Republicans in the largely leaderless Arizona House continue their trip fantastic through Fantasyland, passing a barebones budget that has no prayer of getting signed by the governor.

“The House acted decisively today to prevent a government shutdown and protect Arizona taxpayers,” House Speaker Steve Montenegro announced on June 24.

Is he delusional?

If state government grinds to a halt next week — if state parks close and state troopers are put on leave and state offices are shuttered — Montenegro will be the face of the shutdown.

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He’s the guy who spent the months of May and June refusing to negotiate a spending plan withDemocratic Gov. Katie Hobbs and Senate Republican leaders.

House rejected the Senate’s compromise budget

So, they hammered out a $17.6 billion deal without him, a compromise budget that reflects the divided government installed by Arizona voters.

One that boosts pay for public education and border security.

One that gives pay raises to state police and firefighters.

One that Rep. David Livingston, chairman of House Appropriations Committee, predicted had the votes to pass the House just last week, on June 18.

But you don’t cross the uber conservatives in the Arizona Freedom Caucus lightly, for fear of being labeled a RINO and suddenly finding yourself with a Republican opponent in next year’s GOP primary. (See: state Superintendent Tom Horne, who dared to suggest some controls on the state’s Empowerment Scholarship Account program.)

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By June 19, Livingston was lambasting the staunchly conservative Senate President Warren Petersen for daring to negotiate with Hobbs on a budget — the budget that just a day earlier Livingston had praised as containing “a lot of good things” for Republicans.

“The Governor, with the help of RINO Senate President, is pushing a Democrat Budget,” Livingston posted on X late on June 19.

Montenegro blames Hobbs. Voters won’t buy it

Five days later, the Montenegro-led House instead passed a $17 billion “continuation” budget on a party line vote — one that is guaranteed one of Hobbs’ signature vetoes.

Livingston and Montenegro are hoping to make Hobbs the face of the state’s first-ever shutdown.

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“I believe, in my heart of hearts, if the governor doesn’t sign a budget, government will be shut down for a minimum of two weeks,” Livingston said. “And if we go a month, K-12 payments will be in jeopardy.”

And I believe, in my heart of hearts, that voters will see through the spin and understand exactly who is to blame.

Opinion: Lawmakers’ $500m DBacks giveaway will cost us a lot more

The Arizona Legislature has one job: To pass a budget.

It doesn’t take any particular skill to cater to one party’s whims and wishes.

Leadership is required, however, when you’ve got to find a way to get buy-in from both parties, something Montenegro, in his first year as speaker, apparently hasn’t yet figured out.

If House won’t compromise, Arizona closes

The Republican-run Senate returned to the Capitol on June 25 to approve both the House’s “skinny budget” and its earlier $17.3 billion budget — both created in a House GOP bubble. Consider it a demonstration project, to show House Republicans what happens when they try to go it alone.

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“It doesn’t take competence or courage to pass a budget that only has Republicans on it,” Petersen said, taking an obvious shot at both Montenegro and Sen. Jake Hoffman, who chairs the Freedom Caucus and pulls Montenegro’s strings.

Hobbs quickly pulled out her well-used veto stamp, tossing both of Montenegro’s all-Republican budgets into the trash.

Either the Montenegro-led House returns to the real world, where compromise is sometimes necessary,or in five days, the state of Arizona will close up shop.

Just in time for the Fourth of July, say goodbye to state parks. Bid adieu to state troopers and state services. Need a new driver’s license to comply with Real ID so you don’t get hassled at the airport?

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Sorry, we’re closed.

When that happens, you’ll know who to blame.

This column has been updated to add new information.

Reach Roberts at laurie.roberts@arizonarepublic.com. Follow her on X (formerly Twitter) at @LaurieRobertsaz, on Threads at @LaurieRobertsaz and on BlueSky at @laurieroberts.bsky.social.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: AZ state shutdown is days away. But don’t blame Gov. Hobbs | Opinion

After President Donald Trump “liberated” Americans from a strong economy Wednesday, the Senate held an extraordinary vote. By 51-48, the chamber passed a privileged resolution authored by Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia that would revoke the tariffs Trump imposed on Canada earlier this year. Four Republicans — Rand Paul and Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine — voted with every Democrat to rebuke the president’s trade policy.

In practical terms, for now, Kaine’s resolution means little. The president is plowing ahead with his new, far larger tariffs. “The markets are going to boom, the stock is going to boom, the country is going to boom,” Trump told reporters Thursday, amid the worst day for the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq since 2020.

