Congress

Trump’s big Mike Johnson decision

Published

2 years ago

December 23, 2024

After the House passed a shutdown-averting spending bill Friday, a very relieved Speaker Mike Johnson proclaimed to reporters that President-elect Donald Trump was “certainly happy about this outcome.”

Not by a long shot.

Amid the chaos in Washington, I was in Palm Beach talking to people close to the past and future president and called up other confidants afterward. This much became clear to me: Not only is Trump unhappy with the funding deal, he’s unhappy with Johnson, too.

He’s unhappy that he didn’t get the debt ceiling hike he made clear he wanted. He felt blindsided by the initial deal Johnson struck with Democrats. And, in the end, he was unimpressed with the entire chaotic process, which left the incoming administration questioning whether Johnson is capable of managing an even thinner majority next year.

“The president is upset — he wanted the debt ceiling dealt with,” said one Trump insider, who like others was granted anonymity to speak candidly about Trump and Johnson.

“In the past couple weeks, we’ve questioned whether [Johnson has] been an honest broker,” said another.

“No one thinks he’s strong. No one says, ‘Damn, this guy’s a fighter,’” went another reaction I got to Johnson’s bid to keep the speaker’s gavel.

“I don’t see how Johnson survives,” said a fourth.

Johnson and his allies have good points to make in his defense — that the president had unrealistic expectations of what was possible, that Joe Biden is still president and Democrats control the Senate, thus limiting how much could be achieved.

But when it comes to Johnson staying as speaker, all that matters is how he’s perceived in Trump’s eyes.

Maybe this is just another instance where Trump toys with one of his minions just watch him squirm — just ask Kevin McCarthy, Johnson’s predecessor, what that’s like. But Republicans tell me there’s no way Johnson will win the gavel again without Trump not only endorsing him but actively whipping for him.

And, as of this weekend, it’s an open question at Mar-a-Lago about whether Trump will lift a finger to help him. Trump is sitting back and watching the coverage, I’m told, mulling whether it’s worth it to defenestrate another speaker.

“If he wanted to bury Mike Johnson, everyone knows he could — and he hasn’t,” said one of the previously quoted Trump confidants. “While the president thinks there could have been a better deal, he also hasn’t pulled the ripcord. Where we end up in a week or two is largely undecided.”

Inside Trump’s exasperation

Frustration with Johnson started well before this week’s meltdown on Blue Light News. In several conversations with Johnson after the election — as reported previously in Playbook — Trump mentioned his interest in quickly raising the debt ceiling to clean the slate for 2025.

One of the Trump insiders called the borrowing limit a “cleaver hanging over his head in the middle of the year” — something that would give Democrats major leverage to oppose the spending cuts he is seeking, given how thoroughly Republican loathe voting to raise it: “He brings it up in every conversation — he says the debt ceiling is going to be the thing that [Senate Democratic Leader] Chuck [Schumer] uses” to obstruct his agenda.

The way Hill Republicans see it, Trump never explicitly endorsed attaching the debt ceiling bill to the year-end spending package until two days before the shutdown deadline. If Trump — never shy about what he wants — was that serious about raising the borrowing limit in the lame duck, they argue, wouldn’t he have been tweeting about it for weeks, publicly demanding lawmakers act?

Another Trump official bristled at that suggestion, arguing that it’s not Trump’s job to get into the minutiae of legislative strategy: “He said, ‘Deal with the debt ceiling prior to me coming into office.’ … Let’s not play semantics.”

The situation escalated on Tuesday when Johnson unveiled his deal with Democrats, which included a host of measures that had little to do with keeping the government open.

Multiple Republicans on Blue Light News said the speaker’s team let the incoming administration know exactly what would be in the bill — including pay raises for members, transferring ownership of Washington’s RFK Stadium and restricting investments in China — though they acknowledged that didn’t necessarily mean Trump himself knew.

“Maybe they should have taken it to the top sooner,” one Hill aide said. “There was a lot of CYA after Elon [Musk] began picking apart, line by line, on the bill,” another one added, suggesting Trump’s team didn’t fully convey what was happening to their boss.

Trump insiders firmly pushed back, arguing that while Johnson’s team may have provided some “bullet points” and toplines, they didn’t get a full picture of the deal in advance. (“Bullshit,” the second Hill aide said.)

Things only deteriorated further from there. After the initial deal collapsed and Johnson agreed to add the debt ceiling to a Plan B proposal, Trump officials claim that Johnson assured them the votes would be there to get it over the finish line. Trump decided at that point to endorse the bill and pressure Republicans to fall in line.

When that deal failed spectacularly, with 38 Republicans voting against it, Trump’s team was floored — and felt Johnson had made Trump look foolish for weighing in. “You can’t bring the president a deal that you say you have the votes for if you don’t have the votes,” one said.

Johnson could have recovered some favor with the president had he taken one final step, they say: Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance both made clear they’d be fine allowing a holiday-season shutdown to try to force Democrats into swallowing a debt ceiling deal.

