3小时前
发布于 2026年3月9日，美国东部时间凌晨5:00
作者：莎拉·费里斯
随着议长迈克·约翰逊（Mike Johnson）和他的团队在众议院自二战以来最微弱的多数优势中艰难前行，他们经历了种种状况。
曾几何时，共和党人因内部纠纷，第二次试图弹劾时任总统乔·拜登的国土安全部长，结果再次以尴尬的失败告终——除非他们能再争取到一张共和党人的选票。他们打电话给一位因心脏病正在家中休养的共和党议员，其医生曾警告他不要飞往华盛顿。但这位议员还是飞了过来。
还有一次，一名共和党议员在华盛顿时得知母亲去世的消息。共和党领袖不得不请求他再留几小时，否则他们将在投票中失败。他留了下来。
就在上个月，数十名众议院共和党人参加了白宫煤炭行业活动，但由于抗议活动（包括大量佛教僧侣）封锁了街道，他们无法返回美国国会大厦参加投票。共和党领导团队疯狂地给议员们打电话，让他们放弃乘坐的车辆，步行前往地铁站。
众议院共和党人正处于维持对议院控制权的持续斗争中，上述事例正是这种斗争的体现，多位共和党议员和助手向CNN描述了这些情况。
由于自20世纪30年代以来最窄的多数优势，约翰逊在众议院投票中最多只能失去一票。在这个派系林立的共和党会议中，这是一项极其艰巨的任务，少数强硬派愿意在关键问题上违抗党内，甚至违抗唐纳德·特朗普总统的意愿。共和党领袖还必须应对那些渴望在中期选举中生存的战场选区议员的要求，以及数十名有各自竞选优先事项的共和党人。
尽管众议院在未来几个月不太可能通过重大立法，但特朗普和共和党领袖仍急于利用国会在11月选举前展示他们的优先事项——这要求党内必须步调一致。
众议院多数党督导汤姆·埃默（Tom Emmer）回忆起最近与一名共和党人的对话，该人威胁要支持民主党提出的决议，因为正如他们所说：“没人听我的，我的选区会出问题。”
埃默简短地回复道：“如果你这么做，出问题的就不是你的选区了。”
约翰逊的处境可能很快会变得更加艰难。
共和党人承认，如果他再失去一个席位，几乎不可能继续治理这个议院。
他们中的一员，德克萨斯州众议员托尼·冈萨雷斯（Tony Gonzales），因承认与一名后来自杀身亡的工作人员有染，正面临辞职的呼吁。
多位共和党人告诉CNN，共和党领袖还在密切关注佛罗里达州众议员尼尔·邓恩（Neal Dunn）的健康状况，一些人担心他可能因健康原因提前离职。
还有消息来源向CNN透露，党内领导层私下担忧，像德克萨斯州众议员韦斯利·亨特（Wesley Hunt）这样在全州竞选失利的议员可能会威胁不再出席会议。
这种微弱的优势容不得任何差错——而这还是假设所有议员都在场的情况下，这在来自美国各地的218名共和党人中是无法保证的。这是一项需要每分钟都进行监控的工作，需要对议员们的情绪和日程安排有细致入微的了解。
“我们必须密切关注每一个航班，确保每一位议员都能登上那架飞机，”共和党领导层的一位人士告诉CNN。
有时，这需要进行特别痛苦的对话，比如要求议员们在仍为配偶或子女的丧亲之痛中返回华盛顿。许多议员提及备受尊敬的资深共和党人史蒂夫·沃梅克（Steve Womack），他在1月份失去了相伴41年的妻子，几天后在家人举行葬礼前就返回投票，以监督他提出的支出法案在众议院的审议。其他人则必须与自身健康挑战作斗争，包括众议院多数党领袖史蒂夫·斯卡利斯（Steve Scalise），他几年前在血癌治疗期间仍积极参与投票。
“我认为这些是我们必须进行的最艰难的对话，”参与共和党计票工作的另一位人士表示。
“真正的杠杆作用”
由于每一次投票都岌岌可危，任何威胁叛党的共和党人现在都能获得共和党领袖——有时甚至是特朗普的接见。正如CNN报道的那样，田纳西州众议员约翰·罗斯（John Rose）最近誓言要阻挠一项党内优先法案，以换取总统对其州长竞选的支持。
“我喜欢这样，我得到了我想要的一切，”纽约州共和党议员安德鲁·加巴里诺（Andrew Garbarino）打趣道，他是领导层的盟友。
有时，党内最顽固的成员干脆拒绝告诉领导层他们的投票意向，迫使约翰逊和他的团队进行赌博。
埃默回忆起拨款季的一次经历，当时他与斯卡利斯在议院走廊上与督导团队成员秘密商议，决定是否要试探某些议员的底牌并举行投票。当斯卡利斯问团队成员想怎么做时，埃默假装掷骰子。他们最终还是进行了投票并获胜。
“有些人明白什么是真正的杠杆作用，而有些人以为自己在施压，实则没有任何筹码，”埃默说。
共和党领袖还需做出艰难决定。多位共和党领导层助手透露，约翰逊不得不禁止他的成员在特朗普政府中获得晋升，并打消他们对参议院任命的幻想，例如去年阻止他们参与填补佛罗里达州参议员马可·卢比奥（Marco Rubio）空出的席位。
