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House Speaker Paul Ryan lost on Friday. He lost a high-profile vote on one of his “legacy” projects, the latest farm bill, which would have imposed additional work requirements on food stamp recipients. The decision to pursue those “welfare” cuts had lost him all Democratic and many moderate Republican votes from the outset. His lost authority on the issue of immigration, meanwhile, had led many of those same moderates—and a host of others—to circumvent him in an effort to force votes on immigration bills. The Freedom Caucus, which takes pride in its ability to procedurally out-crazy all other blocs, killed the farm bill after not getting its own, hard-line immigration demands to counter the moderates. With moderate and far-right Republicans opposing Ryan, the speaker stood in the back of the chamber when his farm bill went down on Friday, lost to himself.

from Stories from Slate https://ift.tt/2Lf5dkk