Congress
Old headaches will plague Mike Johnson in the new year
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.”
President Donald Trump and Speaker Mike Johnson will meet at the White House Tuesday with the executives of top artificial intelligence companies, according to two people granted anonymity to discuss private plans.
The meeting comes as Congress is coming under increasing pressure to put federal guardrails on AI development, as fears mount that technological advancements could soon spiral beyond human control.
Responding to some warnings that AI development was on track to cause human extinction by the end of the decade, Johnson has said he wants Trump and AI CEOs to “go in a big room, close the door and sort this out.” He has yet to endorse major legislative action to address the issue, as Trump has resisted calls for government regulations, citing concerns about lagging behind China.
The president and speaker were in attendance at the State Dinner on Thursday night in honor of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to Washington, as were OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Google CEO Sundar Pichai. It was not immediately clear which of these executives would be invited to next week’s meeting, and who will be participating.
News that the meeting had been scheduled was first reported by Axios.
A group of 10 Democrats has signed on to Rep. Greg Casar’s (D-Texas) bill that would ban superintelligence and pause advanced AI development until a vetting regime could be stood up.
Reps. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), both of whom are mulling a 2028 presidential run, are cosponsoring the bill, named the Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act.
Khanna, in a statement, noted that he convened a hearing this week on AI safety cooperation between the U.S. and China as ranking member of the House China Select Committee with AI experts who underscored the need for a verifiable pause on superintelligence.
AI superintelligence is an as-yet hypothetical form of the advanced technology that surpasses humans’ cognitive capabilities, but exactly when AI crosses the threshold into superintelligence remains contested. The bill would subject violators to a 20-year prison sentence.
The support from prominent progressives in the Democratic caucus comes as the party is navigating how they would approach AI regulation should they retake control of one or both chambers in November.
Other cosponsors include Reps. Analilia Mejia of New Jersey, Yassamin Ansari and Adelita Grijalva of Arizona, Val Hoyle of Oregon, Stephen Lynch of Massachusetts, Chuy García of Illinois, Chris Deluzio of Pennsylvania and Nydia Velázquez of New York.
“We absolutely have to slow down and regulate the advancement of dangerous AI technologies that have the potential to spiral out-of-control and threaten humanity,” Ansari said.
To Lynch, a string of recent AI-led cyberbreaches has “shown us that the advanced forms of this are out of control,” he said in an interview. “We haven’t really solved that control problem yet, nor have we got the alignment problem right yet.”
Casar’s bill, introduced this week with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), is among the most stringent AI regulations proposed by either party.
Rather than focusing on bans as Casar and his progressive allies have done, centrist Democrats are looking to legislative proposals they say can address the technology’s risks without stifling innovation.
Senate Republicans are discussing whether to call up a data center utility costs bill as they make plans to stay in Washington next week rather than beat an early exit before the midterms.
Two GOP aides who spoke on the condition of anonymity said the Senate will remain in town amid pressure from some corners of the party to send members home early to campaign.
Asked if the Senate will stay next week, Majority Leader John Thune said Thursday it’s “looking that way.”
While some lawmakers had hoped to move a long-brewing bipartisan energy permitting deal, those hopes have evaporated, and GOP leaders are instead eyeing votes on the Ratepayer Protection Act — a top priority of endangered Ohio Sen. Jon Husted.
Thune said Thursday moving to the data-center-focused bill next week “is an option.” The Senate is also expected to take up a Democratic resolution condemning the Iran war and several presidential nominations.
The Ratepayer Protection Act easily passed the House earlier this month, but some Senate Democrats are arguing it does not go far enough and party leaders could be motivated to deny Husted a pre-election win.
Josh Siegel contributed to this report.
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