有时，根本没有足够的议员参与投票。几周前，众议院共和党人被迫从日程中取消了一项特朗普的个人优先法案——一项提高淋浴水压的法案，因为正如一位共和党助手所说，他们没有足够的“人手”在程序性投票中击败民主党。仅上周，共和党领袖就因出席率问题取消了两天的投票。
共和党领导层工作人员已经熟悉了偏远小型机场的稀疏航班时刻表，以及数十名试图平衡家乡全州竞选的众议院议员的必到活动。有时，天气也会使情况复杂化。去年7月，当众议院共和党领袖准备最终通过特朗普的全面国内政策法案时，他们眼睁睁看着一趟又一趟航班被取消。随着电脑上的航班追踪应用程序打开，领导团队给全国各地的议员打电话，让他们租辆车开过来。
“你得根据天气——我是说，根据天气来决定何时在议院进行投票！”约翰逊领导团队成员凯文·赫尔恩（Kevin Hern）向CNN感叹道。“这非常困难，因为你显然不能一直和家人相处，而我们就像一家人一样。”
今年早些时候，约翰逊曾严肃地告诉他的成员们“要吃维生素”并避免“冒险运动”，因为他不能承受任何人因生病或受伤而缺席。
然而，有些事情是无法避免的。印第安纳州众议员詹姆斯·贝尔德（James Baird）在与妻子发生严重车祸后，戴着颈托返回华盛顿。他的妻子后来因伤势并发症去世。（贝尔德1月份的事故让共和党议员们受到震动：几乎同时，他们的长期同事道格·拉马尔法（Doug LaMalfa）议员突然去世。）
还有许多未公开报道的健康恐慌事件。
“我们的一位同事，我不会说是谁，他实际上投票后就直接回了医院，”俄亥俄州众议员大卫·乔伊斯（David Joyce）说，并补充说议员们感受到了职责的沉重。“你的职责在这里。你当选是来这里工作的。”
生死攸关的问题
直到最近几年，众议院议员们还可以偶尔因家乡更常规的生活事务（如孩子的重要体育赛事或孙辈的婚礼）而缺席投票。在现代政治的大部分时间里，政党领袖的优势足够大，因此出席率不是问题。他们甚至可以允许议员在中期选举期间辞职。
内布拉斯加州即将退休的众议员唐·培根（Don Bacon）表示，有人问他为什么在几乎不可能通过重大立法的情况下，还要在剩下的一年里坚持工作。
“人们说，‘你为什么不现在就辞职？’”培根回忆道，但他坚定地表示：“我不会那样对待我的选区”——或者，他补充道，“不会那样对待约翰逊。”
民主党众议员斯泰尼·霍耶（Steny Hoyer）在党内拥有多数时曾担任数十年领导职务，当时多数优势达到50票。但多年来，国家激烈的党派对立和选区重划策略大幅缩小了多数优势。到2021年拜登和众议院民主党人全面掌控华盛顿时，他们的多数优势已降至个位数。
“我们当时有4票优势，这比他现在的情况要好得多，”霍耶谈及约翰逊时表示。（共和党人喜欢指出，民主党人在那段时期也使用了疫情期间的远程投票，这使得出席率问题远不那么突出。）
共和党领袖反复警告，只有“生死攸关”的情况才能阻止议员出席投票。这甚至包括非争议性投票，因为共和党人不能冒险在程序性投票中输给民主党。如果他们输了，实际上就会将议院控制权拱手让给少数党。
“只要我们还能维持一天多数，就有很多方法可以让他们的日子非常不好过，”一位众议院民主党助手表示。“我们可以制造很多麻烦。”
督导团队对出席情况极为重视，一旦发现有议员必须缺席投票，就会将其视为机密——以免民主党人得知。
议员们也认真对待这项要求。
佛罗里达州众议员卡特·卡马克（Kat Cammack）自去年8月生下女儿后，从未缺席过一次投票。（她并非有意如此安排，但承认结果如此，因为议员没有产假。）
“我生完孩子两周后，就带着女儿坐火车，因为我不想坐飞机带她。那是一段16小时的火车旅程。她已经坐过几十次飞机了。她和我一起往返。我们会想办法的，”卡马克说。
民主党人深知，在少数党地位上，他们在华盛顿的出席情况是他们最有力的工具之一。
科罗拉多州民主党众议员布里特妮·佩特森（Brittany Pettersen）在2025年1月生下儿子后几乎立刻就飞回了华盛顿。她曾为新父母争取远程投票权——但共和党领袖反对并最终阻止了这一努力。
而在那之前一年，民主党人的全勤记录帮助挫败了共和党人对拜登国土安全部长亚历杭德罗·马约卡斯（Alejandro Mayorkas）的第一次弹劾尝试——给约翰逊和特朗普带来了屈辱的失败。
尽管党内有关键成员叛党，共和党人还是继续推进投票，他们赌民主党人会少一位议员，因为德克萨斯州众议员阿尔·格林（Al Green）因腹部手术缺席了整个星期。但在最后时刻，格林穿着病号服、坐轮椅出现在议院，击败了这项法案。
埃默永远不会忘记那天哪些共和党人投票反对党内——包括当时领导备受推崇的中国问题小组的威斯康星州众议员迈克·加拉格尔（Mike Gallagher）。
