Johnson denies he’s ‘lost control’ of House after Republicans defy him to force vote on extending health care subsidies
Exterior view of the U.S. Capitol on October 23, 2025 in Washington, DC. Eric Lee/Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — House Speaker Mike Johnson denied he has “lost control of the House” after a group of moderate Republicans revolted and joined Democrats’ effort to force a vote on a three-year extension of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies.
“We have the smallest majority in U.S. history, OK? These are not normal times. There are [processes] and procedures in the House that are less frequently used when there are larger majorities,” Johnson said. “When you have a razor-thin margin, as we do, then all the procedures in the book people think are on the table, and that’s the difference.”
Johnson’s assertion comes after four Republicans broke ranks and signed onto House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries’ discharge petition, giving it the 218 signatures needed to force a vote though the vote is not likely to occur until January 2026 at the earliest.
The decision by moderate Republican Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick, Mike Lawler, Rob Bresnahan and Ryan Mackenzie to join Democrats came after the Republican-controlled House Rules Committee on Tuesday night blocked amendments to extend the ACA subsidies from advancing.
Johnson has also resisted from allowing an up or down amendment vote on extending the expiring subsidies, which were Democrats’ focal point of the record 43-day government shutdown this fall.
Asked if he will allow a vote on the ACA extension in January, Johnson said, “Everybody stay tuned. We are having conversations.”
The speaker, who was spotted huddling with moderates on the floor during votes on Wednesday morning, said, “We just had some intense fellowship … We’re working through very complex issues, as we do here all the time, and it’s good. Everybody’s working towards ideas. We’re keeping the productive conversation going. That’s what happens.”
Moderate Republicans who signed onto the petition took aim at House leadership.
Lawler, of New York, said he doesn’t endorse the Democrats’ bill as written, but “when leadership blocks action entirely, Congress has a responsibility to act. My priority is ensuring Hudson Valley families aren’t caught in the gridlock,” Lawler wrote on X.
Pennsylvania’s Fitzpatrick again urged for an up or down vote on extending the ACA subsidies — calling on leadership to “let the House work its will.”
ABC News Capitol Hill Correspondent Jay O’Brien pressed Fitzpatrick on if signing the Democrats’ discharge petition will force GOP leadership to take a different approach.
“I sure hope so,” he said. “But you have to let the people’s voice be heard on the House floor. You cannot not put bills on the floor because you’re afraid they’re going to pass. That’s not how this place should operate.”
Bresnahan, who also represents Pennsylvania, said leadership on both sides of the aisle failed to reach a bipartisan compromise on the ACA subsidies.
“Doing nothing was not an option, and although this is not a bill I ever intended to support, it is the only option remaining,” he said in a statement.
What happens next?
The Republican-controlled House will hold vote on a clean three-year extension of the ACA subsidies; however, the vote is not expected to occur until January 2026 at the earliest given the rules for when a discharge petition can hit the floor.
The big question now is how the Senate will respond. The Senate already rejected a clean three-year extension of the subsidies in a pair of dueling health care votes last week, though several Republican senators crossed the aisle to join all Democrats in supporting it.
On Wednesday night, the House will hold a vote at approximately 5:30 p.m. on a narrow Republican health care package that does not address the expiring ACA tax credits.
Johnson needs a simple majority for the bill to pass and can only afford to lose three Republican votes. Democratic leaders are whipping their members against the bill. The vote will be tight for Johnson, who continues to navigate a slim majority.
The House GOP proposal would expand the availability of association health plans and what are known as “CHOICE arrangements;” impose new transparency requirements on pharmacy benefit managers to lower drug costs; and appropriate money for cost-sharing reductions to reduce premiums in the individual market.
Former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene appears on ‘The View,’ on Jan. 7, 2026. ABC News
(NEW YORK) — Former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., in her first interview since resigning from Congress effective Monday, said on ABC’s “The View” on Wednesday that she disagrees with the Trump administration’s capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and the focus on Venezuela instead of other countries that contribute to the flow of drugs into the U.S.
Greene said that while she served on the House Homeland Security Committee, “it wasn’t Venezuela that we were ever talking about” regarding drug trafficking, and that “you can’t hold Maduro accountable and not hold Mexican cartels accountable, who are number one”.
The Trump administration has said it is taking action on stopping the flow of drugs from various countries, including Mexico. On Sunday, Trump said Colombia could face a similar fate as Venezuela, and he said Cuba was imminently “ready to fall.” He also said Mexico could be next, as the administration seeks to continue its battle against drug cartels.
