House Speaker Mike Johnson narrowly averted disaster Wednesday afternoon, salvaging the $900 billion defense authorization bill after cutting last-minute deals and phoning a friend: Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
Why it matters: Conservatives supplied the votes, but they are threatening to tank the next spending bill if Johnson (R-La.) breaks his word.
- "So we made a deal — and actually we talked to the secretary of state directly," Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) told Axios, saying Rubio vowed to shut down alleged funding from NGOs to the Taliban.
- Johnson also promised to "go to war" to ensure that a ban on a central bank digital currency gets attached to the next appropriations bill, due in late January.
- "It either happens, or a CR goes down," Luna said. "He's promised to be with us on that."
💰 Luna extracted a promise on getting a future vote to ban members of Congress from trading individual stock. Johnson was noncommittal about the timeline, and Luna is still pressing forward with her discharge petition on the issue.
- Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) said she flipped after Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) promised her bill, the Protect Children's Innocence Act, would get a floor vote next week.
- "I made a deal and changed my NO vote on the rule to a Yes in exchange for a floor vote next week on my bill that is one of President Trump's key campaign promises and executive orders," she wrote on X.
Driving the news: The procedural vote to bring the National Defense Authorization Act to the House floor was heading for an ignominious defeat earlier Wednesday.
- Johnson, Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) and Conference Chair Lisa McClain (R-Mich.) worked the floor, pressing defectors including Greene and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.).
- Massie held firm as the lone GOP "no." Luna joined Greene — along with Reps. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) and Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) — in flipping to yes.
The bottom line: Johnson kept the vote open for more than an hour — far shorter than his record-setting vote in July, when he held a vote open for seven-and-a-half hours during the "one big, beautiful bill" saga.
