House Speaker Mike Johnson is running into problems with his own caucus as he tries to advance a Senate-approved measure to reopen most of the government, which shut down on Saturday morning.
The House Rules Committee will meet Monday evening to take up the measure that would fund a wide swath of the government, the first step in getting the bill to the House floor. The bill cleared the Senate on Friday after Democrats there had funding for the Department of Homeland Security stripped and replaced with two weeks of stopgap funding for the agency — a change that requires the House to reapprove the measure.
Because Democrats are not helping Johnson and the GOP fast-track the measure, the speaker will likely have to work within his own razor-thin majority to advance the bill when it reaches the floor for a critical preliminary vote as early as Monday night. At least two Republicans so far have said they will not support the bill unless it includes a controversial voter-ID measure known as the SAVE Act, a new hurdle for Johnson as he aims to end the shutdown. And the Republican majority is about to shrink after Democrat Christian Menefee is sworn in to represent a Houston district after being elected Saturday in a special election.
