The effort gained steam on Thursday even as Speaker Paul Ryan, President Trump, and House conservatives intensified their attempt to quell the moderate rebellion and set up immigration votes on their terms. By Thursday afternoon, the discharge petition that rank-and-file Republicans have been circulating to bypass the party leadership had secured 213 signatures of the 218 needed to achieve a majority. Two more moderate Republicans, Representatives Tom Reed of New York and Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, signed the document on Thursday, as did the top two House Democrats: Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Whip Steny Hoyer.
If successful, the discharge petition would set up a floor debate and votes on four competing bills to address the future of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, the Obama-era initiative that Trump has sought to end. Congress missed a Trump-imposed March deadline to codify the program after the Senate failed to pass any of the related bills it considered earlier this year. The immediate fate of DACA now rests on a final ruling by the federal courts, while the House has taken no action on the program at all.
Ryan has fought the discharge petition by arguing that it would be a waste of time to hold votes on legislation that Trump would veto. The president backed up the speaker’s position on Thursday by telling Fox News that any DACA bill must include the “whole package” he’s demanded—a “real” border wall, plus changes that restrict the flow of legal immigration. Ryan is facing a related uprising from House conservatives who want a vote only on a far more restrictive immigration bill, not proposals that provide a path to citizenship for the so-called Dreamers as the moderate-backed bills do. He told reporters on Thursday that the leadership was still looking for “the sweet spot” on the contentious issue, and another round of meetings between the leadership, conservatives, and moderates had yet to yield an agreement that would head off the petition.
“As of right now, there’s no deal,” a senior Republican aide familiar with the talks, who was not authorized to speak publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity, told me late Thursday afternoon.
