Republicans Have Bigger Problems Than Donald Trump

The federal indictment of Donald Trump on numerous felony offenses may be dominating the headlines, but Republicans in Washington, D.C., are grappling with an even bigger set of problems that—if left untreated—threaten to grind Congress to a halt indefinitely.

On the heels of a controversial deal with President Joe Biden's White House to raise the federal debt limit earlier this month, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy faced a revolt from hardliners within his caucus who believed the California Republican conceded too much ground to Democrats in the deal.

While the package contained significant cuts in spending and White House concessions on provisions like work requirements for social services and other policies typically opposed by Democrats, Republicans felt other provisions of the deal—including McCarthy's failure to extract the broad-based spending cuts conservatives wanted—only served to weaken the power of their already narrow 10-vote majority, as evidenced by the bipartisan spending package's overwhelming support from members of the other party.

For members of the House Freedom Caucus—a group of nearly two-dozen hardline Republicans who initially opposed McCarthy's rise to the speakership—McCarthy's capitulation to the Biden White House was a step too far.

During a vote last Tuesday to advance GOP legislation barring the Biden administration from banning gas stoves in new residential construction, nearly one-dozen Republican lawmakers crossed the aisle to block the bill from moving forward in an apparent rebuke of McCarthy's debt limit deal, pledging to hold up all other legislation from moving forward until their caucus' demands were met.

In return, House leadership canceled all votes for the week while, within their own team, lingering tensions between McCarthy and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise—who once reportedly coveted the speakership before McCarthy rose to the post—began to bubble over.

Reached by reporters after last week's vote, McCarthy appeared to have been caught flat-footed by the mutiny within his ranks, placing blame on Scalise for an apparent miscommunication with Georgia Republican Andrew Clyde that led to the first failed rules vote on the floor in two decades. According to media reports, some believed House Leadership planned to withhold a vote on a gun bill Clyde had requested unless he voted for the debt limit deal—a conversation McCarthy placed squarely in Scalise's corner.

"Yesterday was started on something else," McCarthy told reporters the following day. "It was a conversation that the Majority Leader had with [Clyde] and I think it was a miscalculation or misinterpretation of what one said to another. And that's what started this and then something else bellowed into it."

Scalise fired back Wednesday, telling reporters that while there had been a discussion with Clyde, he had not threatened to hold back the bill. He added that there was "some anger expressed" toward McCarthy in other conversations he'd had with members surrounding his work on the debt ceiling deal and other perceived broken promises dating back to the speaker's race in January extending beyond one single bill, before committing to advancing Clyde's bill in the coming week.

"Other things came up, too," Scalise said last week. "We're still working to bring the pistol brace bill to the floor. And there's been vote issues with that bill for a long time. I'm working with Congressman [Andrew] Clyde to get the pistol brace bill onto the floor but also to make sure it passes."

Newsweek has reached out to both's offices—as well as several Freedom Caucus members' offices—via email for comment. But at this point, it seems unclear when Republicans will be able to resume activity as normal.

While Republican leadership planned to resume its regular activities with a series of uncontroversial suspension votes Monday evening anticipated to advance with bipartisan votes, Tuesday will feature votes on a number of partisan pieces of legislation—including a series of sweeping tax cuts—that will require all hands on deck for Republicans to advance. And at this point, it's unclear whether members of the Freedom Caucus are prepared to come on board, setting the stage for a similar blockade similar to that that played out in the 15 rounds of voting McCarthy took to become speaker.

While Freedom Caucus members have yet to lay out explicit terms for what they want to accomplish from the blockade beyond a more hardline negotiation approach, some—like Georgia Congresswoman and McCarthy ally Marjorie Taylor Greene—are urging colleagues to coalesce around the one thing almost all of them have in common: their support for the former President amid his ongoing criminal probe.

"Republicans need to stop being the party of every man for himself and need to stop fighting each other," Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene tweeted following the indictment. "Democrats are arresting their political enemies and they work together in their corrupt ways to get it done," she continued. "It's time for Republicans to unify. No more non-sense."