Congress
Johnson tries to tamp down House GOP shutdown anxiety
Speaker Mike Johnson is working to assuage worries within his conference about his strategy of keeping the House indefinitely out of session until Senate Democrats vote to end the government shutdown.
Johnson met Thursday afternoon to discuss the matter with Rep. Jay Obernolte, one House Republican who has been more vocal than most in his fears about the political optics of the leadership-driven gambit, which could make the GOP appear to be shirking its responsibilities.
The California lawmaker sat down with Johnson in the speaker’s office to relay his concerns, which have only grown since the shutdown began Oct. 1, according to two Republicans with direct knowledge of the matter. The House took its last vote nearly a month ago.
Obernolte recently pressed Johnson during a House GOP conference call, about when he would recall members to Washington. Johnson and fellow GOP leaders reiterated they would do so after Senate Democrats stop blocking the House-passed funding patch.
The mild-mannered Obernolte, a former state assembly member and mayor, is not normally a thorn in Republican leadership’s side. But he represents a district with five military bases that have been hit by the shutdown.
He indicated in a brief interview Thursday, following his meeting with Johnson, that he asked the speaker to consider reconvening the House. The speaker, Obernolte said, had “good answers” in response.
Obernolte declined several times to say whether he believed Johnson’s strategy of keeping the House out of session was the right decision.
“It was us having a discussion about the various decision factors,” Obernolte said of his conversation with Johnson.
“I think … Job One for everyone is to get the federal government reopened,” he continued, though he added he was hearing deep “frustration” from his constituents about the shutdown — which he cited as a reason for leaders to quickly find a solution.
While President Donald Trump found a temporary way to shift funds to pay troops for the Oct. 15 pay period, Obernotle said he’s still worried about future military paychecks, along with hundreds of furloughed civilian workers in his district.
“This is going to last, and it’s not fair to ask our federal workers to be working without a paycheck,” Obernolte said. “Frustration that the United States Congress is so dysfunctional that we can’t even agree on a way of keeping the government open on a short term basis — hear all of it on a daily basis.”
“I wish we could reopen the government … I think it sets a terrible example for our country,” he continued. “It’s terrible for our troops … It’s an altogether bad situation.”
As for possible offramps to end the shutdown stalemate, Obernolte said he doesn’t support directly tying an extension of expiring Obamacare subsidies to the House-passed stopgap, as Democrats demand. But he does support Republicans leaders talking more about possible future votes regarding the fate of the health insurance credits.
“I’m a pretty bipartisan guy. I don’t think we do enough talking across the other side,” Obernolte said.
A Democratic trio attempted to pass an artificial intelligence bill via a unanimous consent request on Tuesday but were blocked on the Senate floor.
Sens. Mark Warner (D-Va.), Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) and Andy Kim (D-N.J.) sought to pass their Artificial Intelligence Risk Management and Security Act using the procedural mechanism, which allows expedited consideration of legislation but fails if one senator opposes it.
“The whole world has recognized that we’ve got to do something,” Warner said in a speech on the floor. “We should not miss the moment to put a safety protocol in place now.”
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) objected to the bill, preventing any chance of passage.
“Congress must not legislate on the issue of artificial intelligence hastily or in a closed manner,” he said on the floor, adding that it gave some in the government too much power to dictate the technology that could be permitted to be released.
As some lawmakers grow concerned over dire warnings from AI labs’ top executives about the technology’s risk to humanity, Congress’ attempts to legislate AI guardrails have largely stalled.
In the past few weeks, two other AI-related bills, the Ratepayer Protection Act and AI Emergency Button Act, were also nixed in an attempt to pass them unanimously.
Warner, Schatz and Kim’s new bill would have established a new safety board within the Commerce Department to vet models before they are deployed and set safety standards for the industry. It would also have created a reporting process for safety and security incidents.
Sen. Darline Graham sought to take up her brother’s mantle Tuesday, going after former special counsel Jack Smith for obtaining the late-Sen. Lindsey Graham’s phone data.
“You should be ashamed of yourself,” the South Carolina Republican told Smith as he testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee, adding that the anguish the prosecutor caused her brother “makes me sick.”
Lindsey Graham, until his unexpected death in July, was among the most vocal in his outrage over revelations that Smith secretly collected electronic data from GOP lawmakers as part of the Biden-era investigation into President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
The late senator was also unapologetic in his support for a provision tucked into a government funding package, which was later repealed, allowing senators to sue the federal government for $500,000 or more if they discover their electronic records were seized without notification — language specifically designed to compensate Smith’s targets.
But Smith replied that Lindsey Graham was not a target of his investigation and was not suspected of wrongdoing — in fact, he considered Darline Graham’s brother “a patriotic public servant” who likely would have been a “witness” in his case against Trump for attempted election subversion.
“Your brother investigated the claims that Donald Trump was making,” Smith told Darline Graham. “He found them to be false.”
The federal government’s internal watchdog told Congress Tuesday that it has concluded President Donald Trump acted unlawfully in unilaterally canceling $810 million in federal funding.
In a letter to congressional leaders obtained by Blue Light News, the Government Accountability Office’s top lawyer panned Trump’s declaration Friday that he is nixing money Congress appropriated through a controversial budget maneuver called a “pocket rescission.”
“The Constitution vests in Congress the power of the purse,” GAO General Counsel Edda Emmanuelli Perez wrote,
adding that “Congress did not cede this important power” by enacting the 1970s impoundment law intended to stop presidents from withholding money Congress approves.
“Any withholding of appropriated funds beyond their date of expiration, regardless of size, subverts both the constitutional process for enacting federal law and Congress’s constitutional power of the purse,” Perez added. “The President may not force the expiration of budget authority Congress has already enacted and did not rescind.”
It is unclear what practical effect, if any, the letter will have on the interbranch funding fight. Outside groups sued the administration last year over a prior pocket rescission, but the Supreme Court issued a preliminary ruling that they did not have standing to challenge the matter. The Trump administration has argued that only the head of the GAO is able to sue under the 52-year-old law governing rescissions.
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