The former congresswoman, who has previously pushed back against other U.S. foreign policy endeavors, insisted as well that she remains “America First,” which she said does not align with the U.S. military intervention in Venezuela.
“We campaigned, and I went to countless Trump rallies and stood on the stage with the president and stood on the stage with other Republican candidates and said ‘America First. No more regime change, no more foreign wars, no more foreign intervention.’ Enough of this. That’s what America First means,” she said.
“Militarily invading a country, killing people in the process, arresting their leader and taking them out, then claiming this is for the Venezuelan people, and saying all the charges are about drugs, but then turning around and literally, every single statement is about Venezuelan oil and how it belongs to America … it’s not working.”
Greene also said a “deeper issue” for her on the U.S. action on Venezuela is that “if it’s OK to go into Venezuela and arrest Maduro, then why are we telling China you can’t go and take Taiwan? Why are we telling Russia you can’t go take Ukraine?”
Greene, first elected to the House in 2020, had established herself as one of President Donald Trump’s closest allies and a staunch supporter of the MAGA movement he spearheaded. Greene came to define the MAGA movement on Capitol Hill, fighting Trump’s second impeachment following the Jan. 6 Capitol attack and wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat at then-President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address in 2024.
But she broke with Trump more recently on issues such as the Israel-Hamas war and releasing files related to sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Trump withdrew his support for Greene in November after she criticized him and his administration for their handling of the Epstein investigation, along with other matters.
Greene announced that month that she would resign from the House, dropping a surprise bombshell soon after she was one of few Republicans to sign on to a discharge petition forcing a vote to order the Department of Justice to release the files. Her resignation before the end of her term leaves House Republicans with an even narrower majority — with 218 Republicans against 213 Democrats as of Wednesday, after Greene’s resignation and the death of GOP Rep. Doug LaMalfa of California on Tuesday.
Greene said Wednesday she made the final decision to leave Congress when Trump called her a “traitor” and soon after, her son began to face death threats. She said she herself had faced threats previously and was used to them.
“One of MAGA’s big campaign pledges was to release the Epstein files. And then having to say ‘Am I going to have to be the next Charlie Kirk? Is my son going to get murdered because I’m trying to continue to do this job?'” she said, referencing the high-profile conservative activist who was assassinated in Utah in September.
Asked how she would respond to people skeptical of her political transformation who think she is trying for a run for another office or to get ahead of potential Republican losses in the 2026 midterms, Greene replied, “I’ve been asked by every single person that’s interviewed me, ‘What are you running for?’ And I’ve said over and over again to exhaustion I’m not running for Senate. I’m not running for governor, I’m not running for president. So first of all, that narrative is just wrong about me.”
She added later that her focus is on “using my voice to pull Americans on the right and the left together to focus on our collective problems, particularly affordability.”
Yet Greene had sharp criticism for Democrats when asked if she’d consider becoming one, saying that Democratic policies and actions contributed to issues at the southern border and both parties had contributed to ballooning national debt.
She declined to say whether she’d leave the GOP.
“I haven’t said if I’m leaving the Republican Party, but my focus is America First, and my focus is — earn my vote,” she said.
As for what’s next for her, Greene told “The View” that she hopes to spend more time with her children, her mother, and friends.
Would she ever return to Congress if Trump asked her to?
“Absolutely not — the way he treated me. No,” Greene said.
ABC News’ Lauren Peller, John Parkinson, Jay O’Brien Will Steakin and Mariam Khan contributed to this report.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is joined by New York Governor Kathy Hochul at an event in Brooklyn to support more housing construction in New York City on February 10, 2026 in New York City. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
(GARDEN CITY, N.Y.) — Just over three months after he won New York City’s mayoral election, Zohran Mamdani is already at the center of another election — even though he’s not on the ballot.
With the New York governor’s race on the horizon, some voters and Republican officials who attended New York State’s Republican convention on Long Island on Monday mentioned Mamdani’s name immediately as they spoke about Gov. Kathy Hochul.
“Kathy Hochul is scrounging for votes and she latched onto Mamdani,” convention attendee Phil Orenstein, from Queens Village, told ABC News. “She endorsed him. He endorsed her in the governor’s race and you can see where that’s going. It’s going so far off the cliff.”
The most prominent Republican New York native, President Donald Trump, criticized Mamdani heavily prior to last November’s election.
