Congress
Trump’s troop pay move is a ‘temporary fix,’ Johnson says
President Donald Trump’s move to pay active-duty troops this week amid the shutdown is only a “temporary fix,” Speaker Mike Johnson said Wednesday, warning that service members will miss their Oct. 31 paychecks if Democrats don’t reopen the government by then.
The Pentagon moved Saturday to tap unused research and development funding to cover the checks due Wednesday to 1.3 million active-duty troops, as well as tens of thousands of National Guard members and reservists on active-duty orders. But the next round of paychecks is not guaranteed, Johnson said at a news conference, as he accused Democrats of using members of the military as “hostages.”
The White House has informed some lawmakers that it tapped roughly $6.5 billion for this week’s paychecks, less than the $8 billion the Trump administration disclosed over the weekend. That funding comes from a pot of about $10 billion leftover military R&D funding that’s available into next fall, according to a person familiar with the plan who was granted anonymity to speak about the details.
It’s unclear if the administration has other accounts it can tap for future paychecks. By law, it can transfer up to $8 billion between military accounts for the fiscal year that just came to a close Sept. 30. But the administration has not sought approval as required from senior congressional appropriators. The White House budget office has also yet to explain to top lawmakers the legal rationale for moving the money.
Many lawmakers in both parties support moving standalone legislation that would pay troops for the duration of the shutdown, but Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune both argued the solution was for Senate Democrats to approve the stopgap spending bill the House approved last month.
“House members have already voted to ensure our servicemembers receive their pay,” Rep. Laurel Lee (R-Fla.) said alongside Johnson on Wednesday.
While a swath of House and Senate Republicans have voiced private concerns to GOP leaders about the need for a separate troop pay bill, Republican leaders have remained opposed. They have argued that addressing troop pay would unleash a clamor from members and the public for other “rifle shot” bills that would reopen key parts of the federal government but ease pressure for an overall end to the shutdown, according to two people granted anonymity to describe the talks.
Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, a senior Republican appropriator, said she thinks Trump’s move to pay troops “did take a little bit of the pressure off” Congress to reach an agreement to end the shutdown — to the detriment of other federal workers who aren’t getting paid.
“We’ve got to get the government fully open for everybody,” she told reporters Tuesday night. “We’ve got to make sure that those who are working — those who are taking care of us, keeping our skies safe, and solving some of the issues that we ask our federal employees to take on — get their paychecks.”
Leo Shane III contributed to this report.
Sen. Eric Schmitt thought he caught Jack Smith in a lie. Instead, he outed him as a fan of former Iowa Hawkeyes star Caitlin Clark.
In a quest to frame former special counsel Jack Smith as a liar during his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday, Schmitt asked him if he was in Atlanta on Feb. 3, 2024, for an NBA basketball game between the Golden State Warriors and the Atlanta Hawks — amid mounting drama around the Atlanta-based criminal investigation into Donald Trump led by prosecutor Fani Willis.
Smith clarified that he didn’t go to that game. But he did go to a different one on the same day: He was in College Park, Md. to see the Maryland Terrapins women’s basketball team play the Iowa Hawkeyes, led by phenom Caitlin Clark, who dropped 38 points that night in a win over the Terps.
It appeared that Schmitt misinterpreted a text message reference to the “hawks” among Smith’s deputies, who discussed reserving a seat for Smith in the front row.
“What would you say if I had a series of text messages from your team that said you were in Atlanta at a Warrior Hawks game on Feb. 3, 2024, the day after Willis and Wade announced their affair,” the Missouri Republican asked, intimating that he was about to get Smith to perjure himself.
Schmitt also tried to connect the NBA game Smith did not attend in Atlanta to Feb. 2, 2024 — the date Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who was also investigating Trump, acknowledged a personal relationship with another prosecutor on her team.
“I definitely did not go to a Hawks game. I’m sure of that,” Smith said, as he initially struggled to recall the time frame.
