In a surprise move Tuesday afternoon June 30, fourteen Republican representatives joined with all Democrats to reject a “Rule” from the House Rules Committee defining the procedures and allowed amendments for floor consideration of the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act and the appropriations bill for the State Department and Intelligence agencies. The vote on the Rule failed, 198-224. Debate and final votes on the two pieces of legislation were due to begin that afternoon, and be finished by Thursday, before the July 4 break.
In the wake of this setback, the House leadership simply cancelled all further House business for the week, and began the July 4 break early. The chamber is due to reconvene the week of July 13.
The motives of the 14 Republican “no” votes were varied. None of them touched on the egregious decision of the House Rules Committee to not allow floor consideration of an amendment from Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) and Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) to strip Section 219 from the bill. Section 219 specifies that the Pentagon name an “executive agent” to merge U.S. and Israeli “defense technology research development, testing, evaluation, integration, and industrial cooperation,” with an emphasis on R&D work in such advanced areas as robotics, AI, drones, and missile defense.