But the Senate vote, one of the first significant legislative losses of Trump’s second term, highlights an opening for Democrats with ramifications beyond even the global economy.

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Most obviously, Trump’s new tariffs create more chances for Democrats in Congress to jam up their GOP counterparts. The president’s handling of the economy already polls poorly, and most Americans are skeptical of his tariff policies in particular. They have good reason to be: The Yale Budget Lab estimates that the price increases from all of Trump’s tariffs are equivalent to “average per household consumer loss of $3,800,” with lower-income households hurt most.

But Republican lawmakers can’t just blame Trump. Though the executive branch typically controls tariff policy nowadays, the Constitution grants Congress the tariff power. Republicans on Capitol Hill may not have initiated a trade war with the penguins of Heard Island, but they could end it tomorrow.

Even before this week, Republicans were already looking to duck votes on Trump’s tariffs. The funding bill Congress passed last month included a provision preventing a vote on ending the emergency Trump claimed to impose tariffs on Canada and Mexico.

But Republicans won’t be able to avoid these difficult votes entirely. Rep. Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y., is exploring a “discharge petition” to force a vote on Kaine’s resolution in the House. Kaine himself plans a similar vote regarding the tariffs Trump announced Wednesday. Most significantly, on Thursday Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa joined with Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington to introduce a bill to require the president to notify Congress within 48 hours of imposing new tariffs. Congress would have to ratify the new tariffs within 60 days, or they would expire. Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., said he would vote for the bill, becoming the sixth Republican to break with Trump’s tariff policy. Even Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said he was against imposing “high tariffs in perpetuity.”

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For Democrats, these votes are win-win situations. The more Republicans block these bills, the easier it is for Democratic challengers to hang those votes around GOP necks next fall. On the other hand, if these votes can make GOP defections from Trump even a little regular, that will complicate Republican policymaking enormously.

Since Trump’s inauguration, two factors have controlled the execution of Republicans’ legislative agenda. First, their narrow majorities in the House and the Senate require near-unanimous support. Just this week, House Speaker Mike Johnson attempted to block a bill from Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., that would allow proxy voting for new parents in Congress. Only seven other Republicans joined Luna in opposing Johnson’s move. But that was enough, combined with all 213 Democrats, to defeat the speaker (who immediately and huffily sent the House home early for the week).

As with Kaine’s resolution, Johnson’s loss was largely symbolic. For the GOP to avoid more significant defeats, however, every faction of the party must be on board with bills before they reach the floor. Getting near-universal buy-in is a time-consuming process, and it threatens to grind the bill-writing to halt. So far, though, those delays have been minimal, because of the second factor: Trump currently can command GOP unanimity on demand.

Ahead of multiple crucial votes this year, individual Republicans’ qualms have vanished under pressure from the president. Even before Inauguration Day, Trump headed off a far-right rebellion that could have delayed or even prevented Johnson’s re-election as speaker. In the lead-up to last month’s government funding bill, he persuaded the Freedom Caucus to back the legislation with far smaller cuts than the right-wing group has demanded in the past. Most recently, several Senate Republicans held up a budget resolution in hope of demanding bigger spending cuts. “But a meeting with Trump Wednesday morning,” reported Punchbowl News, “changed everything. Suddenly, deficit hawks were warming to the plan. [Senate Majority Leader John] Thune and other Republicans attributed the difference to Trump.”

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In short, Trump’s clout keeps the wheels of Republican lawmaking turning. If his grip weakens even slightly, Johnson and Thune can’t rely as easily on Trump’s bully pulpit to smooth over intraparty disputes. Longer negotiations mean fewer bills and less damage the GOP majority can cause the country.

“The most important economic question right now,” former Council of Economic Advisers chair Jared Bernstein wrote Thursday, is “will [Trump] back down?” The most important political question, likewise, is: Will Republicans in Congress back down from their complete fealty to Trump?

For now, fear keeps the GOP lawmakers in line — fear of even a single cross word from Trump. Changing that calculus even slightly might just stop the destructive tariffs, save the economy and short-circuit Republicans’ congressional majority in the process.

This article was originally published on MSNBC.com

Both Republican and Democratic lawmakers weighed in on the conflict between Trump and Musk today as the pair continued to pour fuel on a fire that risks destroying a once tight-knit relationship between the two leaders for good.