Johnson considered it, people close to the speaker said, but he never committed. Like most senior Republicans, Johnson knew that denying Christmastime paychecks to military members or FEMA workers delivering hurricane relief would be an impossible fight to win.

“A shutdown would have bogged Republicans down, taking away our ability to hit the ground running and risked delaying Trump’s swearing in,” the previously quoted aide said.

Instead, Johnson scrambled to assemble a new, slimmer CR deal that also didn’t include Trump’s debt ceiling demand. Trump decided to stay out of it, and it passed 366-34 — with the help of 196 Democrats.

Johnson’s fate in the balance

Johnson has been underestimated throughout his 13 months in office — not only by his avowed foes, but by other senior Republicans who have been predicting his downfall for months. Each time, with Trump’s support, Johnson was able to survive.

This time feels different. And it couldn’t come at a worse moment, with less than two weeks until the critical Jan. 3 speakership vote.

Those close to Trump don’t expect the president-elect to outright call for Johnson to go, though that could still happen. What seems more likely is that, should Trump decide he’d prefer a different partner leading the House, he simply lets Johnson flail as he struggles to land 218 votes.

Johnson’s best hope rests with the calendar and the clock. Trump, I’m told, is aware that an ugly, protracted speakership battle could stall momentum for his agenda, leaving the House in a state of paralysis — just as it did after Kevin McCarthy’s ouster last year.

Two senior GOP aides said this weekend that without an elected speaker, the Jan. 6 certification of Trump’s victory will be delayed. What’s more, Trump is eager to start moving on his legislative agenda as soon as he’s inaugurated, hoping to sign a border bill within 30 days.

“The president recognizes the difficulty of electing a speaker right now — any speaker — is not easy,” one of the Trump confidants said.

So Trump has decided to keep his powder dry as things play out — intentionally so, I’m told. While some in the greater MAGAsphere are fuming about Johnson, key figures such as Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) are weighing in on his behalf.

The speaker’s fate could ultimately come down to Trump’s gut. As the president-elect told Fox News amid all the drama, Johnson will “easily remain speaker” if he acts “decisively and tough.”

The reality is this: Trump now sees him as waffling and weak.

Congress

Former MLB star Mark Teixeira to hit campaign trail with GOP leaders

Published

1 hour ago

July 31, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

House GOP leaders are planning to bring former MLB star Mark Teixeira, one of their top candidate recruits this cycle, out on the trail in battleground districts over the summer recess sprint.

Majority Leader Steve Scalise will host a fundraiser with Teixeira in New York City on Aug. 20 with Speaker Mike Johnson as a special guest, according to three people with direct knowledge of the event, granted anonymity to discuss plans that have not yet been made public.

It’s part of a New York swing where Teixeira and Johnson will also hit nearby stops in GOP Rep. Mike Lawler’s 17th Congressional District and for Mike LiPetri, who is trying to unseat Democratic Rep. Tom Suozzi in New York’s 3rd Congressional District.

Teixeira is running to replace GOP Rep. Chip Roy in Texas’ 21st Congressional District. He won a World Series title with the Yankees in 2009 and also played for the Texas Rangers, Atlanta Braves and Los Angeles Angels before retiring from professional baseball in 2016 after 14 seasons.

Because Teixeira has little chance of losing in the deep-red seat, Republican leaders are hoping to harness his star power to boost their candidates in the most competitive races. They’re planning for Teixeira to help campaign in a wider swath of battleground districts in August and through November, including likely stops in Pennsylvania and Georgia.

Congress

Faced with Blanche dilemma, Trump chooses revenge

Published

1 hour ago

July 31, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

President Donald Trump has a choice: allow changes to a controversial court settlement and secure the confirmation of his former personal lawyer as attorney general, or thumb his nose at a pair of his few remaining Republican critics in Congress.

True to form, he is giving no ground — so far.

Trump’s decision Thursday to signal he would rather pull the nomination of Todd Blanche, his pick to lead the Justice Department, rather than give in to the demands of Sens. John Cornyn and Thom Tillis demonstrated that the president’s desire to thwart his enemies does not end with the demise of their political careers.

Both Republican senators will leave Congress at the end of the year after running afoul of Trump, and both have found a degree of independence since becoming untethered from needing to keep in his good graces.

But their efforts to exert leverage and seek to curtail a controversial settlement agreement reached in May between Trump and the IRS only prompted the president to double down. He announced in a Truth Social post that Blanche would remain as acting attorney general “in any event” and that he would potentially withdraw and resubmit the nomination “after Cornyn and Tillis are out of office” in January.

Tillis, who announced he would not seek reelection last year after clashing with Trump over Medicaid cuts in his home state of North Carolina, betrayed little surprise when asked about Trump’s reticence to bargain over the IRS settlement.

“Look up the definition of recalcitrant,” he said.

Cornyn, who lost his bid for renomination to a fifth term representing Texas in May after Trump endorsed a scandal-prone opponent, brushed off the accusation that he was simply seeking revenge by blocking Blanche.

He called Trump’s claim “a convenient excuse, but it’s certainly not true.” And he warned the president that trying to wait him out would be a “gamble.”

