GOP faces a House in chaos

House Speaker Mike Johnson already had one of the toughest jobs in Washington: controlling an unruly GOP conference, with its razor-thin majority on the line next November.

Now, with tensions sharply rising inside the Capitol over party infighting and a new focus on partisan floor attacks, it’s about to get worse.

When the House returns from its Thanksgiving recess, the GOP speaker will face a chamber in chaos. He and his team have struggled to maintain control of the floor in recent weeks, as made clear by the recent unsanctioned push from rank-and-file members to release the Jeffrey Epstein files. But that’s not the end of it: Members of both parties are increasingly feeling emboldened to buck party leadership, forcing votes on personal priorities, including a spate of recent votes to punish fellow lawmakers.

“I would like us to get back to normal Congress,” Johnson said recently as he left the Capitol for Thanksgiving, acknowledging the censure wars that have roiled the chamber.

Then there’s the shocking resignation of one of President Donald Trump and Johnson’s most vocal critics in recent months, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene — who is making clear she won’t be quiet on her way out in January.

Even floor speeches are devolving into disparaging spats. In the House’s final vote before Thanksgiving, an ugly dispute between Reps. Maxine Waters, a California Democrat, and Maria Salazar, a Florida Republican, over an anti-socialism measure required leadership intervention.

“I think we just gotta quit electing knuckleheads. We have a very high knucklehead percentage compared to non-knuckleheads up here,” Rep. Tim Burchett of Tennessee said when asked about the recent rise in tensions on the floor. “By and large, we just need to start electing better people.”

That political pettiness has led to a notable uptick in frustrations within the House, at a time when GOP leaders are already facing an extraordinarily tough stretch that will include votes on contentious Obamacare and government funding measures loathed by the right wing. And the clash of emotions, diminishing legislative productivity and a rise in political violence outside of the Capitol grounds has led to an outpouring of concerns about what Congress can accomplish for the rest of the year and even up until the midterms.

“As I told my family last night, the House has just had a nervous breakdown. I don’t know what kind of drug we need. But it’s time for somebody to give us a prescription,” Rep. Emmanuel Cleaver, a Missouri Democrat, told CNN, reflecting on the increasingly grim mood inside the House in its first full week in session after nearly two months.

“Members are talking about it amongst ourselves; what’s going on with this place?” Cleaver told CNN. (Cleaver, a Methodist pastor, has arranged for more security while he’s home this week.)

Inside the Capitol, lawmakers in both parties say the increasing nastiness among members has sunk morale to a new low. Already, 18 House Republicans are ditching their jobs to run for a different political office, along with eight more on the Democratic side, in part because of current gridlock — and more retirement announcements are expected around the holidays.

While the House was gone for 54 days during this fall’s historic government shutdown, it only took a week for drama to overtake the lower chamber. In just five days, lawmakers brought forward four resolutions to punish various colleagues.

“After not being in session for so long, one week has got everyone ready to go home,” Democratic Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon of Pennsylvania told CNN.

The tensions go beyond Capitol Hill: Trump has weighed in with primary threats to members of his own party and even seemingly suggested that a group of Democrats who spoke out against his policies should be put to death.

That infighting has led — most recently — to the surprise announcement by Greene that she would resign her seat in the new year after her public feud with Trump.

Greene’s planned departure complicates things for Johnson, and not just because she will further narrow his slim majority during what could be the last major burst of policymaking in Trump’s second term. The Georgia firebrand also publicly called out the GOP for essentially surrendering their House majority, further inflaming tensions in her own party.

Republicans across the board are increasingly worried about their fate next November. The party is on edge that Trump’s redistricting push may be backfiring, awaiting a critical ruling on its Texas maps as soon as this week. Then there’s the early December special election in Tennessee, which Republicans are heavily favored to win but likely with a closer-than-expected margin with Democrats now spending heavily in the race.

Johnson will quickly feel Greene’s absence.

After the Epstein push, more lawmakers of both parties are now eager to force their own votes using the discharge petition, which was once rarely successful but is now increasingly part of members’ strategy to work around Johnson. It’s a rare step for lawmakers to take when their own party is in power.

But GOP Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida, who has shown she’s unafraid to tangle with Johnson, is now pushing a politically popular bill to ban lawmaker stock trading that still lacks support from leadership. Johnson may not be able to dodge floor votes the way a speaker normally can on politically thorny issues.

Johnson has suggested he wants to look at ways to make it more difficult for lawmakers to go rogue with their own legislative priorities, such as raising the threshold for discharge petitions. But he lacks the support in the wider GOP conference to do so.

Separately, a bipartisan group of members are pushing a rule change that would make it harder for the House to engage in censures.

“Today’s censure effect is less than it used to be. It used to be embarrassing,” Rep. Nick LaLota of New York told CNN. “I think the House would be right to move to increase the standard for censure. I think we should remove the privileged nature of it.”

“Otherwise,” he warned, “these things will just continue to devolve into partisan attacks.”

Rep. Steny Hoyer, the former No. 2 House Democrat, told CNN that he, too, sees “merit” in the idea.

“This going tit-for-tat stuff is wrong,” Hoyer, who dealt with plenty of his own floor drama during his time as majority leader, told CNN. “You do not want to cheapen sanctions for behavior,” he warned, adding that the House needs to “preserve, to the extent we can, the image and integrity of the institution.”

There’s another grim reality facing Washington: A frightening uptick in political violence that Greene said contributed to her decision to leave — and prompted at least one other prominent lawmaker to head for the exits this year.

Days before Greene announced her early retirement, Trump suggested that Democratic lawmakers who urged service members and intelligence officials to disobey illegal orders should be put to death. All six of the Democrats featured in the video experienced a significant uptick in threats against them, including bomb threats, following Trump’s amplification.

After Trump’s comments, one House Republican made a private plea to their colleagues that they had a role to play in turning down the rhetoric.

“We have got to tone it down,” the GOP lawmaker granted anonymity to discuss their private conversations told CNN. “Our colleagues have to do a better job of not being so personal. You got to be willing to work with people even if you don’t agree on stuff. You have got to build relationships and get to know them.”

CNN’s Ellis Kim contributed to this report.

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