这位共和党督导补充说，有时他希望党内领袖能对加拉格尔采取强硬手段，回忆起当时他真想对加拉格尔说的话：“听着，我喜欢你，迈克，但如果这次我没有你支持，也许这个中国小组——也许需要换个人来领导了。”
CNN的劳伦·福克斯（Lauren Fox）对此报道亦有贡献。
One vote to lose: Life inside a chaotic House GOP majority
3 hr ago
PUBLISHED Mar 9, 2026, 5:00 AM ET
By Sarah Ferris
As Speaker Mike Johnson and his team have navigated the House’s slimmest margin since before World War II, they’ve seen it all.
Once, Republicans were headed for a second, embarrassing failed attempt to impeach then-President Joe Biden’s Homeland Security chief because of internal disputes — unless they could round up one more GOP vote. They phoned up a Republican who was resting at home with a heart condition, whose doctor had warned against flying to Washington. The member flew anyway.
Another time, a Republican member was in Washington when he learned of his mother’s death. GOP leaders had to ask him to stick around for a few more hours or they’d fail a vote. He stayed.
And just last month, dozens of House Republicans attended a White House coal industry event but couldn’t get back to the US Capitol for a vote because protests — including throngs of Buddhist monks — had closed the streets. The GOP leadership team frantically phoned members telling them to ditch their rides and hoof it to the Metro.
House Republicans are living in a constant struggle to maintain control of their chamber as evidenced by such instances, which were described by multiple members and aides in GOP leadership.
With the slimmest margins since the 1930s, Johnson can afford to lose only a single vote on the House floor. It’s an extraordinarily difficult task in this fractious GOP conference, with a handful of hardliners willing to defy the party — and even President Donald Trump — on key issues. GOP leaders must also navigate demands from battleground members anxious to survive the midterms, plus dozens more Republicans with their own priorities running statewide campaigns.
