Frustration mounts as GOP infighting derails House

Republicans are growing increasingly frustrated with the infighting that has brought work in the House to a halt and caused Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) to send lawmakers home early for the second week in a row.

Republican rebels are fuming over a voter ID bill and what they say is a broken promise from leadership to vote on border legislation by Independence Day.

But those defectors are getting increasing heat from not only their colleagues, but from the president whose policies they claim to be fighting for.

While hosting a group of Republican lawmakers for dinner Tuesday evening at the “Rose Garden Club” at the White House, President Trump turned to Johnson and asked if it was members of the House Freedom Caucus who tanked a procedural vote that would have teed up major funding and defense legislation.

Johnson, according to a source at the dinner, responded to Trump that some of the 13 lawmakers who voted down the rule were in the Freedom Caucus. Trump said that was “stupid” and that Republicans should stick together like the Democrats.

Trump dubbed the rebels part of the “3 o’clock caucus” in an apparent reference to the kind of members he gets asked to call in the wee hours of the morning to help sway them on a vote, as he has previously publicly complained about. Trump said there were nine members of the 3 o’clock caucus, but he didn’t specify who the nine were, the source said. Punchbowl News first reported Trump’s remark at the dinner.

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.), who is not a Freedom Caucus member, was the most visible of the 13 rebels this week. She had called for the annual defense authorization bill to include her amendment attaching the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE America) Act, legislation pushed by Trump that would require voter ID to cast a ballot and proof of citizenship for voter registration. It has passed the House multiple times.

Johnson had tried to use a different procedure to merge the SAVE America Act with the must-pass defense bill, but Luna insisted that it would be easier for the Senate to strip it out, and voted against the procedural rule. Senate Majority Leader John Thune........

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