Congress

Old headaches will plague Mike Johnson in the new year

Published

8 months ago

January 5, 2026

Congress is back for the new year. But Speaker Mike Johnson isn’t exactly getting a fresh start in 2026.

The House returns from the holiday recess to confront old issues that continue to bedevil Johnson — from politically perilous battle over health care and the ongoing release of the Jeffrey Epstein files to a messy intra-GOP fight over lawmakers’ stock trading and another looming government shutdown cliff.

The speaker is working to refocus Republicans, seeking to rally members around initiatives aimed at reducing housing prices and efforts to hammer Democrats over public-benefits fraud in Minnesota and other states. President Donald Trump’s decision to depose Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro by force has also given the GOP a new rallying point amid doubts about Trump’s plan to indefinitely “run” the South American country.

But Johnson will find it hard to escape internally divisive clashes as the GOP feels pressure to address the rising cost of living and otherwise firm up its standing ahead of the November midterms.

He will immediately confront a growing battle within his ranks this week over how to tackle high health care costs after Republicans allowed enhanced Obamacare tax credits to expire at the end of 2025.

Democrats plan to move as soon as Wednesday to force a floor vote on a three-year straight extension of the lapsed subsidies, according to three people granted anonymity to discuss internal planning. That comes after four House Republicans mounted a mini-mutiny against Johnson last month by signing a discharge petition backed by Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.

While this three-year extension could pass the House by Thursday, the bill is set to die in the Senate, where Majority Leader John Thune has indicated he has no plans to move it forward after a similar measure failed to garner the necessary 60 votes in a test vote last month. But a group of moderate senators continue to discuss a compromise proposal, and the rebellious House Republicans are hoping consensus legislation will eventually come back across the Capitol for final action.

The prospects for a bipartisan deal are dim, however, with Trump continuing to slam the Obamacare tax credits as wasteful while pushing Republicans to instead send money directly to taxpayers via health savings accounts. That’s in addition to the internal GOP battle on Capitol Hill over whether to pursue a party-line health care bill this year that could include sending checks to Americans to offset high health care costs.

Johnson is projecting confidence going into 2026, writing in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed that Republicans have “laid the groundwork for an extraordinary new year — from containing the border crisis and stabilizing inflation to securing historic tax, trade and peace deals.”

“The best is yet to come,” he wrote, predicting that Americans would “experience the tangible results of common-sense governance” and reward the GOP at the ballot box.

But that isn’t likely to keep internal rivalries in check. On Venezuela, for instance, Johnson will have to grapple with a pro-intervention Florida delegation while other elements of the conference could be more skeptical of Trump’s threats of long-term military engagement.

Another headache from inside Johnson’s own conference is coming from hard-liners such as Reps. Chip Roy of Texas and Anna Paulina Luna of Florida, who are demanding a vote on legislation to ban congressional stock trading.

Johnson and House Administration Chair Bryan Steil (R-Wis.) are seeking to head off threats of a discharge petition that would force a vote on that proposal by drafting their own framework for cracking down on insider trading. They plan to move it out of Steil’s panel and onto the floor in the coming weeks.

But the GOP leadership-backed bill would, as POLITICO first reported, still allow lawmakers to hold stocks they already own — a concession that might pass muster with Roy and Luna but is stoking others’ ire. Democrats are already raising alarms over the plan they say falls short of a full ban on congressional stock trading.

An even more explosive issue — the Epstein files — threatens to continue dogging House GOP leaders as well, as the Justice Department is under increasing criticism across party lines for its slow and incomplete release of materials related to the late convicted sex offender.

While Congress required DOJ to make its Epstein case files fully public last month, department officials say millions of pages of records continue to be reviewed. And critics say the records that have been released have been subject to improper redactions and other irregularities.

The issue could come to a head in the coming weeks, with House Judiciary Republicans looking to schedule a routine oversight hearing with Attorney General Pam Bondi that is now expected to focus heavily on the administration’s handling of the Epstein case.

“They are blatantly ignoring the law,” Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), who helped lead the effort to release the files and sits on the Judiciary Committee, said in an interview.

He and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), who co-sponsored the legislation compelling the release of the files, have said they are preparing to push for a rare “inherent contempt” vote against Bondi that could include fines and other sanctions for DOJ’s alleged noncompliance.

If there’s any encouraging news for Johnson heading into 2026, it’s on the appropriations front.

With only a handful of legislative days left before the Jan. 30 deadline to avoid a shutdown — and with many Republicans worried about the potential for another short-term punt — the top four House and Senate appropriators have been making quiet progress on a three-bill funding package as appetites fade for allowing the government to shutter yet again.

