Congress

Johnson on shaky ground with Trump after spending fiasco

Published

1 year ago

December 20, 2024

The collapse of Speaker Mike Johnson’s spending plan illustrates a painful lesson that other politicians have already learned: Absolute loyalty to Donald Trump is a one-way street.

As the U.S. teeters on the edge of a government shutdown, bitterly divided Republicans are struggling to find a way forward and Johnson’s hold on his job is in Trump’s mercurial hands.

Multiple House conservatives, as well as Trump advisers and other people close to the incoming president, indicate Johnson’s hold on the speakership is far from stable just as Republicans are about to take control of the House, Senate and White House. One Trump adviser, granted anonymity to speak candidly, said Johnson could salvage the relationship by “doing what Trump wants.” But another said that Trump wasn’t “protecting him” and not to be fooled by the president-elect’s publicly kind remarks.

“If somebody challenges Johnson, you’re not going to get any pushback,” said a Trump adviser, granted anonymity to speak frankly. “Which means he won’t save him if he’s in trouble.”

Johnson’s hold on power was already tenuous — with a slim House majority about to get even slimmer — but this week’s battle over a bipartisan spending plan may have done irreparable damage to the congressman from Louisiana.

Johnson appeared to be back on Trump’s good side after totally deferring to the incoming president’s demands on government spending — but his position is far from stable. After months of Johnson closely hugging the president-elect, Trump didn’t hesitate to throw him under the proverbial bus Wednesday, tanking his funding plan and even making thinly veiled threats about his ability to remain speaker next year, saying If Mike Johnson gets “tough” and cuts out the Democratic wins they secured, then he would be safe.

Republicans read into the unspoken counterpoint: Johnson was doomed if he didn’t.

Johnson aggressively worked to win the president back over, huddling late into Wednesday night with Vice President-elect JD Vance to try to bridge the party’s public divide on how to fund the government. As Johnson met with various factions of his own conference throughout the day, he and his team also circulated ideas with Trump and his allies to avoid another tanked spending bill.

But Johnson and his team were actively talking to the incoming president and his team about the initial stopgap plan, raising questions about where the communication broke down. Some wondered if Elon Musk’s public attacks altered that trajectory.

It’s a harsh reminder of how quickly Trump’s loyalties can change and his willingness to turn on allies who had long cultivated his favor. Johnson knows that keeping Trump on his side is crucial for his political survival as speaker, and that’s going to repeatedly color how Johnson can operate not only in the next couple of weeks, but also next year — if he can hold onto the gavel.

Trump’s allies were actively working to get support for the new stopgap funding bill; the White House legislative affairs team appeared to be involved in checking where members stood ahead of the vote on the revised spending plan, according to a member familiar with the efforts. And some of Trump’s allies are explicitly warning Republicans not to oppose votes that the incoming president backs.

Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-Mont.) said Thursday, after a conversation with Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-Ind.), that he was offering “caution” to Republicans who opposed the new stopgap, telling them Trump “is the quarterback” and “he called a play.” Spartz voted against the bill.

But Trump has now cooled on explicitly defending Johnson for speaker. As recently as this month, Trump was privately urging GOP members, according to one House Republican who spoke to him, to not do anything to distract from the start of his administration. This Republican took that to mean he didn’t want a protracted speakership fight. But after the spending fiasco, some members wonder if Johnson still has the votes.

One House Freedom Caucus member indicated Trump’s backing is a determinative factor: “I keep hearing more and more rumors of people that are jailbreak but at the end of the day, if Trump is backing him on Jan. 3, you really want to stand up against Trump?”

The House Freedom Caucus also huddled Thursday ahead of the vote on the Trump-backed spending bill, where a group of their members vented frustrations and also acknowledged that Trump is watching what happens, according to a person with knowledge of their private meeting. Many conservatives opposed the funding plan, and one who came out against it, Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), got a primary threat from Trump earlier in the day.

Johnson has virtually no room for error on a speakership vote. Republicans are expected to have a 219-215 majority on Jan. 3 given Matt Gaetz’s resignation, meaning Johnson will only be able to lose one of his GOP members and still get the 218 votes needed to be speaker.

Johnson already has one strike against him: Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) has publicly stated he doesn’t plan to back Johnson on the House floor and is hinting that other Republicans share his concerns. Another, Spartz, said earlier this week that she’ll remain a Republican but not attend conference meetings, throwing into question if she would back Johnson.