Yet after the democratic socialist and former state assemblyman defeated former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Republican Curtis Sliwa in November, Trump appeared to change his perspective on Mamdani.
When Mamdani visited the White House after his victory, President Donald Trump congratulated the then-mayor-elect and said that he thought Mamdani “could do some things that are going to be really great.”
Trump’s praise of Mamdani has raised questions over how Republicans seeking to defeat Hochul this November will incorporate the new mayor into their messaging.
Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, who became the likely Republican gubernatorial nominee after Rep. Elise Stefanik dropped out of the race in December, did not mention Mamdani by name in his opening remarks at the Republican convention in suburban Garden City on Monday.
However, Blakeman’s campaign previously issued a statement criticizing the “Hochul-Mamdani agenda” and posted on social media shortly before the convention began that “Zohran Mamdani and Kathy Hochul are pushing New York in the wrong direction.”
Hochul, who had been facing a primary challenge from Lieutenant Gov. Antonio Delgado until Delgado suspended his campaign on Tuesday, touted Mamdani’s endorsement last week.
“Mayor Mamdani understands that we need to build a New York that everyone can afford — I’m grateful for his partnership in finally bringing universal child care to New York, and I know that he’ll stand strong alongside me as we fight against Donald Trump’s attacks on this state,” the governor said in a statement.
Mamdani’s proposals have ranged from free fares on the country’s largest bus system to free child care for 2-year-olds in the city.
“His policies are completely backwards and we are not a socialist country. We are not a socialist state,” Broome County Republican Committee Chair Benji Federman told ABC News at the convention on Monday. “The vast majority of voters disagree with the policies that he has put forward across New York.”
Just under 45% of New York State’s population lives in New York City.
“You have so many people who are in the Senate and the Assembly from New York City [that] if something happens locally down here, they’re going to try to bring it statewide,” Mike Sigler, an upstate Republican county legislator who lives outside Ithaca, told ABC News.
Mamdani and Hochul have each expressed disagreements with each other on a number of issues, particularly regarding taxes.
“Those of us entrusted with the sacred oath of service must heed that call and work together to honor it. That requires not the absence of disagreement but the presence of trust,” Mamdani wrote in his endorsement of Hochul that was published by The Nation. “We must be able to disagree honestly while still delivering for the people we serve.”
On Tuesday, New York leaders gathered for a press conference in the city about housing and infrastructure. Hochul and Mamdani were standing side by side at the podium.
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) talks to reporters after former President Bill Clinton did not appear for a closed-door deposition in the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill on January 13, 2026 in Washington, DC. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — The chairman of the Republican-led House Oversight Committee said the panel will move forward with contempt of Congress proceedings against former President Bill Clinton after he failed to appear for a subpoenaed deposition on Tuesday as part of the panel’s investigation into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The committee had threatened to hold the former president and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in contempt of Congress if they did not appear for separate scheduled closed depositions set for Tuesday and Wednesday, respectively.
“I think everyone knows by now, Bill Clinton did not show up. And I think it’s important to note that this subpoena was voted on in a bipartisan manner by this committee. This wasn’t something that I just issued as chairman of the committee. This was voted on by the entire committee in a unanimous vote of the House Oversight Committee to subpoena former President Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton,” Oversight Chairman James Comer said Tuesday morning.
“We will move next week in the House Oversight Committee markup to hold former President Clinton in contempt of Congress,” Comer, a Republican, later added.
A lawyer for the Clintons, David Kendall, has not responded to requests for comment on whether Hillary Clinton will appear on Capitol Hill for her Wednesday subpoenaed deposition.
In a four-page letter posted on social media Tuesday morning, the Clintons publicly called out Comer for threatening to hold them in contempt of Congress.
“Despite everything that needs to be done to help our country, you are on the cusp of bringing Congress to a halt to pursue a rarely used process literally designed to result in our imprisonment. This is not the way out of America’s ills, and we will forcefully defend ourselves,” the letter states.
The Clintons contend in the letter that Comer’s approach to the committee’s work on the Epstein investigation has “prevented progress in discovering the facts about the government’s role” and that the chairman has “done nothing” to force the Justice Department to comply with its disclosure obligations required by Epstein Files Transparency Act, passed late last year.
“We have tried to give you the little information that we have,” the Clintons wrote. “We’ve done so because Mr. Epstein’s crimes were horrific. If the Government didn’t do all it could to investigate and prosecute these crimes, for whatever reason, that should be the focus of your work — to learn why and to prevent that from happening ever again. There is no evidence that you are doing so.”
