Republicans circled the wagons around President Trump and his team Tuesday, voting to halt Democratic attempts to pry loose potentially embarrassing information about Elon Musk and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
The GOP approved a rules change that limits the power of Resolutions of Inquiry, or ROIs, a parliamentary tool to demand information from the president or the head of an executive branch agency.
Under the change, approved on a 216-208 party-line vote, ROIs no longer get special priority, meaning Republicans can shunt Democrats’ requests without putting the issue up for a vote.
The change lasts through the end of September. GOP lawmakers said they needed breathing space to devote time to Mr. Trump’s agenda and feared a tsunami of distracting Democratic ROIs.
“Democrats are using this to clog things up and stop us from doing our business,” Rep. Michelle Fischbach, Minnesota Republican, said during debate this week.
Democrats lamented the loss of one of the few tools available to the House minority to drive a wedge between Mr. Trump and congressional Republicans. They said they’d been judicious in their use of ROIs.
“Republicans want to hide behind this resolution so they don’t have to risk the wrath of the president if they were to do their job and take votes on getting answers and conducting oversight,” said Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon, Pennsylvania Democrat.
ROIs, if drafted a certain way, are given priority consideration, with the committee of jurisdiction having two weeks to act. If it doesn’t, there’s a speedy vote by the whole House.
While the majority is usually expected to win the vote, it can create headaches for politically vulnerable members.
Democrats hoped to use ROIs on major issues, including demands that Mr. Hegseth turn over documents from Signal chats that may have exposed sensitive information about U.S. policy in Yemen.
Democrats believe the evidence, if they were able to get it, would show Mr. Hegseth risked national security.
“They don’t want to have to vote on Signalgate.They don’t want to have actually take up an issue that they know is controversial,” said Rep. Teresa Leger Fernandez, New Mexico Democrat.
Democrats have also proposed several ROIs involving Mr. Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency, seeking to gain insight into what sort of security clearances DOGE members hold and whether they have accessed sensitive information they shouldn’t have.
Sean Vitka, executive director of Demand Progress, a liberal pressure group, said Republicans were “manipulating” the rules to protect Mr. Trump’s team.
Republicans pointed out that Democrats also limited the power of ROIs back in 2021, when President Biden took office.
Democrats said they did that because of the year-old pandemic and worries that committees couldn’t operate normally.
“There was a reason that we explained to the world. There was a pandemic going on,” Ms. Fernandez said.
Rep. Chip Roy, Texas Republican, suggested that was a smokescreen.
He said committees were up and running at the time. He said the real reason Democrats shut down ROIs was they didn’t want to have to take tricky votes on demands for information about the “foolish incompetence” Mr. Biden was showing on immigration.
“We wanted to get data about the border; they didn’t want to answer it,” Mr. Roy said.
He said having been through that, he was sympathetic to Democrats’ complaints.
But he objected to Democrats’ call for unilateral disarmament by the GOP, only to see Democrats revive their pause the next time they control the House and hold the White House.