And while the House is unlikely to pass major legislation in the coming months, Trump and GOP leaders are still eager to use Congress to show their priorities ahead of November’s elections — requiring the party to be in lockstep.
House Majority Whip Tom Emmer recalled a conversation in recent days with a Republican threatening to support a Democrat-backed resolution because, as they told him, “no one’s listening to me and my district is going to be a problem.”
Emmer offered a terse reply: “If you do this, it ain’t your district that’s going to be a problem.”
It could soon get more difficult for Johnson.
If he loses even one more seat, Republicans acknowledge it could become virtually impossible to govern the chamber.
One of their members, Texas Rep. Tony Gonzales, is facing calls to resign his seat after admitting to an affair with a staffer who later died by suicide.
GOP leaders are also closely monitoring the health of Rep. Neal Dunn of Florida, who some fear may need to leave his seat early for health reasons, multiple Republicans told CNN.
And there’s private concern among leadership that their members who lose statewide bids, such as Rep. Wesley Hunt of Texas, could threaten to stop showing up altogether, multiple sources told CNN.
The margins leave zero room for error — and that is assuming every member is present, which is never guaranteed with 218 Republicans from all corners of America. It’s an undertaking that often requires minute-by-minute monitoring, with an intricate knowledge of members’ moods and calendars.
“We have to watch every single flight to make sure every single member gets on that flight,” one person in GOP leadership told CNN.
Sometimes, it requires particularly painful conversations, such as asking members to return to Washington while still grieving losses of their spouses or children. Many members cite Rep. Steve Womack, a respected senior Republican, who lost his wife of 41 years in January and returned to vote days later — before the family held a burial — to oversee his spending bill on the floor. Others have had to battle through their own health challenges, including House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, who was actively voting during much of his treatment for blood cancer a few years ago.
“I think those are some of the most difficult conversations we have to have,” another person involved in the GOP vote-counting operation said.
‘Real leverage’
With every vote tight, any Republican threatening to defect can now get an audience with GOP leaders — and sometimes Trump. Rep. John Rose of Tennessee recently vowed to tank a party priority as he sought to get a boost from the president in his governor’s race, as CNN reported.
“I love it. I’m getting everything I want,” quipped Rep. Andrew Garbarino of New York, a leadership ally, of the attention.
Sometimes, the conference’s most recalcitrant members have simply refused to tell leadership how they plan to vote, forcing Johnson and his team to gamble.
Emmer recalled a time during appropriations season when he huddled on the floor with Scalise and their whip teams deciding whether to call certain members’ bluffs and hold a vote. When Scalise asked aloud what the team wanted to do, Emmer pretended to throw a handful of dice. They went ahead with the vote and won.
“There are people who understand what real leverage is. And there are people who think they’re leveraging that have nothing to leverage,” Emmer said.
It also requires tough decisions from GOP leaders. Johnson has needed to bar his own members from promotions inside the Trump administration and quash members’ dreams of Senate appointments, such as keeping them out of the running to backfill Marco Rubio Florida’s seat last year, according to multiple GOP leadership aides.
Sometimes there simply aren’t enough members to hold votes. Weeks ago, House Republicans were forced to pull a personal Trump priority — a bill to increase shower pressure levels — from the schedule because they didn’t have enough “bodies on the floor” to defeat a Democratic procedural vote, as one GOP aide put it. Last week alone, GOP leaders canceled two days of votes because of attendance.
The GOP leadership staff have become fluent in the sparse flight schedules of tiny rural airports, as well as the can’t-miss campaign events for dozens of House members who are trying to balance statewide races back home. Other times it’s the weather that complicates things. Last July, as House GOP leaders prepared for final passage of Trump’s sweeping domestic policy bill, GOP leaders watched flight after flight get canceled. With flight-tracker apps pulled up on their computers, the leadership team phoned members from all over the country, telling them to get in a rental car and drive.