For months, Republicans on the committee have been demanding that the Clintons provide testimony to lawmakers, citing the former president’s travels on Epstein’s private aircraft in the early 2000s and the Clinton “family’s past relationship” with Epstein and his associate, Ghislaine Maxwell. The panel initially issued subpoenas for the Clintons on Aug. 5 to appear in October.
Kendall has continued to argue that the couple has no information relevant to the committee’s investigation of the federal government’s handling of investigations into Epstein and Maxwell, and should not be required to appear for in-person testimony. Kendall has contended that the Clintons should be permitted to provide the limited information they have to the committee in writing.
“There is simply no reasonable justification for compelling a former President and Secretary of State to appear personally, given that their time and roles in government had no connection to the matter at hand,” Kendall wrote in one of the letters sent to the committee in October of last year. He argued that the committee should excuse the Clintons, as the committee had done for five former attorneys general who were each excused after certifying to the committee that they had no relevant knowledge.
Bill Clinton has not been accused of wrongdoing and denies having any knowledge of Epstein’s crimes. No Epstein survivor or associate has ever made a public allegation of wrongdoing or inappropriate behavior by the former president in connection with his prior relationship with Epstein.
Former Secretary of State Clinton “has no personal knowledge of Epstein or Maxwell’s criminal activities, never flew on his aircraft, never visited his island, and cannot recall ever speaking to Epstein. She has no personal knowledge of Maxwell’s activities with Epstein,” Kendall wrote. “President Clinton’s contact with Epstein ended two decades ago, and given what came to light much after, he has expressed regret for even that limited association,” an Oct. 6 letter to the committee says.
Comer wrote in a letter to Kendall in October that the committee is “skeptical” that the Clintons have only limited information and stated it was up to the committee, not the Clintons, to make determinations of the value of the information.
“[T]he Committee believes that it should be provided in a deposition setting, where the Committee can best assess its breadth and value,” Comer wrote.
Last month, in response to the Epstein Files Transparency Act, the Justice Department released several photographs of former President Clinton apparently taken during his international travels with Epstein and Maxwell from 2002 to 2003, although the released photographs contained no information identifying when or where they were taken. Following that disclosure, a spokesperson for the two-term Democratic president argued that the Trump administration released those images to shield the Trump White House “from what comes next, or from what they’ll try to hide forever.”
“So, they can release as many grainy 20-plus-year-old photos as they want, but this isn’t about Bill Clinton. Never has, never will be,” Clinton’s spokesperson Angel Ureña wrote on X Dec. 22.
Ureña did not respond to an email inquiry from ABC News on Monday.
What is contempt of Congress?
The House of Representatives can hold an individual “in contempt” if that person refuses to testify or comply with a subpoena. The contempt authority is considered an implied power of Congress.
“Congress’s contempt power is the means by which Congress responds to certain acts that in its view obstruct the legislative process. Contempt may be used either to coerce compliance, to punish the contemnor, and/or to remove the obstruction,” according to a report from the Congressional Research Service.
Any person summoned as a congressional witness who refuses to comply can face a misdemeanor charge that carries a fine of up to $100,000 and up to a year in prison if that person is eventually found guilty.
What would the process look like?
To hold someone in contempt of Congress, the Oversight Committee would first mark up and then vote to advance the contempt resolution. Once the committee approves the resolution, which is expected given the GOP majority, the resolution now could go to a vote in the full House.
A simple majority is needed to clear a contempt resolution on the floor. Notably, it does not require passage in the Senate.
The resolution, if passed, would direct the speaker of the House to refer the case to the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia — under the Department of Justice — for possible criminal prosecution.
History of contempt
Congress has held Cabinet officials in contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with a House subpoena, including Attorney General William Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in 2019 and then-Attorney General Eric Holder in 2012. The DOJ never prosecuted them even though the House voted to hold them in contempt.
The House held Peter Navarro, a former top trade adviser in the Trump administration, in contempt of Congress in 2022 for defying a subpoena to provide records and testimony to the now-defunct House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Navarro was sentenced to jail time.
Steve Bannon, a Trump ally, was also held in contempt of Congress in 2022 for not complying with the Jan. 6 select committee. Bannon was also sentenced to prison time.
The GOP-led House voted to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress in 2024 over the DOJ failing to provide audio of then-President Joe Biden’s interview with special counsel Robert Hur. The DOJ did not prosecute the case, but the audio was released.
