Mike Johnson’s speaker reelection could come down to a single Republican vote
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(WASHINGTON) — Republican Rep. Chip Roy said Tuesday that he doesn’t think House Speaker Mike Johnson has the necessary votes to remain speaker in Friday’s leadership election.
“Right now, I don’t believe that he has the votes on Friday, and I think we need to have the conference get together so we can get united,” Roy told Fox Business.
The speaker vote comes after a number of House Republicans grew frustrated with Johnson during the final days of the 118th Congress, which saw a bitter fight over spending that nearly caused a government shutdown before Christmas.
Roy is a member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus whose chair, Rep. Andy Harris, has also said he is undecided on whether to support Johnson. They’re among 15 House Republicans by ABC News’ count who are undecided on whether they’ll vote for Johnson.
Depending on attendance during Friday’s vote, Johnson may only be able to afford to lose a single Republican vote to win the gavel.
The recent resignation of former Rep. Matt Gaetz will leave the House with 434 members — 219 Republicans and 215 Democrats.
Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky has already said he won’t support Johnson, even after Monday’s endorsement from President-elect Donald Trump. GOP Rep. Victoria Spartz of Indiana and a number of other members have also expressed skepticism about Johnson.
“Victoria is a good friend and Thomas is a good friend and they raise reasonable concerns,” Roy told Fox. “I remain undecided as do a number of my colleagues because we saw so many of the failures last year that we are concerned about that might limit or inhibit our ability to advance the president’s agenda.”
Roy expressed concern about the events that unfolded on Capitol Hill in the week leading up to Christmas, including the original government funding bill that was torpedoed by Trump and his allies.
Billionaire Elon Musk, who was tapped by Trump to run the new private advisory “Department of Government Efficiency,” initially trashed a bipartisan funding bill that would have averted a shutdown in a post on X as the House prepared to vote. Trump later issued a statement opposing the bill and demanding that it include provisions to either raise or eliminate the nation’s debt ceiling before his inauguration on Jan. 20.
The bipartisan bill ultimately failed. A bill that included Trump’s debt ceiling demands also failed. A third attempt that included $100 billion for disaster aid, $30 billion for farmers and a one-year extension of the farm bill, provisions that were in the original measure, passed in the House at the 11th hour and 38 minutes past the deadline in the Senate.
The rush to get a bill passed before the deadline caused Johnson to forgo the rule that allows members 72 hours to read legislation before a vote.
Trump endorsed Johnson on Monday, saying “Speaker Mike Johnson is a good, hard working, religious man,” Trump wrote at the end of a lengthy social media post. “He will do the right thing, and we will continue to WIN. Mike has my Complete & Total Endorsement.”
Musk on Monday also backed Johnson, writing on X, “I feel the same way! You have my full support.”
But that seems to have done little to ease Roy’s concerns.
“I respect like Thomas that President Trump supports Mike, he’s a good friend, but let’s consider what happened the week before Christmas,” Roy said.
Roy said the Republican conference needs to get on the same page before Friday.
“What we need to do is unite around a plan to deliver for the president. Right now I do not believe that the conference has that,” Roy said.
Spartz said Monday some of her GOP colleagues are interested in the speaker’s gavel, but she wouldn’t reveal which members because they don’t want to publicly oppose Johnson.
(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden and his senior aides are discussing possible preemptive pardons for people who might be targeted by the incoming Trump administration, according to a source close to the president.
Possible names include current and former officials such as retired Gen. Mark Milley, former GOP Rep. Liz Cheney, Sen.-elect Adam Schiff and Dr. Anthony Fauci.
Politico was first to report the news.
The consideration comes after Biden issued a full pardon for his son, Hunter Biden, on Dec. 1. The move sparked backlash from Republicans and criticism from many Democrats.
The White House said Biden did so, despite his past pledges not to pardon his son, because “it didn’t seem his political opponents would let go of it.”
Throughout his campaign, President-elect Donald Trump vowed to exact “retribution” on his political enemies.
Milley, who retired as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff last year, has long been a target of Republican attacks over the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan.
He also stoked Trump’s ire over a report that Milley secretly called his Chinese counterpart before and after the 2020 election to dispel China’s fears Trump was not planning an attack. Trump accused Milley of “treason” after the report.
