Congress
A split at the top: Why Thune and Johnson are at odds this week
Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune have largely worked in lockstep since January. This week, they hit a rough patch.
The two men are known for rising above whatever theatrics are embroiling their respective conferences. But in recent days they became enmeshed in just that, when they publicly split and shadowboxed over a pair of internal GOP dilemmas over politically toxic issues.
The fissure emerged when Johnson trashed a measure that Thune tucked into last week’s government funding deal to allow senators to sue the government and reap damages for electronic records seizures. With the Louisiana Republican calling the provision “a bad look,” the House Wednesday unanimously passed a bill to repeal it in a major rebuke.
Johnson suffered his own loss at the hands of Thune this week when the South Dakota Republican rebuffed the speaker’s calls to amend the House’s Jeffrey Epstein disclosure bill to include more protections for victims and whistleblowers. The Senate passed the bill by unanimous consent, after months of Johnson trying to slow it down in the House and ultimately succumbing to an end-run by Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.).
In an interview Wednesday, Thune downplayed the episodes, calling the phone records provision a “Senate issue” to work through and noting the congressional debate over the Epstein files “took on a life of its own” in the final stages.
“We work very well together. Communicate regularly. There are always going to be hiccups along the way,” Thune said. “And I’ve served in the House. They are very different institutions and different cultures and ways of doing things but we make it work.”
The split marked an unexpected round of turbulence for the mild-mannered GOP leaders, who meet weekly when both chambers are in session and are generally viewed as having a good working rapport.
Now they face two huge challenges they will need to navigate together: Obamacare subsidies are set to expire at the end of next month, threatening health insurance premium hikes for millions of Americans, and the leaders face competing factions in both chambers when it comes to how to respond. In January, Thune and Johnson will once again have to rally their members around a bill to avoid another government shutdown. At stake in all the fights is how the GOP’s handling goes over with voters ahead of next year’s midterm elections.
The friction points reflect a well-worn dynamic of congressional life — the House and Senate operate at times in split-screen political realities despite Thune, Johnson and their conferences belonging to the same party.
Thune, like most of the Senate, didn’t know Johnson before the low-key House member ascended to the speakership in the fall of 2023. But the two men developed a rapport before Thune took over as GOP leader in January. They are viewed as more aligned in their day-to-day operations and temperament than some of their predecessor pairings, including former Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell and the House’s former top Republican Kevin McCarthy.
“They work well together. And they get along well,” Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.), a close Thune ally, said of the two GOP leaders. “They not only have a professional relationship, they like each other.”
Another Republican senator who knows Thune and Johnson said they had “worked very well together” so far, adding that some tension between the two chambers is “probably healthy.”
“They’re very similar,” said the senator, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly about the leaders.
That doesn’t change the fact that senior House Republicans, including some Johnson allies, are still smarting over the inclusion of the payout language for senators in last week’s funding package. It was designed to give special recourse to Senate Republicans who had their phone records seized during Jack Smith’s investigation into Trump’s 2020 election interference. House Republicans have said they didn’t learn about it until after the Senate passed the bill and it was the House’s turn to act on reopening the government.
For an angry swath of House Republicans, the episode reinforced their long-standing anxieties about being jammed by the Senate and painted Johnson — who also said he didn’t find out about the provision until after Senate passage — as embarrassingly out of the loop.
Johnson quickly promised the House would vote on separate legislation to repeal it, and the House passed the rollback Wednesday night with zero opposition. Thune also got an earful from his own members during a closed-door lunch Wednesday, including from typical leadership allies like Appropriations Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine).
Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), a former Senate staffer, said Wednesday as he made the case for repealing the provision ahead of the vote that the House needed to “hip check” the Senate.
Johnson, meanwhile, told reporters that Thune was “a trustworthy, honest broker, and that’s why I was so surprised when we found out about that [phone records] provision.”
Across the Capitol, Senate Republicans believe Johnson dropped a hot potato in their lap in the form of the bill to release the Epstein files. Johnson presided over bitter infighting for months over the bipartisan push to force a vote on the matter. By the time Johnson agreed to it, he was on the verge of being on the losing side of an open rebellion within his ranks and seemingly at odds with Trump, who suddenly urged Republicans to support it Sunday night.
Johnson framed his pivot around a hope the Senate would alter the bill before clearing it for Trump’s signature.
“I talked to John Thune over the weekend. I just texted him. We’re going to get together. We’ll talk about this,” Johnson told reporters as he left the House floor Tuesday following the 427-1 vote to release the files.
But Senate Republicans, including members of leadership, never had an appetite for making changes. Many GOP senators privately made clear they didn’t want Thune to drag out the Epstein discussion as Johnson had, and Thune never publicly opened the door to amending the bill.
Two people granted anonymity to discuss private party dynamics said that if Thune had bowed to Johnson’s push for changes, it would have risked keeping Republicans mired in the Epstein issue for weeks.
“What was [Thune] supposed to do with a bill that passed the House 427-1 … had no objections in the Senate and the president said he’d sign?” one of the people said.
“That is House drama,” said another GOP senator granted anonymity to speak candidly about the situation. “We don’t need that over here.”
Congress
Mike Johnson says House can end government shutdown ‘by Tuesday’
House Speaker Mike Johnson said he is confident Congress can end the partial government shutdown “by Tuesday” despite steep opposition from Democrats and turmoil within the GOP conference.
Johnson is under pressure to unite his caucus, with lawmakers raising concerns about funding for the Department of Homeland Security as the Trump administration faces scrutiny over its nationwide immigration crackdown that has at times turned violent.
House Republicans are hoping to take up the $1.2 trillion funding package passed by the Senate on Tuesday following a House Rules Committee meeting Monday. The partial shutdown began early Saturday.