Talks around a full-fiscal-year “minibus” that would include the Interior, Energy-Water and Commerce-Justice-Science appropriations bills are close to being finalized, three other people granted anonymity to discuss internal deliberations said. GOP leaders are hoping to put the package on the House floor Thursday if a deal can be reached.

In the meantime, House GOP leaders are navigating internal politics around a major bipartisan housing package the Financial Services Committee approved last month. While it remains unclear whether the House and Senate can reconcile competing housing plans, Johnson is pushing forward after Trump’s top pollster told a closed-door briefing of House Republicans last month they should focus more on housing affordability issues ahead of the midterms.

This week, House GOP leaders are planning to hold votes on a bill from Rep. Erin Houchin (R-Ind.) that would cut red tape and relax energy efficiency standards for manufactured housing as well as a measure from Rep. Russell Fry (R-S.C.) that would codify Trump’s effort to roll back a regulation instituted under former President Joe Biden limiting water flow for shower nozzles.

But even Republican leaders’ unity-building proposals — such as highlighting the fraud convictions in Minnesota — could end up sparking fights.

A growing number of conservatives want Trump to reinstate Elon Musk in his prior role as efficiency czar to probe reports of Medicaid fraud and other related projects. But other Republicans, especially key moderates, are cool to the idea.

“We have fraud experts in the government that can do this,” Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) said in an interview. “They should be able to do their jobs.”

Congress

White House, hemp lobbyists bet on shutdown politics to delay ‘diet weed’ ban

Published

9 hours ago

August 28, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

President Donald Trump and hemp industry lobbyists are hoping to win a final vote on Capitol Hill next week to skirt a ban on intoxicating products — with shutdown politics as leverage.

Nine months ago, Congress cleared a bill to close a loophole created in 2018 that allowed the sale of some hemp-derived products containing types of THC colloquially known as “diet weed.” That ban is supposed to take effect in mid-November, or roughly 11 weeks, to limit overall THC levels in hemp products that can get people high — including gummies, canned drinks, pills and vapes.

But Trump and industry leaders successfully lobbied Senate leaders to add language to a government funding patch earlier this month to delay the ban until mid-December, with the administration promising instead to finalize regulations cracking down on how the products are made and sold.

Now House Republican leaders are aiming to clear that bill for Trump’s signature early next week, according to three people granted anonymity to disclose private discussions. And many GOP lawmakers are not pleased at the prospect of being rolled.

Rep. Riley Moore (R-W.Va.) told reporters last week that he expected House lawmakers would “iron out” some “sticking points” with the Senate-passed funding bill, “particularly the hemp issue,” rather than pass the legislation without changes — which appears to be GOP leadership’s current plan.

Sen. Ted Budd (R-N.C.) was more blunt: “it is morally reprehensible to threaten a shutdown over a loophole Congress agreed to close to less than a year ago,” he said in a statement Thursday.

Yet despite fierce pushback from lawmakers warning that the intoxicating products are harming Americans, hemp industry leaders are preparing for a victory, betting members of Congress ultimately care more about swiftly passing legislation to avert a Sept. 30 government shutdown before the midterms.

“Any effort to try to shut down the government — over a one-month delay on a hemp issue — I don’t think is going to fly well with most members of Congress,” Jonathan Miller, a top lawyer for the U.S. Hemp Roundtable advocacy group, said in an interview this week.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment about its plans for imposing new rules on hemp products in the coming months. But the Trump administration is expected to need more time than mid-December to finalize regulations, so hemp industry representatives are discussing a “regulatory bridge” that would impose temporary rules while continuing to avoid a full ban, according to Miller.

That could include restricting purchase to adults age 21 and older, blocking imports from China, mandating certain manufacturing practices, cracking down on copycat products that look like popular candy or potato chips and requiring transparency in product labeling.

While lawmakers have been back home over their summer break, hemp industry leaders have fanned out across the country to make their case for this plan. “The hemp industry does not have an August recess,” Christopher Lackner, head of the Hemp Beverage Alliance, said in an interview this month of the group’s work to facilitate passage of the Senate-passed funding bill.

Trump administration officials have also been telling reluctant lawmakers they will use the one-month delay to work on regulations. “The White House has committed to me that they’re committed to regulate the industry,” Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) said in an interview this month.

Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-Neb.), who fought in the Senate to retain the ban as originally intended, said White House officials have said “they don’t want another extension, and I agree with that.”

In a statement, Ricketts said that “manufactured high-THC products like gummies and drinks are putting our kids in the hospital” and need to be taken “off our shelves.”

Some supporters of the ban say the White House and industry are just employing delay tactics to get to December, when lawmakers will face another pressure campaign to delay the ban while they are motivated to avert a shutdown before leaving town for the holidays.

