MAGA Mike CANCELS WAR VOTE right BEFORE LOSING

Added: 2026-05-24

[00:00:00]Hey Kelly, so at this point, we do have those two Republicans who have now voted for a candidate other than Mike Johnson.

[00:00:06]We had Thomas Massie, of course, we knew he wasn't going to vote for Johnson. He voted for Tom Emmer. And now we have Ralph Norman, one of the other holdouts who was undecided yesterday. He met with Johnson, he sounded optimistic, but said he wasn't there yet. He has now gone ahead and voted for Jim Jordan. We have another about five members of Republican members who they were in the chamber, their names were called, but they didn't say anything. And so what's going to happen then is that the clerk will be going back to their names when they are done. We'll see if they vote present, if they vote for someone else, if they vote for Johnson. Clearly, this is a strategy. We just don't exactly know at this point. And of course, there are still some other members uh who have been holdouts for Johnson, including Congressman Chip Roy. They haven't gotten to vote yet. Their names are further back in the alphabet.

[00:00:51]>> All right, people. Welcome back to Dr. John podcast. Speaker Johnson looked at a vote he was going to lose. Members of his own party ready to join Democrats to stop a war. And rather than let democracy function, he shut the institution down and walked away. Not a procedural maneuver, not a tactical retreat. He saw the votes, knew he'd lose, and closed the house rather than let the count happen. Mike Johnson closed the House of Representatives. Not metaphorically, not rhetorically. But at this point, it is looking like we are going to be going on to a second roll call vote. Of course, nothing is final until the gavel falls. Anyone can change their vote. Uh but at this point, it does not looking good for Mike Johnson.

[00:01:32]And it's looking like those promises that he made before going into the chamber with having a working group to work with those to cut spending might not be enough at this point. Kelly?

[00:01:41]>> So if I heard you correctly, there you said it was Ralph Norman uh from South Carolina who was another no vote on this, bringing that to two. Now, are they going to continue the roll call all the way through, Emily, and then start another round? How do How does it work?

[00:01:53]Yeah, so they'll continue the roll call all the way through. I mean, technically, members can continue to change their votes until the gavel falls, so nothing is final. Um, however, again, at this point, with kind of these five members Republican holdouts where just not voting and will vote then at the end.

[00:02:10]>> He literally gaveled the session closed and sent everyone home, canceling all remaining votes, and announcing the chamber would not reconvene for weeks.

[00:02:18]The reason was as simple as it was damning. A war powers resolution was scheduled for a vote. The Senate had already passed it with Republicans joining Democrats in a remarkable bipartisan rebuke of the administration's military actions. The House was poised to do the same. The votes were there. The resolution had the support to pass. And rather than face that reality, rather than allow a vote that would formally challenge the president's authority to wage war, the speaker pulled the plug on the entire legislative calendar and fled. Uh, plus the two who have already come out and voted for someone other than Johnson, things aren't looking good. Johnson would need a small miracle for him to work out on the first roll call. After that, Johnson can decide whether to take a break, go back to his office, maybe meets with the holdouts, or he could decide to just go ahead into that second roll call vote and see how he does there. So, we'll be paying very close attention to the rest of this roll call, to what the final roll call for the first one is, exactly how many folks are for or against Johnson, and then figure out what the next steps are from there.

[00:03:20]Interestingly, the market completely shrugging it off to Larry Lindsey's earlier point. Uh, the Dow still nearly 300 points without much movement on this. Emily, we appreciate it and we'll check back in. Emily Wilkins with that update from Capitol Hill.

[00:03:32]>> This is the moment when procedural jargon fails and plain language becomes necessary. The House of Representatives is not supposed to operate this way. The speaker is not supposed to possess the power to unilaterally cancel votes because he doesn't like the likely outcome. The entire structure of the legislative branch, the checks and balances, the separation of powers, the constitutional design that the founders crafted to prevent exactly this kind of executive overreach, all of it depends on Congress actually showing up and doing its job. And tonight, the speaker decided that preventing a vote was more important than allowing the House to function. Let's walk through exactly what happened because the sequence of events reveals more than any summary possibly could. The Senate had already acted. They took up the War Powers Resolution, a measure designed to block what many members of both parties have characterized as an unlawful and catastrophic military engagement. The vote was 50 to 47. Republicans crossed the aisle. Democrats held together. The upper chamber did what it was supposed to do. It debated, it voted, it produced a result. The resolution passed and moved to the House, where the real battle was expected to take place. The House leadership knew this vote was coming. They had it on the schedule.

