Jane Coaston interviews Rep. Don Bacon about why Republicans keep knocking out their own leaders and how a few populists are grinding the House to a halt.
In uniting his party behind an annual defense bill loaded with social policy restrictions, including on abortion, Speaker Kevin McCarthy scored a short-term victory that could put his majority in peril.
A long-shot Democratic effort to force a debt-limit increase to the floor hinges on at least five G.O.P. defections. These House Republicans are considered the likeliest.
G.O.P. candidates have been changing their positions, erasing sections about abortion from their websites and trying to focus on topics like inflation, crime and immigration.