“What they’re really after is to try to jam this on some must-pass, end-of-the-year funding,” Budd told reporters earlier this month. “That’s really what this is about.”

Budd fought to block the delay in the Senate as part of the government funding measure, but his amendment to that end was shot down 61-32 before the chamberpassed the legislation, sending it on for House action.

Trump personally called Budd after the senator filed the amendment and talked about creating federal regulations for hemp products, according to a Senate aide granted anonymity to describe the private discussion.

Days later, Budd demanded a vote on the amendment anyway and continues to slam the hemp industry.

“It is clear that businesses that sell unregulated, intoxicating products will stop at nothing to protect their bottom line, even at the expense of children’s health and safety,” he said in a statement this week.

Besides lawmakers fighting to ban intoxicating hemp products, others are pushing alongside the White House and industry for federal regulations.

Rep. Morgan Griffith (R-W.Va.) has crafted legislation that would direct the Food and Drug Administration to create federal rules for intoxicating hemp products and wants to see mandates for third-party testing, as well as new THC limits per serving.

Griffith told reporters Thursday the “deadline push” in the Senate-passed government funding measure “is not long enough” to finalize necessary regulations.

Since state limits for THC vary widely throughout the country and the federal government has taken years to step in since the hemp loophole was created in 2018, Griffith argued it makes more sense to regulate the intoxicating products than to enact a federal ban.

“That horse is out of the barn,” he said. “What we need to do is corral it.”

Kelsey Brugger, Amanda Friedman and Rachel Shin contributed to this report.

Congress

Trump’s MAGA Inc. to host first public event in battleground Michigan

Published

19 hours ago

August 27, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

President Donald Trump’s $400-million super PAC is taking its first steps into the general election: hosting a public event in battleground Michigan, headlined by Vice President JD Vance.

Battleground Republicans have been clamoring for Trump’s MAGA Inc. to spend in competitive races. The Michigan event is an early indicator of how the massive group might seek to use its funds to help the party keep control of Washington.

Vance will be joined in Sterling, Michigan, on Monday by GOP Senate nominee Mike Rogers, 10th District nominee Mike Bouchard Jr. and gubernatorial nominee John James, along with several other Michigan Republicans, according to an event advisory from MAGA Inc.

The GOP sees Michigan’s open seat as its best Senate pickup target this fall as Rogers faces former public health leader and progressive Abdul El-Sayed, who emerged from a grueling primary earlier this month.

“MAGA Inc. will be hosting events throughout the nation to ensure that Republicans retain control of Congress in order to finish cleaning up the mess the Biden-Harris-Pelosi-Schumer Democrats left,” said Alex Pfeiffer, spokesperson for MAGA Inc. “We’re not going back to their record inflation, open borders, and surging crime.”

MAGA Inc. is sitting on more funds than any other super PAC, and Republican donors and battleground candidates have been hoping it will unleash that money to help the party keep control of the House and Senate.

So far, the group has only spent only a few million dollars out of its massive fundraising haul, and its funds have largely gone to competitive Republican primaries. Most recently, it spent $827,000 on phone calls and text messages to boost Sen. Darline Graham (R-S.C.) in the state’s special primary.

Congress

House Democrat moves to reverse Trump’s ‘Lake America’ order

Published

20 hours ago

August 27, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

A House Democrat is already pushing back on President Donald Trump’s executive order renaming Lake Ontario “Lake America.”

Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) said in an interview hours after Trump’s announcement that she plans to introduce a bill Monday that would nullify the name change. The one-page bill is titled the “Hands Off Our Great Lakes Act.”

“People do not understand how intertwined our two countries are,” Dingell said “And this is insane, this naming Lake Ontario ‘Lake America.’”

The name change is Trump’s latest escalation in a rapidly spiraling trade war between the U.S. and Canada. The White House imposed 50 percent tariffs on about $20 billion in Canadian imports earlier this week, inviting retaliatory levies from Ottawa.

Trump said in a Truth Social post Canada has been “Ripping Off” the U.S. for decades and that Canada is “easily the most difficult and unreasonable” country he deals with.

Trump’s renaming Lake Ontario throws another controversy into one of the country’s most consequential states ahead of the midterms. Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed has already attacked his Republican opponent Mike Rogers over the move.

Dingell said she has been working with Democratic leaders on a response to the tariffs, and separately collecting signatures on a letter to Trump that urges “your Administration to change its diplomatic approach with our closest ally, Canada, and recognize the importance of the United States-Canada relationship.” She said she has about 100 signatures from fellow House Democrats.

“I grew up in a small town called St. Clair, and when I got up and looked out my bedroom window every day, I didn’t see America. I saw Canada,” Dingell said. “We lived that close. Canada was as close to us as [the Cannon House Office Building] is to the Capitol.”