GOP leadership in the House originally hoped to pass the bill under suspension of the rules, an expedited process that requires a two-thirds-majority vote, but Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told Johnson on Saturday that Democrats would not help Republicans acquire the necessary support for the spending bill.
“I’m confident that we’ll do it at least by Tuesday,” Johnson said in a Sunday interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “We have a logistical challenge of getting everyone in town, and because of the conversation I had with Hakeem Jeffries, I know that we’ve got to pass a rule and probably do this mostly on our own. I think that’s very unfortunate.”
The Senate voted Friday to pass a compromise spending package after Senate Democrats struck a deal with President Donald Trump to extend DHS funding for two weeks. The move bought Congress more time to work out a compromise on reforms for Immigration and Customs Enforcement after federal officers fatally shot two people in Minnesota earlier this month.
Speaking to host Kristen Welker on “Meet the Press,” Johnson acknowledged that “there’s been tragedies in Minnesota” — but he also blamed Democrats in the state for “inciting violence,” even as the Trump administration attempts to tamp down pressures in the state.
Johnson praised Trump’s decision to send White House border czar Tom Homan to Minneapolis, a step widely seen as a deescalation from the aggressive tactics favored by Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino.
“[Trump] was right to deputize him over that situation,” he said of Homan on NBC. “He has 40 years of experience in Border Patrol and these issues. So I think that this is going to happen, but we need good faith on both sides. Some of these conditions and requests that they’ve made are obviously reasonable and should happen. But others are going to require a lot more negotiation.”
Johnson pushed back in particular on Democratic calls to bar federal immigration enforcement officers from wearing masks and require them to wear identification, telling Fox’s Shannon Bream: “Those two things are conditions that would create further danger.”
He also signaled an unwillingness to negotiate on Democratic demands to tighten requirements for judicial warrants for immigration operations.
Still, House Democrats remained opposed to passing the funding package as is, with Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) saying Sunday: “I’m not just a no. I’m a firm no.”
“I just don’t see how in good conscience Democrats can vote for continuing ICE funding when they’re killing American citizens, when there’s no provision to repeal the tripling of the budget,” Khanna said in a Sunday interview with Welker on NBC. “I hope my colleagues will say no.”
Jeffries also signaled Sunday that a wide gap remains between his conference and House Republicans, telling ABC’s George Stephanopoulos that the House must reach an agreement on judicial warrants “as a condition of moving forward.”
“The one thing that we’ve said publicly is that we need a robust path toward dramatic reform,” Jeffries said on ABC’s “This Week.” “The administration can’t just talk the talk, they need to walk the walk. That should begin today. Not in two weeks, today.”
Congress
Shutdown likely to continue at least into Tuesday
The partial government shutdown that began early Saturday morning is on track to continue at least into Tuesday, which is the earliest the House is now expected to vote on a $1.2 trillion funding package due to opposition from Democrats and internal GOP strife.
House Republican leaders have scheduled a Monday meeting of the House Rules Committee to prepare the massive Senate-passed spending bill for the floor. According to two people granted anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, the procedural measure teeing up a final vote would not happen until Tuesday, with final passage following if that is successful.
That’s one day later than GOP leaders had hoped. Their previous plan was to pass the bill with Democratic help under suspension of the rules, a fast-track process requiring a two-thirds-majority vote.
But that plan was complicated by Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries telling Speaker Mike Johnson in a private conversation Saturday that Democratic leadership would not help Johnson secure the 70 or so Democratic votes to get the measure over the line, according to the two people and another person granted anonymity to discuss the matter.
The Tuesday plan remains tentative as GOP leaders scramble to navigate tensions inside their own conference, which could make passing the procedural measure difficult. Some conservative hard-liners, for instance, want to attach a sweeping elections bill to the package.
Jeffries said in a MS NOW interview Saturday that Republicans “cannot simply move forward with legislation taking a my way or the highway approach” while noting that House Democrats are set to have “a discussion about the appropriate way forward” in a Sunday evening caucus call — first reported by Blue Light News.
He did not rule out that Democrats might support the Senate-passed spending package, which funds the majority of federal agencies through Sept. 30 while providing a two-week extension for the Department of Homeland Security — including controversial immigration enforcement agencies.
Democrats, Jeffries said, want “a robust, ironclad path to bringing about the type of change that the American people are demanding” in immigration enforcement.
Congress
Here’s what federal programs are headed for a (possibly brief) shutdown
Government funding is set to lapse at midnight Friday for the military and many domestic programs, but cash will continue to flow at a slew of federal agencies Congress already funded.
House leaders are aiming to send a funding package to President Donald Trump Monday, days after the Senate passed the legislation just before the deadline to avert a partial shutdown.
The effect on most federal programs is expected to be minor, and employees who are furloughed would miss just one day of work if the House acts on schedule — which is not assured.
This time, many of the services that have the greatest public impact when shuttered — like farm loans, SNAP food assistance to low-income households and upkeep at national parks — will continue. That’s because Congress already funded some agencies in November and earlier this month, including the departments of Energy, Commerce, Justice, Agriculture, Interior and Veterans Affairs, as well as military construction projects, the EPA, congressional operations, the FDA and federal science programs.
Still, the spending package congressional leaders are trying to clear for Trump’s signature next week contains the vast majority of the funding Congress approves each year to run federal programs, including $839 billion for the military.
Besides the Pentagon, funding will lapse for several major nondefense agencies beginning early Saturday morning.
That includes federal transportation, labor, housing, education and health programs, along with the IRS, independent trade agencies and foreign aid. The departments of Homeland Security, State and Treasury will also be hit by the shutdown.
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