Congress
This House Republican has become Mike Johnson’s biggest internal headache
California Rep. Kevin Kiley was already one of Speaker Mike Johnson’s loudest Republican critics — even before the government shutdown started earlier this month.
Now two weeks into the standoff, Kiley made clear in an interview Tuesday he has no plans to quiet down on Johnson’s handling of the shutdown, the future of crucial health insurance subsidies and the GOP’s controversial redistricting campaign that has suddenly put Kiley’s own political future in doubt.
Having already called Johnson’s strategy of keeping the House out of session during the shutdown “embarrassing,” Kiley reiterated Tuesday that it was the “wrong decision” and threatens to prolong the impasse.
Rank-and-file members could add pressure to find “some sort of agreement” that would end the shutdown, Kiley said. “When people are just not here, and those conversations aren’t taking place,” he added, that allows the two sides’ rigid positions “to calcify.”
Kiley, who was in Washington Tuesday and appeared at an otherwise sparsely attended pro forma afternoon session, added that the no-show strategy also means House Republicans are “again falling behind” on the full-year spending bills that could be part of a lasting solution to the shutdown: “All the things we were supposed to be getting done and working on are not getting done.”
So far Johnson has shown no sign of budging. He reiterated on a private House Republican call Tuesday members are to stay in their districts on a 48-hour notice to return, and members of his circle have argued members such as Kiley are among a small minority of GOP dissidents.
But Kiley has emerged as an outspoken and fearless critic who has been willing to break ranks at a crucial moment for the GOP leadership. The 40-year-old former state legislator from the Sacramento area says he is simply trying to represent his constituents and push for a solution to the damaging showdown.
“You’re not going to, you know, persuade anyone to do things differently, to keep your feelings quiet,” he said, comparing Johnson’s closure of the House to the cancellation of the legislative session in California during the early Covid crisis.
A Johnson spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment on Kiley’s criticism.
Inside the House GOP, however, some see payback for what appears to be an existential threat to Kiley’s congressional career: the partisan redistricting fight now playing out across the country.
After President Donald Trump persuaded Texas Republicans to redraw their House maps ahead of the 2026 midterms, California Gov. Gavin Newsom launched a campaign to do the same in his own state. Should a Democratic-backed ballot measure pass next month, Kiley and several of his GOP colleagues in the state’s delegation are almost certain to be drawn out of their seats.
Kiley has urged Johnson and fellow House Republicans to pass legislation barring the redrawing of maps outside of the usual decennial Census-driven process. “Just because a party thinks that they can gain an advantage by redrawing lines all of a sudden doesn’t mean they should do it,” he said.
But Johnson has so far refused to act.
“It’s extremely disappointing to me that he did not do the right thing in advocating for our members and protecting the House as an institution,” Kiley said of Johnson, noting that the two have spoken about the topic.
Still, Kiley’s criticism of the speaker has gone well beyond the redistricting dispute and even the tactical decision to keep the House out of session — a move Johnson has undertaken in a bid to force Senate Democrats to pass the stopgap spending bill Republicans, including Kiley, voted for last month.
Kiley has also broken with the bulk of his Republican colleagues in saying the GOP should broach a deal with Democrats on extending key health insurance subsidies as a way to end the shutdown. That’s something Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune have explicitly ruled out as part of any shutdown solution.
“There is going to need to be a deal on that issue — I don’t think that there’s any doubt about that,” Kiley said of the subsidies, which are set to expire Dec. 31. “So insofar as there needs to be a deal anyway, if we can try to reach at least the beginnings of one now as a way to get out of the shutdown … I don’t know why we shouldn’t at least explore that possibility.”
He also waded into another sensitive matter by pushing for Johnson to swear in Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva (D-Ariz.), whom Johnson has refused to seat until the shutdown ends. Once a member, she had pledged to be the 218th signature on a discharge petition forcing a floor vote to release Justice Department documents related to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Kiley has not signed the discharge petition but said he would be “inclined” to vote for the bipartisan Epstein bill should it come up for a vote.
Democrats have dealt with internal dissension, as well: Rep. Jared Golden of Maine and Sens. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania and Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada have backed the GOP-led House stopgap bill. But none has been anywhere as vocal as Kiley in criticizing their leadership.
While GOP leaders have been keenly focused on presenting a united front against Democrats’ shutdown demands — and have placed calls to some unhappy members — Kiley said he hasn’t gotten similar pressure from party brass.
“No such requests,” he said, adding that they would not stop him from speaking out in any case.
Sen. Ron Johnson blocked the Senate from passing a bill Wednesday to restore $810 million in federal funding President Donald Trump nixed Friday without Congress’ consent and stop him from using the controversial budget tactic again.
Democratic Sens. Jeff Merkley of Oregon and Patty Murray of Washington asked on the Senate floor to swiftly pass a measure that would nullify Trump’s latest move to unilaterally cancel money Congress appropriated and prevent similar attempts by blocking the president from sending requests to claw back federal dollars less than 90 days before the cash expires.
