is not going to work. Nonetheless, Luna and a few other True Believers have been blocking every effort to deal with any other House business, meaning progress on a number of bills being pushed by Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has ground to a halt.
Johnson has very little control over his conference, and was completely unable to persuade Luna, et al., to end their empty posturing (it is instructive that even Rep. Ronny Jackson, R-TX, is angry with the miscreants). So, the Speaker called up Trump and asked him to intervene. Trump, who reportedly speaks to Luna more often than he speaks to Johnson, agreed and got on his social-media-platform-for-the-perpetually-unreasonable to send out this:
House Republicans should unify, and stop voting down "Rules" or, threatening to do so. Giving power to the Radical Left Dumocrats in the House to control what goes up for a Vote will make our outcomes worse, not better. No more grandstanding, please! They are the Dumocrats, and we can't let them WIN! Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DONALD J. TRUMP
Allow us to just pause for a moment and note that the man who is supposed to represent the whole country is referring to the opposition (i.e., about half the country) as "Dumocrats," and it doesn't even raise any eyebrows at this point.
We would imagine that now that Luna and the Loonie Brigade have their marching orders, they will fall in line. However, we're not actually going to know for... some indeterminate amount of time. Johnson already canceled several votes scheduled for today and sent his members home for the weekend. And because the July 4 holiday is around the corner, it's possible the House will remain recessed, and will not actually be in session again until July 13.
The Senate, meanwhile, will definitely be in recess until July 13. And this means that Donald Trump's "I'm not signing" temper tantrum might work, at least in the short term. The basic idea behind presidential approval of bills is that the chief executive has to convey their decision to Congress within 10 days. If they sign, they return the signed bill. If they veto, they return the vetoed bill. If they do neither, then they communicate nothing, and that means "I did not object to the bill," and it becomes law.
However, if Congress is not in session, then a bill cannot be returned to them. And so, in that circumstance, a non-signature is called a "pocket veto." The bill is not only dead, but on top of that, a pocket veto cannot be overridden. It is not entirely clear if "not in session" refers only to "the current session has reached its end" or it means "not in Washington right now." That has not been established definitively, and might have to be litigated.
Of course, if Trump pocket vetoes, Congress certainly could pass the legislation again, perhaps in slightly modified form. Would enough Republican members be willing to do that, knowing Trump's feelings on the matter? Would Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) be willing to bring the bill to the floor again? And, if not, would there be enough GOP votes for a discharge petition? These are all excellent questions.
If Trump does successfully kill the housing bill, and if Congressional Republicans do refuse to reverse that choice, then it's a real gift to Democrats. They would point out, over and over, that the bill was overwhelmingly bipartisan, that it passed by a huge margin, that it's what the people want, and that there's ONE PERSON who is stopping it from happening, and ONE PARTY whose cowardice is allowing that to happen. We find it very hard to believe that Republicans running for reelection in swingy districts and states, in particular, would be willing to bestow such a gift on the blue team, but then again, we are often surprised by what the modern Republican Party does. (Z)