No one has publicly joined Massie so far, but Johnson is facing skepticism, and in some cases vocal criticism, from several others, who say they are undecided about how they will handle his speaker race election. Some members are publicly floating potential alternatives to Johnson, including Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.), Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) and Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.), as conservatives raged against the initial funding plan.

“I think he’s certainly got a lot of whipping to do,” said one House conservative, granted anonymity to speak frankly.

Still, some conservatives dismissed threats to Johnson’s speakership as mere saber rattling.

“Everyone likes to question, and then no one likes to actually go out and publicly own it. So until someone steps up, I don’t even think that that’s a topic of discussion as of right now. The president supports him. I support him,” said Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.), a Freedom Caucus member, about Johnson’s chances of remaining speaker.

Asked if Trump backing the spending plan helps Johnson on Jan. 3, Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) said “time will tell.”

“I like Mike,” added Norman, who is opposing the latest spending plan. “[But] no bill is better than a bad bill.”

Meridith McGraw, Meredith Lee Hill, Holly Otterbein contributed to this report.

Congress

Senate Republicans want a say on Trump’s Iran deal

Published

6 hours ago

June 16, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

President Donald Trump is touting a deal that would end the monthslong war with Iran — and potentially ease some of the political headwinds bearing down on Republicans.

GOP lawmakers still have lots of questions.

The absence of publicly released text for the “memorandum of understanding” Vice President JD Vance reportedly signed with Iranian officials Sunday left an information vacuum on Capitol Hill, where senators of both parties were left airing concerns about what the deal might entail.

Even most Republicans agreed: More information needs to come to Congress soon, and any agreement touching on the future of the Iranian nuclear program would have to eventually be subject to a congressional vote.

“If you want a deal to last, it can’t be an executive agreement,” said Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.). “We’ve got to have a vote of Congress to be able to solidify [it] long term.”

The bipartisan scrutiny of the long-brewing agreement is a legacy of the last Iran nuclear deal, consummated more than a decade ago by then-President Barack Obama amid a bipartisan uproar over trading sanctions relief and cash concessions to the Iranian regime in return for curbs on its nuclear ambitions.

Trump withdrew from the deal in his first term, and now he is back with an agreement that — pending release of the text and final negotiations yet to come — could end up looking like Obama’s deal. That has raised the hackles of both defense hawks who despised the original agreement, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), and Democrats who believe Trump never should have left it in the first place.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), one of those defense hawks, told reporters that he was “pulling for a deal,” while also making note of serious discrepancies in the terms that have emerged thus far.

“The MOU being described by us sounds really very good; the MOU being described by Iran sounds awful,” Graham said.

“If they can enrich [uranium] anywhere at all, then it’s the same as JCPOA. If they can’t enrich, then that makes it a good deal,” he continued, adding in a separate conversation that he was “skeptical that Iran will ever go there” to cease enrichment.

The Trump administration said it expects release of the memorandum of understanding no later than Friday.

The possibility that Congress would take any kind of vote on the agreement is also a legacy of the 2015 deal. Amid bipartisan concern about the Obama administration’s pursuit of nuclear talks, the GOP-controlled House and Senate that year passed legislation allowing for congressional review of any agreement dealing with the Iranian nuclear program.

That law, however, does not require Congress to approve a deal — it rather gives it the ability to kill a deal via a disapproval resolution that could be subject to presidential veto. That means each chamber would have to effectively muster a two-thirds majority to block Trump, something it did not come close to doing in 2015.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Monday there is “probably some expectation” that his chamber would ultimately vote on the agreement while declining to weigh in on the particulars.

“I just don’t know enough about it yet, and I don’t think even the people who follow this stuff closely up here know that much about it,” he said, adding that he expected Vance or other administration officials to brief members on the deal at some point.

The lack of specificity was par for the course on Capitol Hill Monday, with many senators expressing exasperation that text of the signed agreement has not yet been released.

“If it’s a secret deal, then how can I take it seriously?” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) told reporters.

The agreement reportedly includes reopening the Strait of Hormuz to commercial shipping, but it’s not clear to what degree Iran will be required to abandon its nuclear program. Vance indicated in a series of interviews that the administration will attempt to ensure Iran does not develop or obtain a nuclear weapon but left details regarding civilian nuclear facilities and potential uranium enrichment unaddressed.