[00:04:45]Members had prepared. Whips had counted.

[00:04:47]The math was clear to anyone paying attention. Democrats were united in support of the resolution. A significant block of Republicans, having watched the Senate Republicans join the measure, were prepared to do the same. The anti-war coalition had the numbers. Not a massive margin, not a supermajority, but enough. Enough to pass. Enough to send the resolution to the president's desk. Enough to force a confrontation that the administration desperately wanted to avoid. And so, Mike Johnson faced a choice. Allow the vote to proceed and accept the consequence, which would be a formal congressional challenge to the war. A public repudiation of the administration's foreign policy. And a demonstration that the president's grip on his own party was slipping in ways that could not be hidden. Or find some way, any way, to prevent the vote from happening. He chose the latter. And the method he chose was as breathtaking as it was simple. He just canceled everything. The floor of the House descended into chaos.

[00:05:39]Democratic members rose to demand answers. What happened to the vote? What happened to the resolution? What possible justification could there be for canceling a vote that members had prepared for, that the Senate had already passed, that the American people were demanding? The responses from the chair were non-answers dressed up in parliamentary language. Consult with leadership about scheduling. The chair is prepared to move on to the next question. Translation, we're not doing this vote and we're not going to explain why in any terms that would satisfy anyone who actually cares about democratic process. Congressman McGovern stood up and asked the question directly. Can someone explain what just happened? You're preventing us from voting on a privileged resolution. This was supposed to happen today. The frustration in his voice wasn't performative. It was the genuine exasperation of a legislator watching the legislative process get strangled in real time by someone who had decided that avoiding political embarrassment mattered more than allowing the house to function. He pressed further, asking whether the vote was being pulled because the American people were sick of the war, because gas prices were through the roof, because families couldn't afford groceries. The chair banged the gavel and tried to restore order, but order wasn't the problem. The problem was that order had been shattered by the speaker's decision to run from a vote he knew he couldn't win. Congressman Pat Ryan, a combat veteran who served 27 months in Iraq, responded with the kind of unfiltered fury that only comes from someone who has actually fought in wars that politicians start. He didn't hide behind decorum or diplomatic language.

[00:07:13]He called them chickenhawks. He pointed out the grotesque irony of being sent home for a holiday weekend, a weekend when he would be honoring fellow veterans who served and sacrificed, while the speaker refused to even allow an up or down vote on continuing a war that was approaching its third month. He connected the war directly to the economic pain Americans were feeling.

[00:07:32]The gas prices approaching $5 a gallon, the sense that the government was pouring billions into an overseas conflict while families at home struggled to fill their tanks and buy their groceries. His words were profane because the situation was profane. The polite language of legislative procedure had been weaponized to avoid accountability, and he refused to play along. Congresswoman Hillary Scholten explained the reality behind the procedural smoke screen. The votes were there. The resolution would have passed.

[00:08:00]The Speaker knew it would have passed, and rather than accept that outcome, he pulled the entire schedule and closed the House. She wasn't speculating. She was stating what everyone in the chamber already understood. The vote wasn't canceled because of some scheduling conflict or procedural technicality. It was canceled because the Speaker counted the votes and realized he was going to lose. When you have the votes to win, you hold the vote. When you know you're going to lose, you find an excuse to run. It's not complicated. It's not subtle. It's the behavior of someone who values power over process and loyalty to the executive over the constitutional role of the legislature. Even members of Johnson's own party were appalled.

[00:08:41]Congressman Barrett, a Republican, called the decision stupid. He said they should have stayed and worked. He expressed disappointment, not just in the outcome, but in the waste of taxpayer money, the waste of an entire week, the waste of the opportunity to actually govern. When members of the Speaker's own conference are publicly calling his decisions pathetic, something has gone profoundly wrong with the coalition he's supposed to be leading. The cracks that have been visible for months are now gaping fissures, and the Speaker's response to pressure isn't to lead, it's to flee.

[00:09:10]The scene as Johnson tried to escape the Capitol captured the essence of what happened more vividly than any floor speech could. Reporters chased him through the hallways shouting questions he had no good answers for. Why did you shut down the House? Why are you blocking this vote? What about the fund the administration wants for people connected to the January 6th attack? He walked faster. He dodged. He deflected.

