Several Republicans joined their Democratic colleagues in voting Thursday to block President Donald Trump from stripping federal workers of their union rights, a rare bipartisan rebuke of the White House by the Republican-controlled House.

The measure, put forth by Reps. Jared Golden (D-Maine) and Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.), would undo an executive order Trump signed earlier this year nullifying collective bargaining agreements covering up to 1 million workers. It passed, 231 to 195, with 20 Republicans in support.

The legislation is unlikely to go anywhere in the GOP-controlled Senate, but its success in the House shows some moderate Republicans don’t support Trump’s unprecedented union-busting at federal agencies.

One of those lawmakers, Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-N.J.), told reporters ahead of the vote that Republicans should lean into being more populist. He noted that typical union members are “people that love America” and “people that love hard work” — and that a lot of them are Republicans.

“We should not be the party of ‘no,’ the party of take away, the party that hurts people,” Van Drew said.

The bill’s success is also a rebuke to House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), who has been contending with Republican defections on a range of issues. Golden forced the vote by filing a “discharge petition” that got signatures from the entire Democratic caucus plus five Republicans.

Once a discharge petition gets 218 signatures, the House has to vote. Such petitions are rare, but Golden’s was the second to succeed this month after one by Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) forced the House to vote on a bill requiring the Justice Department to release its files on Jeffrey Epstein.

The Trump administration has pushed out an estimated 200,000 federal employees as part of its historic assault on the administrative state. Attacking federal labor unions has been a key strategy in the overall plan, since union contracts can insulate workers from arbitrary and unfair firings.

Trump’s March executive order aims to exempt workers at a slew of federal departments from collective bargaining rights that have been enshrined in law for decades.

The rationale is that these employees serve a “national security” function, even though many of them clearly do not. Among the agencies listed in the order are the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Justice and much of the Agriculture Department.

A follow-up order Trump signed in August added even more agencies to the list, including the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the U.S. Agency for Global Media and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The Trump administration made clear when it issued the first order stripping workers of collective bargaining rights that it viewed federal unions as a political enemy, claiming they had “declared war” on Trump’s agenda. Nullifying contracts could help the White House weaken unions by giving workers less reason to join and pay dues.

Golden told HuffPost on Wednesday that the orders amounted to “the largest instance of union-busting in a single act in American history.”

“These are collective bargaining rights that have already been negotiated,” he said. “It’s already a deal that’s been struck and has been arbitrarily taken away.”

Federal unions have sued to block the orders from taking effect, arguing they are unlawful. The case has not yet been resolved, but organized labor can’t bank on a legal victory. The Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority has put its blessing on much of Trump’s effort to remake the federal bureaucracy as he sees fit.

The House bill is part of an effort by organized labor and congressional allies to stop Trump’s orders legislatively in case the lawsuits fail. Federal unions and the AFL-CIO labor federation worked to build support on both sides of the aisle leading up to the House vote.

Liz Shuler, the AFL-CIO’s president, thanked Golden and Fitzpatrick for leading what she called a “rare bipartisan majority.”

“Americans trust unions more than either political party,” Shuler said in a statement. “As we turn to the Senate ― where the bill already has bipartisan support ― working people are calling on the politicians we elected to stand with us, even if it means standing up to the union-busting boss in the White House.”