Hakeem Jeffries asked the House Democrats' rules committee Tuesday for a "serious response" to two of his own members — Jared Golden of Maine and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington, who rescued a Republican agenda that Republicans had just voted down.
Speaker Mike Johnson needed the rescue at 2:20 Tuesday afternoon. He brought up the rule that opens the week's floor debate — the procedural vote that decides whether the House considers his bills at all — and five of his own Republicans voted no: Andy Harris, Clay Higgins, Ralph Norman, Chip Roy and Pete Sessions. A tie kills a rule, and Johnson was staring at 208-208. His week was dead.
Golden and Gluesenkamp Perez voted aye.
Final count: 210-208.
Narativ read the clerk's roll call — number 288 — and the votes around it, and the crossing was surgical. Eight minutes earlier, both voted no on the previous question, the setup vote Republicans carried alone, 212-205, without a single Democrat. They crossed only on the one vote Johnson could not win without them — and the crossing held all afternoon: both voted down their own party's last attempt to rewrite the whale bill.