[00:09:32]He said the Senate was still working through things, that he was waiting to see what they sent, that it wasn't his call. The spectacle of the Speaker of the House literally running away from questions about why he refused to allow a vote was the visual embodiment of a speakership in collapse. Leaders who are confident in their decisions explain them. Leaders who know they've done something indefensible run from the cameras and hope nobody notices. The procedural mechanics of how Johnson pulled this off deserve examination because they reveal the vulnerability in the system he exploited. A war powers resolution is what's called a privileged resolution. The founders understood that questions of war and peace were too important to be bottled up in committee or blocked by leadership. So, they created a mechanism that allows any individual member to force a vote on war powers. The Speaker isn't supposed to be able to simply cancel it or bury it or make it disappear. It's privileged for a reason because sending Americans to fight and die in foreign wars should require the consent of the people's representatives, and no single person should be able to override that consent.

[00:10:34]So, Johnson couldn't just block the resolution directly. That option wasn't available to him. Instead, he found a loophole that no one had ever heard of, a procedural argument so obscure and so convenient that it might as well have been invented on the spot. He announced a rescheduling. The vote would be moved to the next legislative session. And then he announced that the next legislative session wouldn't happen for weeks because he was closing the House and sending everyone home. It was a blockade disguised as a scheduling adjustment. He couldn't stop the vote, so he stopped time instead. He couldn't defeat the resolution, so he fled the battlefield and declared the war postponed. Congresswoman Balint explained this with the clarity of someone who has watched this playbook deployed before. This is the same tactic they used to block the release of files the public had a right to see. Delay, obstruct, run out the clock, and hope that by the time anyone can force action, the moment has passed and the energy has dissipated. The procedural excuse changes depending on the situation, but the strategy remains constant. When you can't win on the merits, you manipulate the process. When the votes are against you, you make sure the votes never happen. Congressman Al Green Claus described the situation with brutal simplicity. Republicans didn't have the votes to continue the war, so instead of stopping the war, they went home. They closed up shop for the holiday while Americans paid billions of dollars and service members remained in harm's way. The contrast between the sacrifice being demanded of troops in the field and the cowardice being displayed by politicians in the capital was stark enough that it didn't require elaboration. He made the point and let it hang in the air. The question of whether Mike Johnson has become a lame duck speaker is no longer theoretical.

[00:12:16]Congressman Jackson addressed it directly. The coalition is falling apart. The president is alienating members of his own party, taking out established senators, going against what the party has asked him to do. The result is a speakership that can't hold votes because it can't hold its majority, that can't pass legislation because it can't count on its members, that can't even stay in session because staying in session means confronting defeats that the speaker lacks the strength to prevent. When a speaker closes the house to avoid a vote, he's admitting that he can no longer lead it.

[00:12:46]The irony that Jackson identified is worth dwelling on. The more toxic the president becomes, the more opportunity there is for Congress to actually do its work. When the executive's grip weakens, the legislative branch can reassert itself. Members who know their time is limited, who know their political futures don't depend on presidential approval, can finally vote according to their convictions rather than their fears. The lame duck period isn't just about weakness. It's also about liberation. When there's nothing left to lose, you can finally do the right thing. Congressman McGovern didn't bother with the nuanced analysis. His assessment of Johnson's speakership was characteristically direct. The entire speakership has been lame. He's accomplished absolutely nothing, not a single thing. The session has been a waste of time, an exercise in incompetence, a spectacle that should embarrass everyone involved. He pointed out the priorities the House hasn't addressed. Nothing about affordability, nothing about lowering gas prices, nothing about the cost of groceries, nothing about making child care affordable. The only thing this Congress seems capable of doing is helping the well-connected, serving the interests of what he called the Mar-a- Lago class.

[00:13:55]Everything else gets ignored while the speaker finds new ways to avoid doing the people's business. The dynamic around the president's influence on the Hill has shifted in ways that even a few months ago would have seemed impossible.

[00:14:07]McGovern noted that Johnson apparently refused to meet with the president, something that would have been unthinkable when the speakership was stronger and the president's hold on the party was firmer. When asked whether Johnson had actually told the president no about anything, McGovern was skeptical. Johnson is many things, but a profile and courage, he's not. The suggestion wasn't that Johnson had suddenly found a backbone. It was that the president's toxicity had reached a level where even a speaker known for his loyalty was keeping his distance. When the person most associated with the administration starts avoiding the administration, the political signals couldn't be clearer. The broader pattern of what the House has been doing, or more accurately not doing, reveals the rot at the center of the current majority. The same procedural manipulation that killed the War Powers vote has been deployed repeatedly.

