Johnson scraps House votes before midterms

What happened

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) on Thursday canceled all House business for the final two weeks of September, leaving just four days for voting and other legislative activity before the Nov. 3 midterms. That’s a reversal from just days ago. “Republicans are here to work,” Johnson told reporters on Tuesday. “We are going to work all the way through September.”

Who said what

Johnson’s decision to shrink the calendar “comes as candidates agitate to get back on the campaign trail,” Politico said. It also “severely” curtails “what had been a full legislative calendar for September,” though “GOP leaders continue to struggle to maintain control of the House floor.”

The government is now funded through December. But among other consequences, the canceled workdays are “threatening to delay a bipartisan push to crack down on sexual misconduct in Congress,” Axios said. The reforms are “something that everybody wants,” Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández (N.M.), the top Democrat on a task force set up to address the issue, told Axios.

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What next?

After the House wraps up its next four-day workweek on Sept. 17, lawmakers “will return again for a lame duck session on Nov. 9,” kicking off five final weeks of scheduled “legislative business before the end of the 119th Congress,” said ABC News.