Timothy Noah at The New Republic reports something unusual happened that didn’t attract sufficient attention. It concerned the latest in what’s been a heartening recent series of House Republican rebellions against President Donald Trump. Congressional Republicans have bucked Trump lately by voting to release the Jeffrey Epstein files and (however briefly) by investigating whether the Pentagon’s killing of two survivors on a boat allegedly conveying drugs in the Caribbean constituted a war crime. The inside-the-Beltway explanation for this deviationism is that House Speaker Mike Johnson is too much of a weakling to keep his caucus in line. But if Johnson is a weakling now, wasn’t he also a weakling before, when he managed to keep Congressional Republicans unified? A more persuasive explanation is that Trump’s approval rating, which has been trending south since Inauguration Day, has now fallen sufficiently low that at least 15 or so House Republicans fret more about losing next year’s Mid-Term Election than about incurring Trump’s blustery wrath. The third recent instance of House Republican disloyalty was surprising because it supported Labor Rights. Organized labor is something Republicans typically oppose. This vote concerned not just Labor Rights - but Labor Rights for Government Workers, previously the target of practically every Republican from President Ronald Reagan (who in 1981 fired 11,000 striking Air Traffic Controllers) to former Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker (whose Union-Busting 2011 law Act 10 was overturned last year, though that decision is on appeal) to the majority-Republican Supreme Court’s 2017 Janus ruling giving Public Sector Union Non-Members a free ride on Collective Bargaining Agreements. The Bill in question, the Protect America’s Workforce Act, would restore Collective Bargaining Rights that the Trump Administration stripped from Federal Workers through a couple of Executive Orders (EOs)and a March guidance from the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB). These rights were erased based on an entirely spurious national security justification. Trump’s EOs and OMB guidance affect more than one million Federal Workers and constitute, in the words of National AFL-CIO Legislative Director Jody Calomine: “The biggest single act of Union Busting in American History.” That’s the sort of thing Republicans used to cheer.

To Continue Reading This Labor News Story, Go To: How Labor Scored a Surprising Win in the GOP-Controlled House | The New Republic