[00:14:56]Important legislation gets scheduled and then pulled. Votes that would expose divisions within the party get canceled.

[00:15:02]The calendar becomes a weapon rather than a schedule. Members who want to govern find themselves trapped in a chamber that can't pass anything controversial, can't debate anything substantive, can't even stay in session when staying means confronting reality.

[00:15:16]The economic dimension of all this is what will ultimately matter most to voters. While the House plays procedural games, Americans are paying almost $5 a gallon for gas, grocery bills keep climbing, the cost of living keeps rising, and the response from the people's representatives isn't legislation to address any of it. It's cancelled votes and closed chambers and a speaker who runs from reporters rather than explaining what he's doing to help families who are struggling. The disconnect between what Congress is focused on and what Americans are experiencing couldn't be more complete.

[00:15:46]The war isn't just a foreign policy disaster. It's an economic catastrophe that hits every family every time they fill their tank or visit the grocery store. And the house just went home without doing anything about it.

[00:15:58]Congressman Ryan's closing argument on the floor captured the fury that every American should feel about what happened. Every American needs to know what just happened. There was supposed to be a vote on this war. Do you want to continue this war or do you want to exercise your voice? He pointed out that the War Powers Resolution is privileged specifically because the founders knew this was too important to be blocked by leadership. The excuse Johnson invented, the procedural loophole no one had ever heard of, was transparently fabricated.

[00:16:27]It was, in Ryan's words, pathetic. The American people should be furious, and he's right, they should be. The comparison to previous tactics used to block disclosure of sensitive files isn't incidental. It's part of a pattern that spans multiple issues and multiple legislative sessions. When the majority doesn't want the public to see something, whether it's documents or votes or the true state of opinion within the party, the response is always the same: delay, obstruct, find a procedural excuse, run out the clock, and hope that by the time anyone can force action, the public has moved on to something else and the danger has passed. It's a strategy designed to exhaust rather than to govern, to survive rather than to lead. The vote on the museum legislation, which was supposed to be a straightforward non-controversial measure, revealed the same dysfunction from a different angle.

[00:17:15]What should have been a simple bill honoring women's history got loaded with controversial provisions tied to attacks on vulnerable communities and ultimately failed because seven Republicans joined Democrats in voting against it. The majority can't even pass the easy stuff anymore. The culture war tactics that were supposed to unite the base are now alienating members who don't want to be associated with them. The coalition is fragmenting on every axis simultaneously and the speaker's only remaining strategy is to avoid votes that would make the fragmentation visible. The lame duck question has been answered. Mike Johnson is a speaker who can no longer speak for his majority, who can no longer hold votes because he can no longer predict their outcomes, who can no longer govern because governing requires showing up and being counted.

[00:18:02]Closing the House to avoid a war powers vote is in a tactic, it's a confession.

[00:18:07]It's an admission that the constitutional role of the legislature has been subordinated to the political survival of its leadership. It's a declaration that avoiding presidential embarrassment matters more than congressional prerogative. It's a signal to every American that their representatives can't even be trusted to vote on the most consequential question any government ever faces, whether to continue sending people to fight and die in a foreign war. The House will eventually return. The vote will eventually happen and when it does, the resolution will almost certainly pass.

[00:18:38]Congressman Fitzpatrick has already warned leadership that the next time they bring it, it's passing. The delay hasn't changed the underlying math. The votes that were there before the recess will still be there after it. All Johnson has done is postpone the inevitable while demonstrating that he lacks the courage to face it. The war continues in the meantime. Service members remain in harm's way. Families keep paying at the pump and the speaker of the House hides behind procedural excuses that convince no one and protect nothing except his own increasingly untenable position. This is what a speakership in its final stages looks like. Canceling votes, closing chambers, running from reporters, losing members of your own party, accomplishing nothing while the country faces crises that demand action. The November elections can't come soon enough. Not because of partisanship or ideology, but because the current House has ceased to function as a legislative body. It's become a shelter for politicians who are scared of their own president, scared of their own members, and scared of the democratic process they were elected to serve. The founders didn't design the House to be closed because its speaker was afraid of losing a vote. They designed it to be the place where the people's voice was heard, where war and peace were debated openly, where representatives stood and were counted.

[00:19:54]Tonight, Mike Johnson decided that voice was too dangerous to hear, so he silenced it. He closed the doors. He went home, and he left the rest of us to wonder what it will take to finally open them again.