“When you release that power, the majority goes to Nancy,” House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy said, referencing House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. | Alex Wong/Getty Images McCarthy to GOP: DACA vote could cost us the House The House Majority Leader warns centrists that forcing votes on immigration could cost the party its majority in the midterms.

House Republicans are flailing to get on the same page on immigration, as rebellious moderates inch closer toward forcing a vote protecting Dreamers and leaders scramble to stop the intra-party collision.

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy warned centrist Republicans in a closed-door meeting Wednesday that their effort to force votes on immigration could cost the party its House majority and empower Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.


But the California Republican's warning did little to stop the centrists' momentum on their so-called discharge petition. Two additional Republicans, John Katko of New York and David Trott of Michigan, signed on after McCarthy's scolding, leaving the group just four signatures shy of their goal.

Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) called an emergency meeting in his office Wednesday night to try to broker peace.

"I'm extremely confident," said discharge petition author Jeff Denham (R-Calif.) when asked how sure he was that immigration bills would hit the House floor.

Meanwhile, the House Freedom Caucus floated an obscure procedural maneuver aimed at crushing the discharge petition completely. While the forced roll call would include a vote on one of their favored conservative solutions to address Dreamers, conservatives know it won't pass, while a bipartisan immigration bill likely would.

The group has vowed to find a procedural way to stop the vote.

"It may get the required signatures; I don't think it will ever come to fruition," said Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows. "There's too many procedural ways you can stop it from happening."

The scramble started early in the morning, when McCarthy told members at a conference to “put your phones down” and listen, according to a GOP source in the room. The prospects of Republicans keeping the House are improving, he said, and “if the election was today, we win.”

But McCarthy cautioned that “we cannot disrupt ourselves,” saying in no uncertain terms that a “discharge petition” to force votes on such a controversial issue six months out from an election would do just that. Passing a bipartisan immigration bill that the base hates, McCarthy argued, would depress Republican turnout, and possibly cost the party the House.

GOP “intensity levels are still not there, and discharge petitions release the power of the floor that the American people gave us the responsibly to hold,” McCarthy said, according to the source present. “When you release that power, the majority goes to Nancy.”

He added: “If you want to depress intensity, this is the No. 1 way to do it. We can debate internally but don’t let someone else like Nancy decide our future.”

Supporters of the discharge petition pushed back on McCarthy during the conference meeting. According to another source in the room, Denham of California and Carlos Curbelo of Florida defended their move by arguing that leadership promised months ago that they’d address DACA. Indeed, Curbelo and several other Republicans who have signed onto the petition had held back on forcing the issue because they believed leadership would eventually move on something.

Sign up here for POLITICO Huddle A daily play-by-play of congressional news in your inbox. Email Sign Up By signing up you agree to receive email newsletters or alerts from POLITICO. You can unsubscribe at any time. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

But when the Supreme Court decided to consider Trump’s move to end the program this fall, momentum to find a solution stalled.

McCarthy’s comments come just a week after centrist Republicans, many of whom are typically staunch allies of leadership, bucked Speaker Paul Ryan’s team and filed a discharge petition on several immigration proposals to resolve the status of so-called Dreamers. If a discharge petition garners 218 signatures, the centrist lawmakers can force votes on their plans to codify the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.

With Democratic support, a bipartisan proposal stands a solid chance of passage — even if a majority of House Republicans vote against them.

Centrists and GOP leaders alike recognize the moderates likely will collect enough signatures eventually to force the issue. All Democrats are expected to sign onto the discharge petition, and enough Republicans are frustrated at the lack of movement to protect Dreamers to put the petition over the top.

Still, Ryan and McCarthy, who met with the president on the matter Tuesday, have tried to persuade members to hold off.

“We don’t want to advance something that we know will just get vetoed,” Ryan told reporters Wednesday morning.

Freedom Caucus members have suggested that GOP leaders put a conservative DACA bill on the floor to stop the moderates. The discharge petition technically calls for a vote on four immigration bills that span the ideological spectrum, including one conservatives prefer authored by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.). So if lawmakers vote on any of those bills, it would upend the discharge petition and make moderates file a new one.

"If the Goodlatte bill comes up, it makes the existing 'Queen-of-the-Hill' rule expire," Meadows said, referring to the discharge petition at hand.

GOP leadership sources, however, say moderates could easily get around that. They could — and have already threatened to — band together with Democrats to block the Goodlatte bill from reaching the floor by sinking a rule governing debate. That would leave their discharge petition intact.