Congress

Johnson prevailed in the speakership race. His problems are just beginning.

Published

1 year ago

January 4, 2025

Mike Johnson managed to avoid a drawn-out battle for the speakership on Friday. His headaches are just getting started.

While Johnson ultimately secured enough votes to remain speaker on the first ballot — after two members switched their votes after further lobbying from Johnson and phone calls with President-elect Donald Trump — the aftermath of his victory made it clear that conservatives see this as a tentative truce.

Hardliners said they have certain expectations for the speaker going forward, and signaled that forcing a vote to oust him is on the table if Johnson doesn’t meet them. The newly adopted rules package requires the support of nine GOP members, up from the current threshold of one, to trigger an ouster vote.

“It’s always going to be there. I think our founders wanted it there for a reason as a check,” said Rep. Eli Crane (R-Ariz.),who backed Kevin McCarthy’s ouster last year, when asked by Blue Light News if a motion to vacate is on the table. “I really hope it never has to be used again. But we’ll see.”

Yet Johnson’s allies are hoping the speaker’s race is an early glimpse of things to come — that Republicans will ultimately get in line on party priorities, even if the process is messy and chaotic. And they’re encouraged by Trump’s repeated support for the speaker, after the incoming president made it clear he’s willing to lobby members and keep them in line, even when Johnson isn’t able to do so.

“I just hope President Trump pounds them into submission,” said Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.).

Regardless, the speakership episode is a reality check about what the next two years have in store for Johnson. His margin is only set to shrink in the near-term as some members leave for positions in the Trump administration, and he can currently only afford to lose one GOP vote on partisan legislation. He’ll need near, if not complete, unity to pass Trump’s agenda on the border, energy and taxes — or anything else. If he relies on Democrats to move must-pass items like spending legislation now that the GOP has total control of Congress, he’ll risk a severe backlash from his right flank.

Johnson’s critics are already drawing lines in the sand. Eleven members of the Freedom Caucus, who comprise the group’s board, circulated a letter to all of their colleagues just as Johnson won the speaker’s vote. It laid out what they believe Johnson should have agreed to and what they want to see in legislation moving forward, including lowering inflation, ending stock trading by members of Congress and other provisions.

And they notably included an indirect salvo at Johnson’s leadership in the letter, saying that “there is always room to negotiate on so-called ‘leadership’ positions under the rules.”

Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.), one of the signatures on the letter, demurred when it was suggested that it seemed like a warning: “It is what it is.”

“It’s there for a reason. It’s about accountability. Mike has laid out a plan and a vision and now he’s got to execute it,” Ogles said about early mentions of speaker-ousting measures, known as the motion to vacate. “And if he doesn’t, you have … some members that will be willing to pull the pin on the hand grenade.”

Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), who had declined to publicly support Johnson up until the speakership vote, brushed off questions about the motion to vacate immediately after the speaker’s vote but hinted at “consequences” if Congress couldn’t deliver on certain priorities.

“Let’s make no mistake about it. There will be things that are, in fact, red lines that we need to deliver. We can have no more of the nonsense that happened before Christmas,” Roy said.

The warnings are a flashback to the McCarthy era. Though the former speaker managed to win the speaker’s gavel after 15 ballots, eight Republicans joined Democrats to boot him just 10 months later. Many of those rebels said it was because of his handling of government funding, though the Californian’s allies believe some, namely former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), just had a personal ax to grind.

Johnson has a better relationship with his right flank than McCarthy, as someone who was widely known as a conservative himself before taking the gavel. And he spent the back half of the year working to shore up his relationship with hardline conservatives after a failed ouster effort against him last May. He focused the conference largely on GOP messaging bills, criss-crossed the country helping reelect his members and put some of his critics on key panels, including the Intelligence Committee.

“We don’t want to sound the alarm. This is not what it was after Speaker McCarthy was vacated. That situation has built lines of communication because we don’t want to go through that again,” said Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Wis.).

Jennifer Scholtes and Nicholas Wu contributed to this report.

Congress

Thune is ‘hopeful’ Mitch McConnell will return this week

Published

3 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

6 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.

Congress

Senate eyes vote on updated housing affordability legislation

Published

8 hours ago

June 15, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Senate Majority Leader John Thune is planning to put an updated version of a bipartisan housing affordability bill on the Senate floor for a vote this week, according to two people familiar with the bill dynamics and two Senate Democratic aides granted anonymity to discuss ongoing plans.

The version of the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act that the Senate will vote on will include most of the House-passed language, including a provision restricting large institutional investors from buying single-family homes. The legislation would also add back Senate bills that were dropped from the House package that passed last month, the two people and the two aides said.

The Senate legislation comes after talks between Thune, Senate Banking Chair Tim Scott (R-S.C.) and ranking member Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). The updated Senate package was also discussed with the House and the White House, the aides said.

Still, it’s unclear if House leadership and the White House have signed off on the legislation.

The Senate and House have gone back and forth for months on language for a housing affordability bill as lawmakers on both sides look for a win to tout during a midterm election season dominated by cost-of-living issues.

Both chambers overwhelmingly passed their own versions of the housing bill — the Senate 89-10 in March, and the House 396-13 in May. The White House supported the Senate-passed bill and then backed the House-passed bill after it retained most of the Senate’s language on reining in private equity and other large Wall Street investors in the housing market — a top priority for President Donald Trump.

The Senate’s updated legislation would remove two of the House’s community banking deregulation bills due to budget scoring concerns, said two of the people familiar: two bills that would modify the Federal Deposit Insurance Act around failed insured depository institutions. The Senate bill also added back a provision to authorize the Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery program for seven years, as opposed to a permanent reauthorization in the Senate’s March legislation.

The Senate additionally re-inserted several upper-chamber priorities, including the BUILD NOW Act, which would incentivize communities to build more housing through the Community Development Block Grant program; the Rental Assistance Demonstration bill, which would raise the cap on housing authorities to convert voucher-based assistance; the Moving to Work bill, which would aim to add a new cohort of MTW public housing agencies; and the VALID Act, which would require Federal Housing Administration mortgage disclosures to include cost comparison information for veterans.

The package retains core wins for the leaders of both the Senate Banking and House Financial Services committees and their members and reflects input from all four leaders of those panels, one of the people familiar said.