Though former President Donald Trump has emerged as the de facto leader of the Republican Party, the members of his party in the House have routinely failed to carry out his wishes.
The former president has a close relationship with House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and has attempted to use this to push his own legislative agenda. Despite his popularity within the party, however, Republicans have repeatedly failed him for one reason or another.
Here are four ways in which House Republicans have failed Trump:
Failure to impeach Joe Biden
Following his own impeachment twice at the hands of the Democrats, Trump has sought to wield House Republicans to return the favor, letting President Joe Biden share the burden of being the only 21st-century president to be impeached. The move is hardly a strain on House Republicans, as a distaste for Biden is the one overriding factor uniting them all.
These efforts have come to naught, however, despite an enormous effort from House Republicans, who sifted through thousands of documents, mainly related to allegations that Hunter Biden wielded his father’s political power for financial gain.
The intricate web of foreign connections has excited many Republicans, but its complicated nature and competing, sometimes hostile witnesses, have failed to pull together a solid enough case to move forward.
Nearly a year and a half after initial investigations began, the effort to impeach Biden appears to be fizzling out.
Failure to prioritize bill moving presidential state cases to federal court
In April 2023, Rep. Russell Fry (R-SC) introduced a bill that would allow presidents charged at the state level to move their cases to federal court, neutering district attorneys such as Fani Willis and Alvin Bragg. The bill laid dormant for over a year with little interest.
However, Politico reported that the bill has renewed interest and may be put to a vote soon.
Despite the late start, Fry believes House Republicans can pass it with proper information.
“In my experience so far, the more [House members] have heard about it, the more comfortable they are with it,” he said. “It’s not a unique concept.”
Failure to defund Jack Smith
Special Prosecutor Jack Smith has emerged as one of Trump’s foremost enemies, being responsible for the prosecution of two of four indictments against him. To help his legal troubles, the former president has turned to his allies in the House to defund Smith’s efforts to prosecute him.
In May, Johnson expressed possible support for the idea.
“There’s a lot of different ideas. People are alarmed that the special counsel, in that capacity, has been abused in recent years,” he told reporters. “How does Congress correct that error and ensure that a special counsel is not abusing their authority? You know, we have oversight, of course, we also have the power of the purse.”
He announced that he was “working with Chairman [Jim] Jordan of the House Judiciary Committee and Chairman [James] Comer of our Oversight Committee on measures to rein in the abuses of Special Counsel Jack Smith.”
One month later, these efforts have failed to bear any fruit. Republicans don’t appear to have enough votes to push the measure through, with Rep. Mike Simpson (R-ID) dismissing the idea as “stupid.”
“I don’t think it’s a good idea unless you can show that [the prosecutors] acted in bad faith or fraud or something like that,” he told Politico. “They’re just doing their job — even though I disagree with what they did.”
Failure to impeach Alejandro Mayorkas
Homeland Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas represents the near opposite of Trump on one of the former president’s central issues – immigration. The firing of one of Biden’s top officials, the one in charge of immigration no less, would have been a major boon for the former president.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
After House Republicans made known their intention to impeach Mayorkas in January, a vote was brought forward on Feb. 6 — which humiliatingly failed after four Republicans defected to the Democrats. A second vote on Feb. 13 barely scraped by in a 214-213 vote, making Mayorkas the first Cabinet official to be impeached since War Secretary William Belknap in 1876, who served under President Ulysses S. Grant.
In April, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer succeeded in killing the impeachment articles before they could be brought to a vote.
