Only 70 House Republicans have not signed on to an amicus brief supporting Texas’s challenge at the Supreme Court to the election.
The brief, which Louisiana Rep. Mike Johnson organized this week to support Republican challenges to election results in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin, and Michigan, attracted overwhelming support from House Republicans, with 126 members signing on by Friday. The bid failed on Friday night.
Prominent proponents included House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, House Minority Whip Steve Scalise, and every member of Republican House Leadership except the party’s House Conference Chairwoman Liz Cheney.
Cheney, who throughout President Trump’s term often sought to distance herself from the party, did not immediately respond to request for comment.
Other prominent House Republicans who kept their names out of the brief included Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger and Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie. Prominent Trump defenders California Rep. Devin Nunes and Arizona Rep. Paul Gosar also did not sign.
Likewise, several Republicans who either lost their primaries or decided to retire, including Texas Rep. Will Hurd and Virginia Rep. Denver Riggleman, refrained from signing the brief.
Texas Rep. Chip Roy, in explaining why he did not join, wrote on Twitter that he believed Texas’s case itself was a “dangerous violation of federalism & sets a precedent to have one state asking federal courts to police the voting procedures of other states.”
“I cannot support an effort that will almost certainly fail on grounds of standing and is inconsistent with my beliefs about protecting Texas sovereignty from the meddling of other states,” he wrote.
The case, in which Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton asked the Supreme Court to declare the four swing states’ mail-in ballot procedures unconstitutional, also attracted a vocal minority of Republican critics in the Senate.
Outgoing Tennessee Sen. Lamar Alexander on Friday told NBC that the arguments the cases’ supporters made don’t “sound like a very Republican argument to me.”
“Texas is a big state, but I don’t know exactly why it has a right to tell four other states how to run their elections,” he said. “So, I’m having a hard time figuring out the basis for that lawsuit.”
Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse on Thursday told the Washington Examiner that he expected the court to brush the case away.
Widespread House Republican support for the case drew sharp Democratic criticism on Friday. New Jersey Rep. Bill Pascrell asked House Speaker Nancy Pelosi not to seat any of the 126 Republicans signed on to the brief because they “would act to tear the United States government apart” if allowed to serve.
Pelosi responded in a letter, chastising the 126 Republicans.
“Republicans are subverting the Constitution by their reckless and fruitless assault on our democracy which threatens to seriously erode public trust in our most sacred democratic institutions, and to set back our progress on the urgent challenges ahead,” she wrote.
Pelosi did not directly respond to Pascrell’s request that the supporters of the lawsuit not be seated.
