House goes on break until July 5 in a bid to preempt sit-in Republicans use a late-night parliamentary maneuver to disrupt the protest, but Democrats continued their effort on Thursday morning.

After a chaotic, daylong occupation of the House floor, Republican leaders moved in the middle of the night to cut off House Democrats' gun control sit-in by adjourning the House through the July 4 — without a vote on gun control.

Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) sought to to quell the Democratic demonstration by having lawmakers vote at 2:30 a.m. on several bills they had to pass this week, including one to combat the Zika virus. After that, Republican leaders sent lawmakers home until July 5, starting their already-scheduled recess a few days earlier than planned.


The move will deny Democrats any chance of votes on gun control legislation.

Democrats, though, continued their sit-in after the House adjourned, and on Thursday morning the effort was still going, with the action being livestreamed online. They vowed not to stop until Ryan and GOP leaders relent.

"This is just one bridge. We have other bridges to cross," Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) told his colleagues after the House adjourned in the wee hours of the morning. Lewis, a civil rights icon, helped lead the sit-in.

The GOP leadership's move came 15 hours after Democrats seized the House floor, vowing to block any House legislative action until Ryan promised to allow votes on what they believe are reasonable proposals: blocking suspected terrorists on the no-fly list from purchasing guns, as well as expanded background checks for gun sales.

Ryan refused. And Democrats said they were willing to hold the floor hostage for however long it took.

"I couldn't predict" how long it will go on, Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) told reporters around 10 p.m. "I mean tomorrow, and the next day. ... You've seen folks in the [House] gallery, they're pretty fired up on this. It could go through Friday."

Republicans used a parliamentary maneuver after midnight to try to short-circuit the Democratic sit-in. They rushed through debate on a funding bill to combat the Zika virus, as well as a measure to fund military construction and the Veterans Affairs Department, setting up final votes on both measures for 2:30 a.m.

The tumultuous day started just before noon when Democrats took over the chamber. Republicans almost immediately recessed the House and turned off the chamber video cameras. But that only drew more attention to the sit-in, as lawmakers whipped out their own phones and started livestreaming their efforts online, which was in turn broadcast by C-SPAN. The protest soon became the story of the day, leading news websites across the nation.

House Republicans earlier in the day signaled they weren't interested in bringing in security to escort Democrats out, but they also weren't willing to give them the votes they wanted.

If Ryan thought a few hours on the House floor would assuage the left, he was mistaken. The Wisconsin Republican entered the chamber at 10 p.m. to break up the protest by moving to a vote on unrelated legislation to override an Obama administration rule. Pandemonium ensued, a scene not witnessed on the House floor in years, if ever.

But as Ryan sought to restore order in the chamber, Democrats angrily chanted "No bill, no break!" — a reference to the upcoming July recess they want to postpone until a vote on gun control is held.

Earlier in the day, Ryan dismissed the Democratic protest as "nothing more than a publicity stunt," noting that the proposal at issue was recently defeated in the Senate. "We're not going to take away a citizen's constitutional rights without due process," the speaker told CNN.

Ryan and other Republicans say that relenting to Democrats' demand would only encourage more protests and distort the majority party's prerogative to decide which bills reach the floor, a bad precedent for the House in general.

The clash on the floor during the vote on the unrelated bill was ugly, a scene even longtime Hill observers have said they've never witnessed before.

Democrats who had been in the chamber all day for the protest moaned when the House stenographer came back into the chamber to take her spot, in preparation for the vote. Several dozen Democrats sat in front of the House podium to fill the area where members occasionally cast votes.

A few minutes before the vote started, as Ryan took to the podium and slammed his wooden gavel, Democrats started chanting. Guests watching from the gallery inside joined in, pumped their fists in the air and clapping. A few Republicans, entering the chamber for the vote, stood for several moments to take in the surreal scene.

Lawmakers held up signs with the names of victims of gun violence, creating a sea of stark white papers with bold black letters waiving on the House floor. Other members held pictures of victims and signs that said “Disarm Hate” printed on a rainbow background.

Just before the vote, Rep. Gwen Moore (D-Wis.) recited a poem on the floor about gun violence.

Ryan tried to speak over the crowd to call the vote, but no one in the chamber could hear him. Police quieted the public sitting in the gallery, in accordance with House rules that bar observers from cheering, but Democratic shouts still drowned out Ryan.

Despite the inability to hear, Ryan called the vote. And Republicans started voting.

Democrats were voting using paper cards — as opposed to the electronic vote House members normally employ — in an attempt to slow down the vote.

Republicans mostly kept to their side of the room, some standing to watch while others sat and chatted among themselves.

Throughout the vote, Democrats crowded the well, chanting and holding up the names of gun violence victims.

“Give them a vote,” Democrats shouted, shaking their papers with victims’ names.

Earlier, as Ryan stepped off the dais at the beginning of the vote, Democrats booed the speaker and shouted "Shame! Shame! Shame!" at him.

And Democrats at one point during the same series sang "We Shall Overcome," echoing a crowd that sang the civil rights hymn hours earlier outside the Capitol.

After the vote, several Democrats went outside the House to greet a crowd that had gathered during the day to support them. Others stayed inside the gallery to continue blasting their GOP colleagues' unwillingness to do anything about what they believe is a major gun epidemic.

Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) walked over to the area Democrats were sitting and started lecturing them that the Orlando shooting was caused by "radical Islam" — and was not an issue of guns.

Gohmert and Rep. Corrine Brown (D-Fla.) got into a shouting match. Lawmakers had to break them up, and House security circulated on the floor, ready for any more trouble.

Up in the visitors gallery, where onlookers had gathered to support Democrats in their protest, Capitol Police started escorting out some viewers they said had shouted at House Republicans during the vote. That goes against House rules, which require viewers be silent and not disrupt proceedings on the floor.

House Democratic Caucus Chairman Xavier Becerra and Rep. Maxine Waters, both California Democrats, ran up the stairs to play mediator, eventually convincing security to allow their supporters to stay.

