After Donald Trump visited Capitol Hill last week to meet with congressional Republicans, the president tried to downplay increasingly obvious intraparty divisions.

“For the most part,” he told reporters, “we have a really well-unified party.”

As it turned out, “for the most part” was doing a lot of work in that sentence. Within a day of the president’s comment, the Republican-led Senate gave up on its plans for the week and went home. Meanwhile, in the Republican-led House, GOP leaders couldn’t advance any of their priorities because of opposition from many of their own members.

This week, conditions on Capitol Hill managed to go from bad to worse. The New York Times reported:

Far-right House Republicans blocked consideration of the annual defense policy bill on Tuesday, solidifying a legislative blockade and forcing an early holiday recess as they agitated for action on a voting restriction bill President Trump has championed.

The rebellion paralyzed the House for a second consecutive week and dealt yet another blow to Speaker Mike Johnson, who has struggled to corral his fractious majority to act on legislation on the Pentagon, spending and other matters.

GOP leaders intended to focus this week on advancing an annual must-pass defense policy bill, called the National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, and a key spending bill that funds the State Department, among other things.

More than a dozen House Republicans, however, decided they didn’t care for that plan, with some arguing the chamber should do nothing but focus on Trump’s voter-suppression proposal, which the White House has labeled the SAVE America Act, as others pointed to party leaders’ promise of a vote on an anti-immigration bill before the July 4 recess.

The House speaker tried to legislate anyway, hoping enough of his members would stick together and follow his lead. That didn’t go well: 13 GOP members revolted and voted with Democrats on a key procedural vote, making Johnson look weak and leaving him with little choice but to start the chamber’s holiday break early.

(In the House, before a bill can be voted on, members approve a measure to establish ground rules for how the legislation will be considered. It’s known as adopting a rule, and the vast majority of the time it’s little more than a procedural speed bump, because members vote with their parties to begin the process. During their respective tenures, Nancy Pelosi, John Boehner and Paul Ryan never lost a rules vote. Johnson has now lost nine rules votes, which is both humiliating and unheard of in modern American history.)

For his part, Trump has made at least tacit efforts to curb these GOP rebellions, declaring by way of his social media platform last week, “House Republicans should unify, and stop voting down ‘Rules’ or, threatening to do so. … No more grandstanding, please!”

The trouble is, the far-right members ignoring the speaker’s wishes (and the president’s rhetorical sops) are doing so in order to do the president’s bidding and champion his legislative priority.

But the underlying problem is the unavoidable fact that Johnson is simply too weak to legislate with such a small majority. Bipartisan majorities have already gone around him with more successful discharge petitions than anyone has seen in generations, and the Louisiana Republican’s latest failures this week reinforce perceptions that he just isn’t in control of the House floor he ostensibly leads.

Taking stock of the broader conditions, Punchbowl News noted that the House GOP majority “is getting worse,” adding, “What good is a House majority if you can’t use it?”

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