The hard right agrees to allow house votes, but threatens continued blockade

Hard-right House Republicans agreed late Monday to give their party leaders a temporary reprieve from a week-long blockade of the House floor, allowing some legislative business to proceed Tuesday, but insisting they withhold their support from future votes if their demands were not met.

The move counted as progress for Speaker Kevin McCarthy after days of paralysis in the House that showed his tenuous grip on his awkward conference despite anger from right-wing Republicans over the deal he struck with President Biden to suspend the debt limit. and avoid federal bankruptcy. But the agreement was only tentative, and the group of about a dozen ultra-conservative lawmakers who held the floor hostage made it clear they intended to continue using guerrilla tactics to try to get Mr. manage to achieve.

The House was silent on Monday evening after Mr McCarthy canceled scheduled votes. But under a deal he reached with right-wing members of the House Freedom Caucus, things would resume Tuesday with votes on legislation to guard against restrictions on gas stoves and other government regulations, as well as a separate bill to introduce tougher federal rules on stabilizing pistols. brackets, according to people familiar with the discussions that talked about it on the condition of anonymity.

In talks on Monday, the people said, members of the rebel group explicitly told Mr McCarthy that he couldn’t count on their support to bring forward any other legislation next week or in the future until they worked out a power-sharing deal. agreement that guaranteed them a major influence on the legislative agenda.

Last week marked the first time in two decades that members of the majority party in the House sided with the party to lose power to defeat a rule, a procedural vote normally considered routine and almost always passed. decided along party lines with unanimous majority support. The move meant that Mr McCarthy was left, at least temporarily, as speaker only in name, with no governing majority behind him. In talks with GOP leadership on Monday, the rebels made it clear they intended to make it a habit.

Still, some of the 11 Freedom Caucus members emerged from talks in Mr McCarthy’s office on Monday and said they would support the rule they helped defeat last week – to call for regulatory action – as long as it was amended to the pro-gun legislation championed by conservative Republicans.

Mr McCarthy called the meetings “productive” but admitted more talks would be needed to reach a resolution.

“We know that when we work together and work on conservative issues, we were winning and getting more victories that way,” he told reporters at the Capitol on Monday night. “And I think everyone wants to go back to that place.”

Mr McCarthy said there seemed to be a “willingness” to work out differences but admitted that “doesn’t mean it’s all tied together. It means we thought that meeting was great so we’re putting in others each other.

Earlier in the day, Mr McCarthy said he was willing to hold the House on hiatus for a few more days if it meant Republicans could “fix the problem so it doesn’t keep blowing up”.

But the resolution reached Monday didn’t seem like a long-term solution, and it wasn’t clear what such a solution would look like. Hard-right Republicans are pushing for spending caps lower than what Mr. McCarthy and Mr. Biden agreed to in the debt ceiling bill, among other things.

The feud erupted last week in response to the compromise Mr McCarthy struck with Mr Biden to suspend the debt limit, which contained only a fraction of the cuts the Republicans had demanded. The deal enraged ultra-conservative Republicans who claim Mr McCarthy betrayed promises he made to them during his run for the speakership.

The uprising effectively shut down the House last week and talks to resolve the deadlock dragged on until Monday.

The impact of the uprising was low for now: The GOP insurgents managed only to push through their own party’s messaging bills, which have no chance of passing a Democratic-controlled senate. But it served as a reminder of the difficulty the speaker could have later when he needs to get his conference together to pass crucial spending bills, which will be needed to avoid a government shutdown this fall and punitive austerity in early 2025. to prevent.

It was also reminiscent of the paralysis that gripped the House in January, when some of the same instigators of the current drama refused to support Mr McCarthy as speaker, leading to a historic 15-round election that undermined the outrageous influence of a small group of right-wing legislators in a narrow Republican majority.

Carl Hulse reporting contributed.