By Thursday morning, the outcome of the House vote on the “one big, beautiful bill” was all but carved on the Capitol walls. But there were X feeds to light up and TikTok videos to post before the foregone conclusion was a fully gone one.
That’s why Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., given the chance to delay the bill’s inevitable passage, insisted on breaking the record for the longest House floor speech, previously held by former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., taking his “magic minute” for a full eight hours and 44 minutes.
As he approached the eight-hour mark, the Democratic side of the aisle swelled and got increasingly rowdy, while the scattered Republicans in the chamber remained largely fixed on their phones. Steps away, a few other Republicans ate bagels in an anteroom while they waited for Jeffries to finish.
When Jeffries finally stopped talking at 1:39 p.m., Democrats swarmed him, chanting his first name as if he’d scored a touchdown to win the Super Bowl.
And then they voted. And lost.
Not to be outdone, Republicans, too, could not resist injecting a little drama, even after a historically long procedural vote Wednesday night.
As the final passage vote wound to a close, all eyes were locked on the tally board, wondering about a GOP vote not yet cast: Ralph Norman of South Carolina.
Republicans already had the votes to pass the measure. They could’ve closed the vote and called it a day. And all eight holdouts who had held open the rule for hours on Wednesday night had already backed the bill.
But without Norman, a member of the Freedom Caucus who had voted for the rule on the House floor Wednesday night but against it earlier that day in the Rules Committee, there was a level of suspense.
What did they not know?
Finally, a rushed Norman ran into the chamber. When he voted yes, the assembled House Republicans roared their approval, chanting “USA! USA!” as if country singer Lee Greenwood himself might drop from the ceiling and sing a few patriotic tunes. Two of Iowa GOP Rep. Zach Nunn’s daughters jumped up and down, wearing sundresses that looked like the American flag.
For his part, Norman pointed, as if in victory, while some of the Wednesday night holdouts exchanged high fives.
It had taken them a minute to get to yes, but they were part of the team. In truth, they’d been part of the team the whole time.
“I had five interviews, they caught me coming into Cannon and they called the vote quickly,” Norman said, explaining his tardiness at the bill’s enrollment ceremony just after the vote. “Anyway, I made it.”
In fact, most of the Republicans whom leadership had worried about had largely been a “yes” since they met earlier in the day with President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance, said Norman and Rep. Tim Burchett from Tennessee.
“He convinced us that, one, if we send it back to the Senate, it’s gonna get worse, and two, they’re [the White House] gonna make some changes along with the tax cuts that are gonna help us,” Norman said, a bead of sweat still on his brow from his rush from the Cannon House Office Building to the Capitol. “We got as far as we can go.”
“It was the president, obviously,” Burchett said, on his decision to back the bill. “They couldn’t have been more informative and kind and generous with their time.”
He said there was no bullying. “He’s never F-bombed me, he’s never cursed me, he’s never threatened me,” he said. “It’s just, it’s business.”
Then why hold up the vote after meeting with the president?
Burchett, usually talkative, went mum. “The things that were discussed, we had to get it all out in an agreeable form.”
What was the agreeable form?
“I’m not going to talk too much about my personal conversations with the president because if you do that, you won’t have very many more personal conversations with the president,” he said.
Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., looking exhausted, said most of the hesitant Republicans “needed just to work through the process.”
“We got the Senate bill and we moved on it pretty quickly so I needed to allow everybody to digest the changes, the amendments that were made to ours and to have all their questions answered. I’ve always committed to that,” he said, sitting in the Speaker’s Lobby before the vote. He drank more than five Celsius energy drinks over the course of the night as he worked to get people on board.
Still, like so many other House votes, the whole exercise felt detached from the world outside.
Lawmakers talked at length about the impact of the bill, sure, but it also felt like a show put on for voters already firmly locked in on their positions. The House members were actors on a stage, helping feed a confirmation bias. No one was changing any minds.
Steps from the chamber, tourists wandered through Statuary Hall, gearing up for a July Fourth celebration in the nation’s capital.
Among them were Keegan and Jen Meister of St. Louis, Mo. Jen teaches U.S. history to seventh graders. Keegan, 19, is a college student.
They briefly broke off from their tour and peered down the hallway leading to the House chamber, watching the cameras and lawmakers come and go.
“It’s kind of one of those things that’s gonna be pivotal, regardless of what you think,” said Jen Meister. “I’m going to take the neutral view, but I feel like a lot of it is kind of frightening.”
Sandhya Raman contributed to this report.
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