CNN
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Speaker Mike Johnson on Tuesday succeeded in a high-stakes House vote to pass President Donald Trump’s plan to fund the government into the fall, overcoming far-right opposition as the GOP scrambles to avert a government shutdown Friday at midnight.
The 217-213 vote to approve Republicans’ stopgap bill saw just one GOP defection, Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, and now amplifies pressure on Senate Democrats to decide whether to back the measure – or trigger a spending showdown with Trump and risk a potential shutdown.
The House plans to immediately leave Washington — an attempt to stick the Senate with a take-it-or-leave-it bill ahead of the March 14 deadline. But it’s not yet clear whether Johnson’s show of force will be enough to convince Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to stave off a shutdown.
At least eight Senate Democrats would need to vote with the GOP to accept the bill, which includes none of the concessions the party has been demanding to protect Congress’ spending powers in the Trump era.
Senate Democrats will hold a meeting Wednesday where they are expected to discuss their position on the House GOP funding plan, according to multiple people familiar with the planning.
While the fate of the measure remains uncertain, House Republicans cheered the passage of their bill as a major win for Trump, convincing even some of the GOP’s staunchest conservatives to back a bill that mostly funds the government at levels that former President Joe Biden signed into law, along with $13 billion in cuts for certain domestic programs.
House Democrats, meanwhile, were largely united against the measure. “The strong House Democratic vote in opposition to this reckless Republican spending bill speaks for itself,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said Tuesday evening.
Top House Democrats, led by Jeffries, had led their own fierce whip operation, and ultimately lost one of their own members, Maine Rep. Jared Golden, on the vote.
“Even a brief shutdown would introduce even more chaos and uncertainty at a time when our country can ill-afford it,” Golden said in a post on X explaining his vote. “My vote today reflects my commitment to making tough choices and doing my job for the people of Maine.”
In the hours before the vote, Johnson was still working to get his members in line, but his team succeeded with the help of a full-court press by Trump and his White House team. Trump, Vice President JD Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegetth, budget chief Russ Vought and White House chief of staff Susie Wiles all repeatedly phoned members to support the bill.
In a closed-door meeting Tuesday morning, Vance warned Republicans that their party could be blamed if the government shut downs, in a last-ditch push to lock down the votes. The vice president told members that the party will “lose momentum” on Trump’s agenda if the short-term spending bill fails, specifically pointing to border security and political momentum, the source said.
“This is how the President has asked us to fight now so that they can do what they’re doing with DOGE, and there will be a point in time where we implement a recissions plan that basically formalizes those cuts,” Rep. Warren Davidson, an ultraconservative who is typically opposed to stopgap spending bills, told CNN.
Conservatives succeeded in getting billions of cuts in the bill, which largely stem from the removal of projects or one-time initiatives funded by lawmakers, known as earmarks. But it also included language that some of their members opposed, like language that would help House members avoid a politically painful up-or-down vote on ending President Donald Trump’s tariffs on Canada and Mexico.
“It’s not a clean CR,” one GOP appropriator told CNN. A “clean” bill, that member said, would be one page.
House Republican’s one holdout, Massie, said he was not worried about his future, even as the president threatens a primary challenge against him for his defiance.
The Kentucky Republican said he doubted Trump could back a successful primary effort against him and thinks the president threatened him to “keep other Republicans in line.”
“I don’t think they were meant to change my vote because they know they can’t change my vote. They don’t even call me,” he said.
This story has been updated with additional details.
CNN’s Manu Raju, Sarah Davis and Alayna Treene contributed to this report.