“After the midterms, who knows who’s going to be the next United States senator from North Carolina or Texas?” he said.

The subtext of Cornyn’s remark was that Republicans might have a smaller majority if they have one at all — raising the question that if Trump can’t strike a deal with members of his own party to advance his prized nominee, what will governing with Democrats possibly look like?

One of Trump’s frequent Democratic sparring partners from his first term in office — Sen. Adam Schiff of California — said the pressure from Cornyn and Tillis is only a hint of what is to come and that the president should get used to “a restoration of checks and balances.”

“I would hope what it will mean both for the remainder of this Congress and the next is that Congress will once again assume the role of being a counterbalance to the power of the executive,” said Schiff, who led Democrats’ first Trump impeachment attempt. “We largely reneged on that.”

The battle of Blanche has been especially pitched given Trump’s personal interests. Not only did Blanche represent Trump in multiple cases brought in the years before the president’s reelection, Cornyn and Tillis were seeking to curtail a deal that personally benefited him.

Both men sought to ensure a $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization fund” set out in the agreement text could not be revived and to restrict the terms of an audit immunity agreement applying to Trump, his family and business.

It’s possible a deal could still be reached. Cornyn and Tillis met with Blanche Thursday afternoon after Trump issued his ultimatum. One person granted anonymity to describe the private meeting said the two sides were “working collaboratively now” and that it was good “they were finally all face to face.”

Ahead of the meeting, both senators insinuated that the White House — not Blanche — was the obstacle to revising the settlement and moving forward with the confirmation. Cornyn explicitly blamed Trump, while Tillis said the presidents’ advisers could be to blame.

“They’re making this a lot harder than it needs to be,” Cornyn said Wednesday. “We’ve tried to make it easy for them, and they simply refuse to take our help.”

Both said they believed there was a desire in Trump’s orbit to resurrect the payout fund at some point to direct federal settlements to the president’s political allies.

GOP colleagues also chalked up Thursday’s drama to the White House not wanting to give in — whether to protect the original settlement agreement or to deny Trump’s critics a victory.“Clearly, the White House does not want to do what Senator Cornyn and Senator Tillis were asking,” said Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska said she shared Cornyn and Tillis’ qualms about the settlement and asked Blanche in her own private meeting to put his oral commitments in writing.

“I have expressed the same concerns, and I am waiting for the same answers,” said Murkowski, an occasional Trump critic who is up for reelection in 2028.

Jennifer Scholtes contributed to this report.

Congress

Trump-aligned parents rally behind kids’ online safety rules

Published

12 hours ago

July 30, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Parents’ rights groups aligned with the MAGA movement and other socially conservative groups are imploring congressional leaders to enact strict rules that aim to prevent online dangers for kids.

They join a chorus of more progressive parent and survivor groups urging lawmakers ahead of an upcoming Senate Commerce online kids’ safety markup to enact robust and clear “duty of care” requirements that would legally compel technology companies to prevent harm to children.

In a July 30 letter to Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), shared first with Blue Light News, the groups demanded specific standards that would require technology companies to “truly stand with, not against parents.”

So-called duty of care requirements have emerged as a central battleground in negotiations over kids’ online safety legislation. The provision would mandate tech companies to take reasonable steps to prevent and mitigate specific harms to minors on their platforms and would give regulators a legal basis to hold companies accountable if they fail to do so.

“[W]e write as parents, pro-family leaders, survivors, and child advocates to implore you to act in a way that truly empowers parents to protect our children, and to resist the rather loud voices who say that immunity for Big Tech and evisceration of state efforts in this space is somehow pro-parent,” the groups wrote. “It is not.”

They also urged lawmakers to expand on state laws rather than override them. Preemption provisions have become much more broadly unpopular in the year since Cruz tried — and failed — to attach a 10-year moratorium on the ability of states to set their own artificial intelligence laws in the GOP’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

“States are standing with parents and children,” the letter reads. “Your committee must build on that work, not tear it down.”

The groups signing the letter, led by Institute for Families and Technology, include MAGA-aligned Moms for Liberty, Louisiana Family Forum, South Dakota Family Voice and the Family Policy Alliance, a conservative Christian group influencing state policies.

Cruz this week postponed a broader artificial intelligence markup tentatively planned for next week until September. Instead, next week, he’s going to take up several measures on kids’ safety and chatbots.

Cruz, in an interview Wednesday, did not rule out preemption provisions in next week’s markup, telling Blue Light News, “Those are all active topics under negotiation.”

Spokespeople for Cruz and Cantwell did not return requests for comment.

The letter comes as right-leaning and family organizations have a heightened awareness of kids’ safety around technology. In fact, the issue was a big topic at last week’s SoCon Con, where there were multiple panels and speakers on kids and tech, including one on keeping kids safe and how to “beat Big Tech.”

“This is new substantive engagement that didn’t really exist before,” said a social conservative advocate granted anonymity to discuss private coalition discussions. “There’s this tipping point that is happening where these groups represent large populations at the state level and saying this is an issue that’s important to us and we’re going to engage as family groups.”