After reviewing the messages more closely, Smith said he recalled going to the Iowa-Maryland game and being flanked in the crowd by U.S. marshals. His testimony prompted Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) to lash out at her colleague’s erroneous attack, saying Schmitt owed Smith an apology.
Speaker Mike Johnson called Tuesday for more “oversight” and “transparency” of the artificial intelligence industry —including “external auditing” — while expressing a preference that those steps would be taken voluntarily by leading AI firms.
Johnson made the comments on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” just hours before he is expected to meet at the White House with President Donald Trump and top AI executives.
“There’s corporate responsibility here. Of course these folks have to provide safe products,” Johnson said. “But I think a little oversight, a little transparency, a little external auditing of what’s going on would calm the nerves of a lot of people.”
It’s a more measured tone than Johnson struck earlier this month, when he joined Trump in playing down the warnings made by some AI insiders of existential threats to humanity and emphasizing the need to beat China in the race to superintelligent models.
He reaffirmed Tuesday his belief the U.S. needs to strike the “right balance” between staying competitive globally and keeping the technology safe.
“I have resisted the siren song to jump in and do these blanket moratoriums and all of this, you know, hyperregulation, because we cannot lose our edge to China,” Johnson said. “I think we’ve got to make sure we do this well. We need to keep America ahead in this, you know, transformational technology, but also do it in a safe way.”
Several of the prominent executives who have called for a voluntary slowdown in AI development, including Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, will be at the meeting. Also attending is Greg Brockman, president of OpenAI, which said Monday it was canceling the release of its latest model due to safety concerns.
Johnson said Tuesday he was counting on the executives, not the government, to take the lead, saying of the implementation of guardrails, “I hope it’s voluntary.”
“We’ll find out what comes out of the meeting today,” he said. “I think that that’s where they’re headed. I think they see the handwriting on the wall, and I think they want to ensure investors, consumers, the American public that they’re going to do this in a very safe way. And that will, I think, put us in the right place.”
Jack Smith, the former special counsel who orchestrated the federal criminal cases against Donald Trump, plans to tell the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday morning that he stands by his decision to bring charges against the president — arguing that his investigations “developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in criminal activity.”
Smith has faced unrelenting criticism from Republicans for presiding over what they view as partisan and flawed inquiries; some, including Trump, have called for him to be jailed. Yet Smith, in his opening prepared remarks obtained in advance by Blue Light News, will maintain he made the right decision to prosecute Trump — both for his alleged role in trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election results that led to the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol attack, and for his alleged unlawful retention of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.
“If asked whether to prosecute a former President based on the same facts today, I would do so regardless of whether that President was a Republican or a Democrat,” Smith plans to say, according to his written testimony.
Smith will note that grand juries in two separate districts reached the same conclusion his investigation did. He also will reflect that the country is facing “challenges unlike any we have experienced in our lifetime” as U.S. citizens are routinely threatened with indictments because they are seen as opposing Trump.
“Predetermined outcomes increasingly seem to take precedence over the Justice Department’s long-standing core values, traditions, and norms,” Smith intends to tell lawmakers. “History teaches that the rule of law is rarely destroyed all at once. It is often weakened by attacks on the institutions and public servants sworn to uphold it.”
Tuesday will mark the third time Smith has appeared on Capitol Hill over the last two years. He has previously testified to members of the House Judiciary Committee — first privately, then in a public hearing — as Republicans have accused him of overstepping his bounds.
GOP lawmakers are particularly incensed over Smith’s moves to obtain electronic communications for dozens of House and Senate Republicans around the time of the Jan 6, 2021 Capitol riots. Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa)revealed in July that Smith obtained text messages between 44 members of Congress and White House officials during that period.
Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the Judiciary panel’s top Democrat, said in a floor speech Monday, that Smith is “a nonpartisan career prosecutor.” He also criticized his GOP colleagues for having “made no effort to obtain a copy of Volume 2 of Jack Smith’s report,” which details findings from the case involving Trump’s handling of classified materials at Mar-a-Lago.
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