House Speaker Mike Johnson is scrambling to whip votes for contempt charges against Joe Biden's Attorney General Merrick Garland ahead of a preliminary Rules Committee vote on Tuesday.
The Rules Committee vote means the Garland contempt resolution could see a vote before the full House of Representatives as soon as Wednesday.
Moderate Republicans, numbering around ten or more, are demanding House leadership delay the vote in the hopes they can negotiate an off-ramp with Biden's Attorney General and avoid the final contempt vote.
While much of the media coverage of House Republicans has focused on the Freedom Caucus's contentious relationship with Johnson, it has ignored an equally tenuous relationship between the Republican Speaker and more moderate members of his party.
House leadership's inability to hold the Republican caucus together has resulted in it mainly pushing symbolic and toothless votes against the Biden government.
According to sources on Capitol Hill, Speaker Johnson and Tom Emmer-the House Majority Whip-have been unable or unwilling "To say no" to this moderate Republican faction, effectively giving them an outsized influence over the House's legislative agenda.
The narrow House Republican majority and inability to effectively whip votes have resulted in several embarrassing votes, including the on-again, off-again impeachment of Biden's Department of Homeland Security Secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, earlier this year.
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