Mike Johnson defies Trump to pass spending bill without voting provisions

House Speaker Mike Johnson has rebuffed former president Donald Trump’s overtures by letting the House of Representatives vote to approve a spending bill to keep the government funded until December — despite the fact that it included no provisions to tighten elections.

Trump had previously called on House Republicans to not agree to a continuing resolution without the SAVE Act, which claimed it would would prevent illegal immigrants from voting. This, despite the fact that US law already prohibits such a practice in federal elections.

“If Republicans don’t get the SAVE Act, and every ounce of it, they should not agree to a Continuing Resolution in any way, shape, or form,” Trump wrote on Truth Social last week.

Some conservatives and members of the House Freedom Caucus expressed frustration at the fact that House Republican leadership gave up.

“And I realize he's got a tough job, but the country's in tough shape, financially, militarily in every way,” Representative Ralph Norman of South Carolina told The Independent. “So I will wish he had fought harder, but it is what it is.”

But House Appropriations Chairman Tom Cole told The Independent that including the SAVE Act was not feasible and a government shutdown would be worse.

“My personal opinion is, we were not likely to be able to get that and the government shutdown was not going to be helpful to President Trump, let alone to our efforts to hold on to the House,” he said.

The House voted 341-82 to pass the continuing resolution, which will fund the government at levels set in the fiscal year 2024 budget, through December 20.

“It's pretty consistent to where this congress has been on issues like providing funding to Ukraine and israel and funding government earlier this year, so it's not surprising,” House Democratic Caucus Chairman Pete Aguilar of California told The Independent.

All of the chamber’s Democrats voted to approve the measure, joining with 140 Republicans to pass it under a provision of House rules requiring two-thirds of the chamber to vote on bills that bypass the regular legislative process.

All Democrats voted with 138 Republicans to keep the government open. The House held the vote under suspension of the rules, which allowed for House Republican leadership to sidestep it having a vote in the Rules Committee, given opposition from far-right members. That meant that the legislation had to pass with more than two-thirds of the vote.

Despite defying the former president, Johnson is a Trump loyalist who even turned up to the former president’s trial in New York to support him. It is unclear how Trump will respond to Johnson’s defying his demands to keep the government open.

Throughout the 118th Congress, Republicans have relied on Democrats to pass stopgap spending bills to prevent a shutdown, to raise the debt limit and pass aid to Ukraine and Israel.

The House will now leave until the after the election. Republicans hope to hold onto and grow their narrow majority in the House while Democrats seek to flip a handful of Republican-held seats that voted for President Joe Biden in 2020.

The legislation will now head to the Senate where it is expected to pass swiftly.