“You’re trying to see when you can put a vote on the floor based on weather — I mean, based on the weather!” Rep. Kevin Hern, a member of Johnson’s leadership team, exclaimed to CNN. “It makes it very difficult, because you don’t get along with your family, obviously, all the time, and we are family.”
Earlier this year, Johnson recalled telling his members — and not in jest — “take your vitamins” and avoid “adventure sports” because he couldn’t afford anyone coming down with sickness or injury.
Some things, though, cannot be avoided. Rep. James Baird of Indiana returned to Washington in a neck brace after he and his wife were in a serious car accident. His wife later died following complications from her injuries. (Baird’s accident in January was a jolt to GOP members: It happened around the same time as the sudden loss of their longtime colleague Rep. Doug LaMalfa of California.)
And there are plenty more health scares that go unreported.
“One of our colleagues, I’m not going to tell you who, literally came here to vote and then went back to the hospital,” Rep. David Joyce of Ohio said, adding that members feel the weight of their obligations. “Your duty is here. You got elected to do your job here.”
Matters of ‘life and death’
Until recent years, House members were free to occasionally miss votes for more routine life events back home, such as a kid’s big sporting event or a grandchild’s wedding. For most of the modern era, party leaders have had large enough margins that attendance was not an issue. They could even afford for members to resign mid-term.
Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska, one of this Congress’ retiring members, said he’s been asked why he’s bothering to stick around for the rest of the year when there’s almost no chance of big legislation going through.
“People say, ‘Why don’t you just resign now?’” Bacon recalled, but he noted he’s been firm: “I wouldn’t do that to my district” — or, he added, to Johnson.
Democratic Rep. Steny Hoyer spent decades in leadership, including when the party in charge had a majority of 50 votes. But over the years, the nation’s bitter partisanship and redistricting gambits have shrunk those margins dramatically. By the time Biden and Hill Democrats had full control of Washington in 2021, they were down to single digits.
“We had four. That’s a landslide compared to what he’s got now,” Hoyer said of Johnson. (Republicans like to point out that Democrats also used pandemic-era proxy voting during that time, which made attendance far less of a problem.)
GOP leaders repeatedly warn that only matters of “life and death” should prevent members from attending votes. That includes even noncontroversial votes because Republicans cannot risk losing a procedural vote to Democrats. If they did, that would effectively cede control of the floor to the minority party.
“If we’re in the majority for a day, there are plenty of ways that we could make their lives very annoyingly difficult,” one House Democratic aide said. “We could make a lot of mischief.”
The whip team takes attendance so seriously that when they find out any member must miss votes, it’s treated as classified information — lest Democrats find out.
Members, too, take the mandate seriously.
Rep. Kat Cammack of Florida has not missed a single vote since she gave birth to her daughter last August. (She didn’t time it that way, but acknowledges it worked out because members do not have maternity leave.)
“Two weeks after I gave birth, I put my daughter on a train, because I didn’t want to fly with her. That was a 16-hour train ride. She’s been on dozens of flights. She goes back and forth with me. We make it work,” Cammack said.
Democrats know that their attendance in Washington is one of their most powerful tools from their perch in the minority.
Rep. Brittany Pettersen flew with her newborn son almost immediately after giving birth in January 2025. The Colorado Democrat campaigned for remote voting privileges for new parents — but GOP leaders opposed it and ultimately blocked the effort.
The year before, Democrats’ perfect attendance helped tank the GOP’s first attempt to impeach Biden’s Homeland Security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas — dealing a humiliating defeat to Johnson and Trump.
Republicans went ahead with the vote despite key defections on their side, gambling that Democrats would be down a member, since Rep. Al Green of Texas had been out all week for abdominal surgery. But in the final moments, Green emerged on the floor in hospital garb and a wheelchair to defeat the measure.
Emmer will never forget which Republicans voted against the party that day — including then-Wisconsin Rep. Mike Gallagher, who led a coveted China panel at the time.
The GOP whip added that he sometimes wished party leaders had played hardball with Gallagher, recalling what he would have loved to say to him at the time: “Look, I love you Mike, but if I don’t have you on this one, maybe this China subcommittee — maybe someone else has to do it.”
CNN’s Lauren Fox contributed to this report.