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.”
President Donald Trump and Speaker Mike Johnson will meet at the White House Tuesday with the executives of top artificial intelligence companies, according to two people granted anonymity to discuss private plans.
The meeting comes as Congress is coming under increasing pressure to put federal guardrails on AI development, as fears mount that technological advancements could soon spiral beyond human control.
Responding to some warnings that AI development was on track to cause human extinction by the end of the decade, Johnson has said he wants Trump and AI CEOs to “go in a big room, close the door and sort this out.” He has yet to endorse major legislative action to address the issue, as Trump has resisted calls for government regulations, citing concerns about lagging behind China.
The president and speaker were in attendance at the State Dinner on Thursday night in honor of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to Washington, as were OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Google CEO Sundar Pichai. It was not immediately clear which of these executives would be invited to next week’s meeting, and who will be participating.
News that the meeting had been scheduled was first reported by Axios.
A group of 10 Democrats has signed on to Rep. Greg Casar’s (D-Texas) bill that would ban superintelligence and pause advanced AI development until a vetting regime could be stood up.
Reps. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), both of whom are mulling a 2028 presidential run, are cosponsoring the bill, named the Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act.
Khanna, in a statement, noted that he convened a hearing this week on AI safety cooperation between the U.S. and China as ranking member of the House China Select Committee with AI experts who underscored the need for a verifiable pause on superintelligence.
AI superintelligence is an as-yet hypothetical form of the advanced technology that surpasses humans’ cognitive capabilities, but exactly when AI crosses the threshold into superintelligence remains contested. The bill would subject violators to a 20-year prison sentence.
The support from prominent progressives in the Democratic caucus comes as the party is navigating how they would approach AI regulation should they retake control of one or both chambers in November.
Other cosponsors include Reps. Analilia Mejia of New Jersey, Yassamin Ansari and Adelita Grijalva of Arizona, Val Hoyle of Oregon, Stephen Lynch of Massachusetts, Chuy García of Illinois, Chris Deluzio of Pennsylvania and Nydia Velázquez of New York.
“We absolutely have to slow down and regulate the advancement of dangerous AI technologies that have the potential to spiral out-of-control and threaten humanity,” Ansari said.
To Lynch, a string of recent AI-led cyberbreaches has “shown us that the advanced forms of this are out of control,” he said in an interview. “We haven’t really solved that control problem yet, nor have we got the alignment problem right yet.”
Casar’s bill, introduced this week with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), is among the most stringent AI regulations proposed by either party.
Rather than focusing on bans as Casar and his progressive allies have done, centrist Democrats are looking to legislative proposals they say can address the technology’s risks without stifling innovation.
Senate Republicans are discussing whether to call up a data center utility costs bill as they make plans to stay in Washington next week rather than beat an early exit before the midterms.
Two GOP aides who spoke on the condition of anonymity said the Senate will remain in town amid pressure from some corners of the party to send members home early to campaign.
Asked if the Senate will stay next week, Majority Leader John Thune said Thursday it’s “looking that way.”
While some lawmakers had hoped to move a long-brewing bipartisan energy permitting deal, those hopes have evaporated, and GOP leaders are instead eyeing votes on the Ratepayer Protection Act — a top priority of endangered Ohio Sen. Jon Husted.
Thune said Thursday moving to the data-center-focused bill next week “is an option.” The Senate is also expected to take up a Democratic resolution condemning the Iran war and several presidential nominations.
The Ratepayer Protection Act easily passed the House earlier this month, but some Senate Democrats are arguing it does not go far enough and party leaders could be motivated to deny Husted a pre-election win.
Josh Siegel contributed to this report.
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