House Rejects Rotor Act After GOP Opposition And Pentagon Reversal

The House of Representatives on Tuesday declined to advance the ROTOR Act, a setback for bipartisan aviation safety reforms that had gained unanimous approval in the Senate but faced resistance in the lower chamber.

In a 264–133 vote, the bill failed to secure the two-thirds supermajority required under the expedited procedure used to bring it to the floor. More than 130 Republicans opposed the measure, raising questions about how — or whether — leadership will move forward.

Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Cruz expressed confidence the legislation is far from dead.

“We came within a couple of votes,” Cruz told reporters, according to Politico.

“An overwhelming majority of the House voted for ROTOR, and I believe we’re going to pass it,” he said, later describing the result as a “temporary delay.”

The Senate had unanimously passed S. 2503 in December. However, the proposal encountered resistance in the House, particularly from Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Sam Graves. Graves recently unveiled a separate bipartisan measure following the January 2025 midair crash near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport that claimed 67 lives.

Families of the victims said they were “devastated” by Tuesday’s vote and urged House leaders to schedule another vote on the ROTOR Act.

Graves downplayed claims that the measure had been effectively killed.

“Still got work to do,” Graves said.

“I don’t look at it as tanking the bill, I just look at it as now we’ll get some House input,” he added.

Graves indicated he intends to advance his alternative proposal, the ALERT Act, through committee markup in the near future.

At the center of the dispute is a requirement that aircraft operating in congested airspace nationwide install Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast In (ADS-B In) technology. Proponents argue the technology enhances real-time aircraft location awareness and collision avoidance. Critics, however, warn that a federal mandate could impose steep compliance costs on general aviation operators — a concern Graves, himself a pilot, has repeatedly raised.

The ROTOR Act has drawn support from victims’ families, labor organizations, and National Transportation Safety Board Chair Jennifer Homendy.

The Department of Defense, which previously supported the bill, reversed its position Monday, warning that enactment would create “significant unresolved budgetary burdens and operational security risks affecting national defense activities.” That late-stage shift complicated the bill’s path forward and raised national security considerations that many lawmakers were unwilling to dismiss.

House Republican leaders privately signaled they might allow the bill to fail under suspension rules to address member concerns. While Graves and Armed Services Committee Chairman Mike Rogers did not publicly campaign against the measure, both have emphasized the need for additional scrutiny.

House Speaker Mike Johnson and Majority Leader Steve Scalise voted against the ROTOR Act, reflecting broader conference unease over potential fiscal and security implications. Meanwhile, ranking Democrats on the Transportation and Armed Services Committees supported the legislation.

A preliminary analysis from National Transportation Safety Board staff, shared with Congress, concluded that a key provision of the ALERT Act would not implement the agency’s ADS-B In recommendation and warned it “would seriously harm our efforts to implement ADS B In at FAA.”

Homendy stated that the Transportation and Armed Services Committees did not consult her prior to releasing the ALERT Act’s legislative text.

Rep. Don Beyer, D-Va., a vocal advocate for the ROTOR Act, said he was heartbroken by the vote’s outcome.

“It was unnecessary to lose all those Republicans,” Beyer said, noting that several Democratic absences were due to a historic blizzard in New England.

“On a normal day,” he said, the bill “would have passed.”

In a joint statement, families of the crash victims argued the legislation “was not defeated on its merits” but by “eleventh-hour objections built on misleading technical claims” and the Pentagon’s reversal. They urged House leadership to bring the bill back under a simple majority threshold, declaring, “We are not done.”

For now, the debate underscores a familiar tension in Washington: balancing aviation safety reforms with fiscal responsibility and national security safeguards. Whether House Republicans ultimately coalesce around a revised compromise remains to be seen.