Musk escalated the war of words throughout the day with online posts that ranged from intense criticism of a Republican funding bill that the Congressional Budget Office estimates would add trillions to the national deficit to a conspiracy-boosting claim that Trump is “in the Epstein Files” and a suggestion that Trump should be impeached and replaced by Vice President JD Vance.

For some Republicans, Musk today took things too far.

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A normally sleepy procedural vote ended in drama for the House of Representatives after a rebellion by nine Republicans against their own party forced chamber proceedings for the week to grind to a halt.

It puts the future in question for two key bills backed by the Trump administration that were slated to get a vote on Wednesday and Thursday, respectively.

Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., told reporters that votes were canceled for the rest of the week in comments condemning the mutiny.

“It’s a very disappointing result on the floor there, a handful of Republicans joined with all the Democrats to take down a rule. That’s rarely done. It’s very unfortunate,” Johnson said. “That rule being brought down means that we can’t have any further action on the floor this week.”

WHO IS JAMES BOASBERG, THE US JUDGE AT THE CENTER OF TRUMP’S DEPORTATION EFFORTS?

It’s an embarrassing setback for House Republican leadership, who put on a full court press for both pieces of legislation.

A “rule vote” is not an expression of support or opposition for any specific measure. Rather, it’s a procedural hurdle, normally falling along party lines, that allows for the House to begin debate and eventually vote on whatever bills the rule is covering.

In this case, the “rule” would have allowed for debate and floor consideration of bills that would have limited district judges’ ability to levy nationwide injunctions and would have mandated proof of citizenship to register to vote, respectively.

It comes amid a weekslong battle over the ability to vote remotely for new parents in Congress.

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., has been leading a bipartisan push for legislation that would allow new parents in the House to vote remotely for 12 weeks surrounding their child’s birth.

She attempted to force the bill onto the floor via a mechanism called a “discharge petition,” which would effectively end-run leaders to hold a House-wide vote on legislation, provided the petition gets support from a simple majority of the House.

Lawmakers rarely, if ever, lead discharge petitions against their own party. But Luna’s was poised for success with support from Democrats and some fellow Republicans.

House GOP leaders attempted to block it, however, by inserting language in an unrelated “rules” package on Monday night that would have effectively prevented Luna’s bill from getting a vote.

That rules package would have opened debate for the No Rogue Rulings Act by Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., and the Safeguarding Voter Eligibility Act by Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas.

‘WOEFULLY INSUFFICIENT’: US JUDGE REAMS TRUMP ADMIN FOR DAYS-LATE DEPORTATION INFO

It sparked a backlash among Republicans who either supported Luna’s efforts or opposed leaders’ attempts to change previously agreed-upon House rules – and in most cases, a combination of both.

“I think that today is a pretty historical day for the entire conference and showing that, yeah, the body has decided that parents deserve a voice in Washington and also to the importance of female members having a vote in Washington D.C.,” Luna told reporters after the vote.

Meanwhile, a source familiar with the House Rules Committee told Fox News Digital that some Republicans on that panel were frustrated at being kept in the dark by House leaders until the final moments before their committee vote on Tuesday morning. All Republicans on the committee voted for the rule, however.

Reps. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., Jeff Van Drew, R-N.J., Greg Steube, R-Fla., Ryan Mackenzie, R-Pa., Nick LaLota, R-N.Y., Max Miller, R-Ohio, and Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., were among those who voted to kill the rule.

“I could not in good conscience vote for an unprecedented rule that would pull the rug out from under Representative Luna’s discharge petition that got the required signatures fair and square,” Miller said in a statement after the vote.

“I cannot imagine a mother, who has spent 9 months going through the wringer, being told that you can’t be with your infant because you are one of 435 people.”

Democrats broke out into applause after the legislation failed.

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House GOP leaders could still call an emergency session of the House Rules Committee to consider modified language that does not target discharge petitions.

One House Republican, however, suggested it was better for lawmakers to be sent home for the week.

“Lots of torn up feelings. Might be better to press pause for a couple of days,” that GOP lawmaker said.

Looking for the latest on the House vote on Trump’s megabill? Visit here.

House Republicans early Thursday morning advanced President Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” after a marathon day of negotiations and a dramatic overnight vote.

GOP leaders kept the vote open for almost six hours as they tried to convince the “no” votes to flip and tried to win over those who haven’t yet to cast a ballot.

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Trump spent much of the day trying to win over deficit hawks in the House Freedom Caucus and beyond who have threatened to block the bill and grind floor action to a halt.

And Trump spoke with several of the holdouts by phone around 1 a.m.

Catch up:

Follow along here for developments.