The White House circulated talking points to Hill Republicans Monday touting the deal including that “Iran will never have a nuclear weapon” and “energy prices … are coming down,” according to a copy of the document reviewed by Blue Light News. The administration also argued in the memo that the agreement “beats” the Obama-era agreement.

In the absence of further details, senators mainly agreed that they wanted a chance to formally review and vote on the deal — even as some Republicans predicted the administration would find a way to avoid that happening.

“I don’t expect that to happen,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said about a vote. “They’ll try to write it around the treaty requirements, so I don’t expect we’ll vote on it.”

Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) said the administration should send the deal to Congress “if they want it to be something other than a political agreement, like the JCPOA was.”

Most congressional Republicans have been eager for Trump to find a way out of the nearly four-month war, which has driven up energy prices ahead of the November elections. Thune predicted Monday that a deal would “have a very positive impact on the economic situation in the country and that obviously will translate into the political situation in the country.”

Some of Trump’s most vocal allies on Capitol Hill praised the agreement Monday.

Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) said has had conversations with senior White House officials and he was “very hopeful.” Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio), who is likely the next Senate GOP campaign chair, added on X: “President Trump deserves our trust and support as he works to bring peace to the Middle East.”

Democrats were largely keeping their powder dry Monday on how they would handle a vote on the agreement. Some could find it hard to oppose a deal that ends hostilities on negotiated terms roughly similar to what was secured under a Democratic president in 2015.

But plenty of Democrats questioned what was gained by the conflict.

“We still don’t know the details,” Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said on the Senate floor. “The American people need to know exactly what’s in the deal. … We know this for certain: We are worse off than before Trump began his foolish war of choice.”

Meredith Lee Hill contributed to this report.

Congress

Thune is ‘hopeful’ Mitch McConnell will return this week

Published

10 hours ago

June 15, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Monday he hopes his predecessor as top Republican, Mitch McConnell, returns this week from a hospitalization.

Thune said he had not yet spoken directly with the 84-year-old Kentuckian but is getting “readouts from his staff.”

Asked about McConnell’s condition or if he knew if he would be back this week, Thune told reporters, “I’m hopeful that he’ll be back this week.”

A McConnell spokesperson said Sunday that he had been admitted to the hospital but did not provide details on his condition or why he was hospitalized — a break from recent prior instances where the seven-term senator was hospitalized.

A former McConnell staffer who spoke on the condition of anonymity was told the senator was doing much better Monday without any further details on what put him in the hospital.

Daniel Desrochers contributed to this report.

Congress

Senate to confirm Jay Clayton as soon as Thursday

Published

12 hours ago

June 15, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

The Senate could vote as soon as Thursday on Jay Clayton’s nomination to serve as director of national intelligence — a lightning speed pace that will necessitate buy-in from all 100 senators.

Confirming Clayton could help shore up enough votes from Democrats to extend a government surveillance program that expired last Friday over opposition to Trump’s pick for acting director, Bill Pulte.

“He will come out of the committee Thursday, at least hopefully, and then if we get consent, we can move,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune said in an interview Monday about Clayton, who Trump only nominated for the job late last week.

Democrats “ought to be happy with Clayton,” said Thune, adding that he’s a “good” and “solid” pick.

Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, floated Sunday to CBS News that Clayton could be confirmed this week if every senator cooperates.

Senate Intelligence will hold a hearing Wednesday on Clayton’s nomination. If every member of the panel agrees, he could then get a committee vote Thursday. Confirming Clayton on the Senate floor hours later would require getting agreement from every senator to speed up the process. Opposition from a single member will punt Clayton’s confirmation to next week.

Confirming Clayton Thursday would, crucially, limit — and potentially circumvent — Pulte from becoming acting director of national intelligence, which Trump has slated to take place Friday, June 19.

The president’s decision to put Pulte in charge after Tulsi Gabbard’s departure at the helm of the Office of National Intelligence sparked bipartisan pushback, with Democrats saying they will withhold support for extending Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act while Pulte is in the acting role. Congress allowed the key government spy authority lapse last Friday without a deal.

Trump threw another curveball into a FISA extension over the weekend when he posted on social media that he was against reauthorizing Section 702 unless a GOP elections bill is attached. That bill, known as the SAVE America Act, does not have the votes to get through Congress.

Thune threw cold water Monday on tying the two issues together.

“Yeah, he’s, as you know, passionate about getting that done and wants to use every opportunity to take a shot at it,” Thune said of Trump and his desire to enact the elections bill.

But, Thune said, “we can’t get FISA done” if the policies are linked.