While objecting to passing the bill, Johnson said he supports the president doing “whatever it takes” to reduce federal spending.
“Personally, I wish it was a lot larger,” the Wisconsin Republican, who chairs the Budget Committee, said of the sum Trump canceled Friday. “That money doesn’t have to be spent, and it shouldn’t be spent.”
Merkley, the top Democrat on the Budget Committee, argued that Trump’s move is akin to exercising “a line-item veto” and taking “a wrecking ball” to the vision of the country’s founding fathers.
While Johnson objected to passing the bill, several prominent Republican lawmakers have slammed the Trump administration’s latest move to cancel federal funding and are discussing ways to head off another attempt.
Those Republican calls to stop Trump from employing the funding maneuver are a turnabout after more than a year of resistance to taking action. Democrats have repeatedly attempted to use funding bills to defend against this kind of eleventh-hour clawback but were rebuffed by Republicans.
“Time after time, they have shot down our attempts to stop this administration from defying Congress and robbing our constituents,” said Murray, who described Trump’s latest cancellation as “theft from the American people, plain and simple.”
Senate Commerce Chair Ted Cruz blocked an effort from Sen. Marsha Blackburn to pass her bill on the chamber floor Wednesday afternoon that would allow people to sue over artificial intelligence “deepfakes” — the latest episode in a long-running public rift between the two Republicans over AI legislation.
Blackburn of Tennessee argued the measure, the NO FAKES Act, would guarantee protections against the “proliferation harmful AI-created deepfakes” while ensuring artists and creative work are not impeded.
“Our bill would establish clear guardrails that protect our creators in Tennessee and across the entire country, in addition to establishing a federal intellectual property right in every American’s voice and visual likeness,” she said in a floor speech.
Blackburn sought to advance the bill by unanimous consent, a process that does not require a roll call vote but does permit any single senator to show up in person to object. That person Wednesday was Cruz, who argued the bill was not ready for primetime.
The Texas lawmaker said he had free speech concerns about the legislation as currently written — for example, would the AI-generated photos and videos like the ones frequently promoted on President Donald Trump’s social media accounts be deemed out of compliance? The same could end up being true for news parody websites like The Onion, Cruz added.
Blackburn said that free speech would not be jeopardized by her proposal, and that the bill instead targets online scamming activities that would certainly be illegal if conducted offline. Cruz was not convinced.
“I am happy to work with you,” Cruz ultimately told Blackburn. “But at least as of now, I object.”
Cruz and Blackburn have been at odds on the issue for some time, dating back to when a five-year deal to block states from enacting their own AI rules and regulations collapsed during One Big Beautiful Bill Act negotiations in 2025.
While Cruz voted for the NO FAKES Act in the Senate Judiciary Committee over the summer, he was unable to help broker a larger agreement with Blackburn and the White House to include it as part of a package of bills addressing preemption of state AI regulations and kids online safety issues.
Cruz also undercut Blackburn’s efforts during an Oval Office meeting over the summer, where he told Trump the package had no chance of moving in the Senate. The president ultimately held off on an endorsement.
Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), a NO FAKES co-sponsor, emphasized the broad support from the creative industry that lawmakers have worked to build.
“This is the most baked, ready-to-go AI-related bill there is,” Coons said as he walked onto the Senate floor Wednesday. “We’ve done hearings, we’ve done technical assistance, we’ve done markups. It’s broadly bipartisan.”
Cruz, who objected Tuesday to an attempt to pass an AI safety bill by unanimous consent, countered that his bill making it a crime to knowingly publish sexually explicit images on the internet without the subjects’ consent — real or AI-generated — is the only major AI bill to become law in the 119th Congress.
Ohio Democratic Senate nominee Sherrod Brown said Sunday that a “technical glitch” with Facebook’s advertising platform caused around half of his campaign ads on the site to suddenly “go dark with no notice.”
“For the past 48 hours, half of our ads have been unable to reach grassroots supporters and voters,” Brown said in a post to his Substack that both detailed the snafu and served as a fundraising appeal. Brown estimated the issue was costing his campaign “thousands and thousands of dollars — and potentially thousands of votes.”
Andy Stone, a spokesperson for Facebook parent Meta, confirmed in a statement that “an error over the weekend impacted the delivery of ads for several advertisers, including the Brown campaign.”
“All of the Brown campaign’s ads have since been restored,” Stone said. “We apologize for the error.”
Neither Brown nor Stone immediately responded to followup questions about whether the Brown campaign would receive a reimbursement for the glitch.
A tally of Meta advertising data for Brown’s political account shows he has spent over a half-million dollars with the company across multiple campaigns. Brown, a former senator, is mounting a comeback against Republican Sen. Jon Husted.
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