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Mike Johnson tries to keep a lid on partisan tensions after Kirk’s slaying

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Not even two hours after Charlie Kirk was fatally shot in Utah, Speaker Mike Johnson sought to hold a moment of silence for the young conservative activist.

It lasted only a few seconds before the situation devolved into yelling and chaos, leaving Johnson banging his gavel as he tried to restore order in the House. Ever since, he’s been struggling to convince both sides of the chamber to keep partisan finger-pointing from spiraling out of control.

Over the past 24 hours, Johnson has been the most powerful elected Republican urging lawmakers and Americans generally to keep things from escalating both online and in person. The Louisianan’s approach is largely in keeping with the way previous speakers might have handled the traumatic situation, but it is out of step with a polarized political culture that has come to color most everything that happens on Capitol Hill.

“What I’m going to do is what I’ve always done,” Johnson told reporters later Thursday. “I’m always about turning down the temperature and encouraging members to walk in the dignity of their office and treat one another with dignity and respect. And I think it’s an important moment for leaders to say that.”

Johnson’s approach is informed in part by his role as nominal leader of the whole House, Republican and Democrat, and his responsibility for managing the security of its 435 members. On Thursday, he described a new burst of private concerns from lawmakers in both parties about their own safety, citing the skyrocketing tensions.

Just last week he noted an uptick in threats against members of Congress during an address to a meeting of G7 country legislative chiefs. On Thursday, Johnson indicated would expedite a review of enhanced funding for lawmakers’ security — a pilot program of money that’s set to expire at the end of the month. He also suggested to a small group of reporters that Republicans were considering boosting funding for member security in a government funding stopgap.

“People are scared to death in this building,” Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) said Thursday. “I mean, not many of them will say it publicly, but they’re running to the speaker talking about security.”

But inside the Republican caucus, he is dealing with more than requests for bodyguards and security cameras. He is dealing with the rage of his own members, some of whom were quick to point the finger at their Democratic colleagues Wednesday.

Florida Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, during the chaos following the moment of silence, yelled and pointed across the aisle. “Y’all caused this,” she said, before hurling expletives at Democrats.

On Thursday, Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Wis.) warned on X that the “Gloves are Off,” adding, “We will not allow these people to take our country. They are 21st Century Brown Shirts.” Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.) said in his own X post that he’s “going to cancel with extreme prejudice these evil, sick animals who celebrated Charlie Kirk’s assassination.”

Johnson — who told reporters shortly after the shooting that Kirk was “a good friend” — is taking a different rhetorical tack. He chose to make an appearance on BLN Wednesday night, in addition to an interview on GOP-friendly Fox News, where he played down the floor outburst as “a reflection of the emotion of the moment” and urged his members and others to take the temperature down.

While Johnson has cited threats to members of Congress generally, there is no doubt that he is himself a target. His immediate predecessor as speaker, Democrat Nancy Pelosi, was personally affected by politically motivated violence when her husband, Paul Pelosi, was brutally attacked in their San Francisco home in 2022.

Yet Johnson is also under intense pressure from some of his fellow Republicans to do more to protect the rank-and-file, with some infuriated that the speaker is insulated in his own security bubble and doesn’t have to deal with the same level of fear.

“We’ve got to protect people who run for public office or no one will, and that’s heavy on our hearts and minds as we also work through the trauma of what happened yesterday,” Johnson said Thursday.

Some Democrats think Johnson could still do more to call out the bipartisan nature of political violence as many in his party blame the left, as well as call out gun violence generally.

“I don’t think it’s appropriate to blame the speaker in a vacuum,” Rep. Mike Levin (D-Calif.) said Thursday. “But … I wish that the speaker had gone to [House Minority Leader Hakeem] Jeffries and said, ‘We had two tragic shootings today — one at the elementary school in Colorado and another with Charlie Kirk in Utah. Can we have a moment of silence for both of those things?”

Johnson will be tested inside his own party in the coming weeks by requests from his members that could further strain partisan tensions. Rep. Eric Burlison of Missouri is calling on him to allow Kirk to lie in state in the Capitol — an honor normally, but not always, reserved for elected officials. Luna is calling for a statue of Kirk to be placed in the Capitol, while other Republicans are pressing to award Kirk the congressional gold medal.

Johnson could find it difficult to keep those passions under wraps, but he appears to take his role as an institutional steward seriously.

Just moments after the outburst on the floor Wednesday night, Johnson swore in the House’s newest member, Democrat James Walkinshaw of Virginia. In his ceremonial office just off the House floor, Johnson posed for a customary photo with Walkinshaw. The speaker turned to the Democrat and said he hoped he had a long career on Capitol Hill. “We’ll try to get everybody under control here,” Johnson added.

Mia McCarthy and Nicholas Wu contributed to this report. 

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Congress

DHS stopgap set for quick House action after Rules Committee vote

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The House Rules Committee advanced a measure Friday evening that would fund the entirety of the Homeland Security Department through May 22 — without setting up debate or a separate vote on the funding bill itself.

The panel, after a raucous meeting that devolved into shouting at multiple points, voted 8-4 on party lines to advance the measure to the floor.

