Speaker Mike Johnson said Wednesday he is canceling planned Thursday votes and sending members home for a seven-week recess a day earlier than expected.
The decision lops another day off a preelection legislative schedule that Johnson had already truncated by two weeks. It also allows members to avoid having to take a vote on an impeachment resolution introduced by Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) targeting Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, which would have hit the floor no later than Thursday under House rules.
Johnson called the idea of impeaching Hegseth “ridiculous” Wednesday.
“It’s a publicity stunt by someone who wants attention,” he said. “It will immediately be tabled, of course, but we probably won’t do that today. We’ll probably do it when we come back. But it’s a stunt. Secretary Hegseth has done an extraordinary job.”
Leadership staffers indicated in a notice to members that other votes expected Thursday, on overturning some EPA regulations, would now take place Wednesday evening. The House could also vote on holding hedge fund mogul Leon Black in contempt of Congress over his refusal to testify in the Oversight Committee’s Jeffrey Epstein investigation, Johnson said.
Read the full article here