Speaker Mike Johnson announced Wednesday that he’s cancelling a session planned for Thursday and sending members home a day early for their seven-week campaigning recess, which will stretch until after the November 3 midterm elections.
“It’s time for our members to go home to their districts and make their case to the American people, to go and explain all the great things we’ve done,” Johnson told reporters.
The decision carries the added benefit for the speaker and his Republican members that it will prevent a vote on a resolution brought by outgoing GOP Rep. Thomas Massie to impeach Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
Many Democrats criticized the decision. In a video posted to X, Rep. Melanie Stansbury of New Mexico noted that the House had passed a war powers resolution on Tuesday. Seven Republicans joined with Democrats to block President Trump from taking further military action against Iran.
“There’s really only one explanation for why they would cancel votes tomorrow and send us home early before the midterms,” Stansbury said, “and that’s because they are afraid that the House of Representatives will vote to impeach Pete Hegseth.”
Even before Johnson sent members home early, dozens of Democrats called on him to keep the House in session to allow for “urgent action” to address concerns about the potential threat to humanity posed by rapid advances in artificial intelligence and work by AI companies toward a “superintelligence.”
“You can forgive every American who believes that Congress remains unserious about confronting our nation’s most pressing challenges,” more than 100 Democratic House members wrote in a letter to the speaker on Tuesday. “The House should remain in session until Congress advances meaningful, bipartisan AI safeguards. To our children who will have read a post-apocalyptic history, ‘Why Congress Slept’ —likely written by agentic AI— our inaction will be inexplicable and unforgivable.”
Johnson largely dismissed such concerns this week as pre-election “alarmism” meant to spin up outrage and fear, comparing it to warnings about looming climate change catastrophes. He told reporters that the White House and lawmakers are “summoning together” the leaders of top AI labs for a meeting within the next week. He insisted that companies already have the responsibility to make safe products and can self-regulate — and he warned against falling behind China in the race to lead the AI revolution. “We do not want to jump in — the reflex of legislative bodies is to cover things up with red tape and hyperregulation,” Johnson told reporters Tuesday. “If you do that, then you lose your edge and that is a national security concern for the American people.”
Some Republicans also expressed frustration that they were being sent home early. “Canceling yet another day of votes is unacceptable,” Rep. Ralph Norman of South Carolina said in a post on X. “The House has now canceled at least 63 scheduled voting days this Congress, including nine days this month alone, and now we’re leaving Washington until after the election. … If Members of Congress want to go home and campaign instead of doing the job taxpayers sent us here to do, then their campaigns ought to be paying them, NOT the American taxpayer.”
But Johnson told reporters Wednesday that he was changing the schedule because “the House has done its work.” He also repeated his claim that the current Congress has been among the most productive in U.S. history. “This House has been the second most productive in terms of legislation in the history of the institution since 1789,” Johnson said.
The numbers don’t really support that claim — and neither does the calendar. By the time lawmakers return in the second week of November, the House will have been in session for a grand total of 84 days over the first 10-plus months of the year, and just 31 days since Memorial Day.