Cheney and Schiff have also long been criticized by Trump over their investigation into the attack on the U.S. Capitol by a pro-Trump mob on Jan. 6, 2021. The two were part of the House Jan. 6 committee’s yearlong probe, which concluded with the recommendation of criminal charges against Trump. Schiff also was the lead House prosecutor in Trump’s first Senate impeachment trial.
Cheney lost her reelection bid in 2022 to a Trump-backed Republican challenger. Cheney endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris over Trump, and appeared with Harris several times on the campaign trail.
Schiff is now the senator-elect from California after winning the seat held by late Sen. Dianne Feinstein in November.
Fauci, the former head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, faced intense scrutiny over the government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
He’s been called to Capitol Hill to testify on school shutdowns, the virus’ origins and more by House Republicans since retiring in 2022.
(WASHINGTON) — House Speaker Mike Johnson said Tuesday that cuts to Social Security and Medicare won’t be part of the legislative package being worked out to fund President-elect Donald Trump’s agenda.
“No, the president has made clear that Social Security and Medicare have to be preserved,” Johnson replied when asked if he was open to cutting the programs as part of the spending plans being worked out between House and Senate Republican leaders. “We have to look at all spending while maintaining… The Republican Party will not cut benefits.”
Johnson said he was to meet with Senate Majority Leader John Thune on Tuesday to discuss ideas for a funding package that Republicans plan to pursue through “reconciliation” — a fast-track process limited to spending and revenue legislation that needs only a majority rather than the 60-vote threshold in the Senate needed to pass legislation. Republicans hold a narrow majority in the House and a 3-seat majority in the Senate.
Congressional Republicans have yet to decide on a reconciliation plan. Johnson is pushing Trump’s desire for “one big, beautiful bill” to fund his agenda but Senate leaders and some conservatives in the House prefer that it be divided into two pieces of legislation.
The negotiated package is expected to include several of Trump’s top priorities, which include extending the tax cuts passed during his first term and addressing his immigration reforms, including more funding for Border Patrol and ICE. Trump has also pushed Congress to increase or eliminate the debt limit, though details of any plan remain unclear.
Trump reiterated his preference for one bill when he spoke to reporters on Tuesday, but said he could live with two.
“Well, I like one big, beautiful bill, and I always have, I always will, he said. But if two is more certain, it does go a little bit quicker because you can do the immigration stuff early.”
Before Trump spoke, Johnson said he remains convinced that the one-bill strategy is the “best way to go.”
“I’m meeting today with Leader Thune about the two ideas,” Johnson told reporters outside a closed GOP conference meeting Tuesday morning. “We still remain convinced over here that the one-bill strategy is the best way to go, but there’s some senators who have different ideas.”
“They’re all dear friends and colleagues, and we’re going to work on this together. We will get the two chambers united on the same strategy. And I think the president still prefers ‘one big, beautiful bill,’ as he likes to say, and there’s a lot of merit to that — we could talk about the ins and outs of that maybe at our leadership press conference here.”
Senate Republican Whip John Barrasso said one of the key objectives in the meeting with Trump will be attempting to forge a clearer path on reconciliation.
“He’s going to be with Senate leadership as well as the entire Senate conference to talk about that exact thing tomorrow and how we get on the same page with the House,” Barrasso said.
Barrasso said a two-part plan that would deliver wins for Trump early in his presidency and allow for more time to address tax policy that doesn’t expire until the end of the year, but the “goal is the same.”
“It was a suggestion by John Thune — this was before Christmas — he said ‘Let’s get an early win on the border.’ It was an issue in the election and it is a big issue for the American people and it is a big issue for national security, and we just thought we could get that done in a quicker fashion with a focus on that, on taking the handcuffs off of American energy as well as military strength, and then have the longer time to work on the financial component of this,” Barrasso said. “This issues and the urgency of the tax issue doesn’t really come into play until l the end of the year to the level that these other issues have the higher urgency right now.”
Johnson also said he intends to handle the debt limit — another Trump priority — in the reconciliation process, which Republicans could try pass in both chambers without Democratic support.
“That way, as the Republican Party, the party in charge of both chambers, we again get to determine the details of that. If it runs through the regular order, regular process… then you have to have both parties negotiating. And we feel like we are in better stead to do it ourselves,” he said.
