Republicans Move to Shield Trump From Inquiries Amid Signal Scandal

House Republicans are moving to block Democrats from being able to force votes on whether to demand information from President Donald Trump’s administration for the next six months. 

The House Rules Committee, which Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) controls, quietly advanced a measure Monday that would halt the legislative body from voting on any “resolutions of inquiry,” one of the exceedingly few ways that the minority party — Democrats — can force Congress to conduct oversight of Trump’s shockingly lawless, careless, and increasingly authoritarian administration.

The move comes as Democrats push resolutions demanding answers about the Trump administration’s “Signalgate” leak scandal. One of the measures from Democrats, in the House Armed Services Committee, would demand that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth supply information about America’s attacks on the Youthis in Yemen, as well as information about rules governing how classified or sensitive information is handled at the Pentagon. 

According to texts published by The Atlantic, Hegseth shared detailed information about plans to attack the Houthis in a Signal chat with several top Trump administration officials, as well as journalist Jeffrey Goldberg. Subsequent reporting indicates Hegseth also shared Yemen attack plans in a separate Signal chat with his wife and brother.

In the GOP-led House of Representatives, resolutions of inquiry are one of the few ways that Democrats can currently influence what goes on. The resolutions specifically allow them to demand answers from the administration. The resolutions are privileged, and have a deadline of 14 legislative days. If a majority party on a committee fails to report a resolution of inquiry to the House within that time, the resolution can be called to the floor without the speaker’s permission.

Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), who sits on the Armed Services committee, has criticized the Trump administration over Signalgate and called on Hegseth to be fired. 

Fresh off a two-week recess, House Republicans returned to Washington and advanced a measure in the Rules Committee Monday that would pause resolutions of inquiry until Sept. 30. This would effectively shut down efforts by Democrats to ask the Trump administration to share documents about Signalgate — or anything else for that matter.

The proposed rule change was tucked into a package of resolutions designed to repeal several Biden-era environmental policies, including those allowing California to set more stringent vehicle pollution rules. 

Polling from Exiled Policy, a libertarian policy consulting shop, finds that among the registered voters who have seen news about Signalgate, 77 percent say that Congress should investigate the U.S. government’s group chat leak about its military operations in Yemen.

“The survey speaks for itself,” says Jason Pye, who runs Exiled Policy and was previously the vice president of legislative affairs for FreedomWorks, a now defunct conservative and libertarian advocacy group. “More than three-quarters of voters believe Congress should investigate Signalgate. This includes 76 percent of independent voters and 60 percent of Republicans. That’s a clear mandate for Congress to live up to one of its most basic responsibilities: oversight of the Executive Branch. Unfortunately, House Republican leadership is once again robbing voters of the oversight they’re demanding by using a procedural tactic to stop a resolution of inquiry. The only reason House Republican leadership would do this is because they feared it may pass.”

Former Rep. Denver Riggleman (R-Va.), who served as an intelligence officer and on a national security subcommittee in Congress, says that “Signalgate deserves an investigation, to say the least.

“Not stepping up is one thing, but procedurally shutting down the chance to even vote on it or any other inquiry is a frightening abdication of duty,” says Riggleman. “For years, Republicans talked about constitutional conservatism and the separations of powers. That has been cast aside out of a blind loyalty to Trump. It’s shameful.”