Congress

Johnson tries to avoid McCarthy pitfalls as he preps for a speaker showdown

Published

1 year ago

January 3, 2025

Mike Johnson is trying to avoid the mistakes of his predecessor as he faces the toughest test of his political career on Friday.

With his bid to keep his speakership on the line — despite support from President-elect Donald Trump — the Louisiana Republican is looking to sidestep the kinds of side deals with conservative Republicans that ultimately cost Kevin McCarthy his own political future. But that’s a hard tightrope to cross.

Fiscal hawks want Johnson to make commitments, including giving them greater control over how bills move to the floor and slashing spending — pledges that could be untenable for Johnson with a razor-thin GOP margin. And while conservatives believe that Johnson is keeping an open mind on some of their demands, they’re also concerned about whether he will keep the three conservative rebels on the House Rules Committee, according to one Republican with knowledge of the matter, granted anonymity to detail private conversations.

The stakes are huge, and no one knows how it will play out in the coming hours. Around a dozen Republicans are on the fence, despite Johnson working the last several days to lock down the 218 votes he needs. He can only afford to have one Republican vote for someone else on the floor, but several on Thursday indicated they won’t announce how they will vote in advance.

While Johnson says his plan is to win the speakership right away on Friday, he’s also signaling that in order to get there he might show more flexibility with GOP hardliners.

”People are talking through process changes they want, and those kinds of things, and I’m open to that,” he said Thursday as he left a meeting with hardliners. He added that if he doesn’t win on the first ballot, “that’s the process of Congress with a small majority.”

Given the uncertainty, some GOP lawmakers worry that a drawn-out speakership fight will force Johnson to cave and agree to policies that would make it harder for Republicans to pass priorities on the border, energy and taxes. Those goals will already be difficult, as they wrangle with an incredibly thin margin in the House.

The speaker race is House Republicans’ first real test of their ability to unify in the new Congress.

“We need to get that taken care of, get it behind us, and get on with our work on policy,” Republican Policy Committee Chair Kevin Hern (R-Okla.) said in a brief interview, adding that a messy speaker fight would “certainly” make accomplishing the party’s policy goals harder.

Another House Republican lawmaker, granted anonymity to speak candidly, added that Friday “needs to go smoothly or this year is going to be tragic.”

Yet the early demands are already piling up for Johnson: Rep. Chip Roy is angling to be chair of the Rules Committee, while the speaker’s allies urge him to remove the Texas Republican from the panel entirely. The other two conservative members of the panel aren’t clear on their futures either: Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), the lone Republican who has already said publicly he’ll vote against Johnson, has signaled he expects he’ll likely lose his seat, while Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) recently told Blue Light News that he would like to stay on but he hasn’t gotten guidance from Johnson.

Indiana Rep. Victoria Spartz, who is known for regularly causing a ruckus ahead of key votes and then folding, publicly served Johnson with a laundry list of demands last month in order to secure her support. A close friend of Massie’s, Spartz is also seen as the most unpredictable of the undecided members.

“We had a good meeting with the speaker, discussed some things. In a lot of things we agree,” Rep. Victoria Spartz said.

Spartz met with Johnson behind closed doors on Thursday, telling reporters after that she will make a decision about the speaker’s race on Friday — one of many who seem to be waiting until the last minute to weigh in.

“We had a good meeting with the speaker, discussed some things. In a lot of things we agree,” Spartz said.

GOP members from across the conference are warning Johnson against any bigger concessions, like the kind they argue eventually crippled McCarthy’s speakership.

“It will cause problems elsewhere,” said one Republican lawmaker, granted anonymity to speak candidly.

It’s not just the speaker’s race that’s presenting early headaches for Johnson. House lawmakers also have to approve a rules package that governs how the chamber operates, an effort that won’t get Democratic help. Johnson similarly needs near-unanimity to move forward on the package of rules that leaders released on Wednesday, and Massie and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) are both already raising concerns. Johnson can’t pass it if he loses both of them.

There’s a real risk for Johnson if he bends to the demands of his hardliners. His predecessor, McCarthy, cut a flurry of deals before and during the 15 rounds it took him to win the gavel, including making it easier to oust a speaker and giving his hardliners plum positions on the Rules Committee. But those agreements ultimately planted the seeds for the House GOP’s perennial chaos over the past two years, and centrists accused McCarthy of bowing too far to his antagonists, sacrificing leadership’s power and still getting ousted just 10 months later.

Several of Johnson’s holdouts were tightlipped on Thursday as they left his office, though one acknowledged that Johnson “has work to do” to remain speaker. Another, Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), added that the group is “keeping our powder dry.” Asked if they feared retribution from Trump if they do not back the incoming president’s pick, Reps. Michael Cloud (R-Texas) and Andrew Clyde (R-Ga.) shrugged off the threat. Cloud later clarified in a tweet that he doesn’t want to delay Trump’s agenda but is instead seeking “structural changes” to “how the House operates.”

Norman declined to say if the group would settle for verbal commitments or if they needed to see something in writing, but said they were dug in on the predictable areas: “fiscal discipline, securing the border, pass reconciliation.”

“The president has got four years, but in reality he’s got 12 to 14 months,” he added.

Meredith Lee Hill contributed to this report.

Congress

Thune is ‘hopeful’ Mitch McConnell will return this week

Published

2 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

4 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

6 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.