Johnson said members will have “lengthy” sessions to go over the plan for reconciliation since there are “broad opinions” on how to handle it.
“Republicans in this majority in the House and Senate – our intention, our mission is to reduce spending in a meaningful way so we can get, restore fiscal sanity… so raising the debt limit is a necessary step so we don’t give the appearance that we’re going to default in some way on the nation’s debt,” he added.
Johnson said this does not mean Republicans will “tolerate” spending more to the new debt limit because the “commitment” is to reduce spending, but the final formula has not been determined.
The speaker also told reporters that he’ll likely speak with Trump on Tuesday, ahead of the president-elect’s visit to Capitol Hill on Wednesday.
“I’m sure I’ll speak with him today, probably this afternoon, and when he’s in town, I’m sure we’ll get together,” Johnson said. “He and I both have a very busy schedule. He’s trying to jam a lot into that visit on the Hill, so we’re sympathetic to that.” Johnson said.
Johnson said there will be more discussions on Trump’s agenda when he meets with House Republicans at Mar-a-Lago this weekend.
“He’s bringing in big groups of House Republicans to Mar-a-Lago over the weekend three days in a row to meet with and talk with all of our team members about what’s ahead of us and the challenges and how we can accomplish all this together. So we’re very excited about that. The president-elect is excited about it, and we all are as well,” Johnson said.
Senate Republicans are preparing to meet with President-Elect Trump in the Capitol tomorrow, and one of their key objectives will be attempting to forge a clearer path about how to proceed with advancing Trump’s agenda through a fast-track budget tool called reconciliation, Republican Whip John Barrasso, R-Wyo. said.
“He’s going to be with Senate leadership as well as the entire Senate conference to talk about that exact thing tomorrow and how we get on the same page with the House,” Barrasso said.
Barrasso said today that the “goal is the same” regardless of whether Congress ultimately proceeds with a one-part bill, as Speaker Johnson and Trump have suggested, or with a two-part strategy championed by Majority Leader Thune.
But he made the case for a two-part plan that would deliver wins for Trump early in his presidency and allow for more time to address tax policy that doesn’t expire until the end of the year.
“It was a suggestion by John Thune — this was before Christmas — he said ‘Let’s get an early win on the border.’ It was an issue in the election and it is a big issue for the American people and it is a big issue for national security, and we just thought we could get that done in a quicker fashion with a focus on that, on taking the handcuffs off of American energy as well as military strength, and then have the longer time to work on the financial component of this,” Barrasso said. “This issues and the urgency of the tax issue doesn’t really come into play until l the end of the year to the level that these other issues have the higher urgency right now.”
Senate Republicans have slightly more breathing room on these measures than their House colleagues as they have a 3-seat GOP majority. In the House, Johnson might only be able to afford to lose a single Republican, so his preference for one large bill appears to be focused on getting his members together.
“If you put a number of high priority issues together, then people are more apt to vote for the larger package, because even though there may be something in it that doesn’t meet their preference, they’re not going to be willing to vote against the larger measures that are such, such high priority for the American people and for President Trump,” Johnson told Newsmax on Monday.
(WASHINGTON) — Republican Sen. Mike Rounds emphasized his support for current FBI Director Christopher Wray, whom President-elect Donald Trump intends to fire and replace with the loyalist Kash Patel.
“I think the president picked a very good man to be the director of the FBI when he did that in his first term,” Rounds told ABC “This Week” co-anchor Jonathan Karl about Wray. “When we meet with him behind closed doors, I’ve had no objections to the way that he’s handled himself, and so I don’t have any complaints about the way that he’s done his job right now.”
However, Rounds reiterated the president-elect’s right to select his Cabinet and Trump’s selection of Patel is not surprising.
“It doesn’t surprise me that he will pick people that he believes are very loyal to himself, and that’s been a part of the process,” Rounds said. “Every president wants people that are loyal to themselves.”
A staunch supporter of Ukraine, Rounds called Russian President Vladimir Putin a “tyrant” and suggested that negotiating with him might be futile.
“I think Mr. Putin is a tyrant. I think dealing with him is going to be extremely difficult,” Rounds said, expressing hope for Trump to succeed but recognizing that this will be a challenge for “any president.”
He added that you can’t trust “a guy that doesn’t honor their word,” which he says Putin had done.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