The rule includes a “deem and pass” provision, a tactic that allows legislation to be passed by the House automatically once the rule itself is adopted. While there will be one hour of floor debate and a vote on the rule, there will not be a standalone House vote on the DHS spending bill.

Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) described himself as needing “a neck brace” from the whiplash of hearing Republicans argue for hours that the Senate’s early-morning voice vote on a different DHS funding measure was “shameful” for lack of transparency and accountability.

House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) accused the Senate of moving their bill “in the middle of the night, with the smell of jet fumes in the air,” lamenting that the House was left “to take it or leave it.”

House leaders, McGovern suggested, have chosen a similar path by fast-tracking the eight-week DHS stopgap.

“You’re in charge,” he told Rules Chair Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.). “You can do whatever the hell you want to do.”

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Congress

Rand Paul weighs a 2028 presidential bid

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Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) is considering a bid for president in 2028, as Republicans jockey for the future of the GOP post-Trump.

In a “CBS Sunday Morning” interview airing Sunday, a reporter asked Paul about an article that implied he would be running for president.

“We’re thinking about it,” Paul said. “I would say fifty-fifty,” adding that he would make a final decision after the midterm elections.

Paul ran for the Republican nomination for president in 2016 with a libertarianism-focused campaign but ultimately dropped out after a poor performance in the Iowa caucuses and a shortage of cash. He instead ran for reelection to the Senate.

Paul has had a complex relationship with his own party and with President Donald Trump, often finding himself the lone Republican on certain issues. More recently, he was the only Republican to support a joint resolution that would limit Trump’s war powers in Iran.

His father, former Rep. Ron Paul, also ran for president three times: first as a Libertarian in 1988, and twice as a Republican in 2008 and 2012.

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Congress

‘Meltdown’: DHS shutdown set to drag on after House GOP rejects Senate deal

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House Republicans moved Friday to further extend the six-week shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security by rejecting a Senate bill that would fund the vast majority of DHS agencies through September.

Instead, Speaker Mike Johnson proposed a temporary extension of DHS funding through May 22 — a plan that has uncertain prospects in the House and certainly won’t pass the Senate before the shutdown becomes the longest funding lapse in U.S. history Saturday.

But Johnson said House Republicans simply could not swallow the Senate bill, which omits funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement as well as Border Patrol and some other parts of Customs and Border Protection.

“The Republicans are not going to be any part of any effort to reopen our borders or to stop immigration enforcement,” he said. “We are going to deport dangerous criminal illegal aliens because it is a basic function of the government. The Democrats fundamentally disagree.”

The move toward an eight-week stopgap creates a tactical gulf between Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, who called an end to weeks of abortive bipartisan talks Thursday and pushed through the funding bill in hopes of tacking on funding later for ICE and CBP in a party-line budget reconciliation bill.

President Donald Trump has largely stayed out of the GOP infighting on Capitol Hill, keeping his criticism trained on Democrats. He ordered DHS to pay TSA officers Thursday as long security lines snarls more U.S. airports.

Johnson played down the split with his Senate counterpart, saying the Democratic leader there bore more blame for the impasse.

“I wouldn’t call John Thune the engineer of this,” he said. “Chuck Schumer and the Democrats in the Senate have forced this upon the Senate. I have to protect the House. … Our colleagues on this side understand this is not a game. We are not playing their games.”

Thune said early Friday morning he did not speak directly to Johnson in the final hours leading up to the Senate’s voice vote, but he said they had texted. He acknowledged he did not know in advance how the House would handle the Senate bill.

“Hopefully they’ll be around, and we can get at least a lot of the government opened up again, and then we’ll go from there,” he said.

Johnson made his game plan clear with House Republicans on a private call just minutes before addressing reporters in the Capitol, according to four people granted anonymity to describe the call. He warned that a failure to advance the short-term DHS stopgap would upend GOP plans for a reconciliation bill, the people said.

He suggested the Senate could quickly clear the stopgap measure once it passes the House. Most senators have left Washington for a recess running through April 13, but Johnson said the chamber could approve the House measure by unanimous consent at a planned pro forma session Monday.

But some House Republicans on the private call, including Rep. Carlos Gimenez of Florida, aired doubts it could pass the Senate — or even the House. Some fellow GOP centrists argued that the House should just swallow the Senate bill and end the standoff.

The House plan for a 60-day stopgap won a cold reception in the Senate, with even Republicans warning it will only prolong the partial government shutdown.

The plan is instead fueling frustration among both Republicans and Democrats who view House Republicans as essentially throwing temper tantrum. Three people granted anonymity to speak candidly each described the House as having a “meltdown.”

Schumer publicly slammed the House GOP plan Friday, saying it was “dead on arrival” across the Capitol, “and Republicans know it.”

A Senate GOP aide granted anonymity to speak candidly added that the quickest way to end the shutdown is for the House to pass the Senate bill.

Five people granted anonymity to comment on Senate dynamics said there was no possibility that Democrats would let the House GOP plan pass during the Senate’s brief pro forma sessions over the next two weeks. It would only take one Democratic senator to show up and object to any attempt to pass it.

The bill, according to the five people, also can’t get 60 votes in the Senate once the chamber returns. Democrats have previously rejected even shorter stopgaps, leaving some to privately question why House Republicans would ever think their plan would work.

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