Congress

Republicans’ faith in Mike Johnson is fading fast

Published

3 months ago

May 1, 2026

Speaker Mike Johnson faced down a bruising “hell week” and ultimately pulled several key GOP bills across the line. But it came at a cost.

Republicans say Johnson’s habit of making last-minute, often contradictory promises to keep his tiny majority functioning is starting to catch up with him. Frustrations over his leadership, they say, are at an all-time high.

“I think this guy has divided us with a smile,” said Rep. Max Miller (R-Ohio), a longtime Johnson skeptic who has grown more vocal with his criticism and now says “without question” he will vote against keeping Johnson as top GOP leader in the next Congress.

This week’s chaos came to a head late Wednesday, with multiple members of key Republican factions yelling and swearing at Johnson on the House floor and in closed-door meetings.

Johnson tried to quell a rebellion among conservative hard-liners by privately reneging on an agreement with a group of midwestern Republicans that would have tied legislation allowing year-round sales of an ethanol fuel blend to the must-pass farm bill.

When some of the ethanol provision’s backers ran back to the floor to try to figure out what happened, they were too late. Some later confronted Johnson, who is now promising a future vote on the matter.

“Bullshit,” Rep. Ann Wagner (R-Mo.) yelled at the speaker as he tried to explain what happened later in the day, according to three people who participated in the huddle and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

This week’s floor chaos was just the latest example of Johnson leading crisis by crisis, ultimately pulling off GOP priorities but leaving a trail of disgruntled members and staffers in his wake, according to more than a dozen Republicans interviewed for this story.

It all comes as rank-and-file lawmakers grow increasingly worried about their ability to govern over the coming months and retain their majority in November — and amid quiet conversations about who else might be capable of leading the House GOP. While Johnson successfully managed this week to end the record shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security and fend off the lapse of a key surveillance program, more challenges loom.

A long-term deal to maintain those spy powers remains elusive, the Senate is expected to reject the farm bill House Republicans approved Thursday and members are agitating for yet another party-line reconciliation bill that stands to continue surfacing the GOP’s internal divides.

Johnson told reporters Thursday that complaints about his leadership style amounted to “fake news.”

“No one in this conference can say that I went against my word on anything,” he said. “You had requests and demands on opposite sides of the conference that were literally irreconcilable. If you meet one group’s demands, you can’t meet the other. And so it takes a lot of time to get people to a consensus and an agreement on that.”

“Everybody’s very happy with their work,” Johnson said. “It’s all smiles.”

Wagner hardly appeared thrilled as she recounted Wednesday’s events in an interview Thursday.

“We were promised a vote on this,” she said of the ethanol measure. “We went back to do our work in our offices, and then a deal was cut on the floor. … And once we became aware of it, we needed to extend those discussions.”

The ethanol measure, allowing year-round sales of a fuel blend high in corn-derived alcohol, vexed a coalition of Republicans who saw the measure as harming petroleum and refiner industry interests in their districts as well as ultraconservatives who had ideological objections.

The result of the infighting was that a Wednesday vote on the budget blueprint for a planned immigration enforcement funding bill stayed open for more than five hours as dozens of Republicans withheld their votes until they got a satisfactory response.

To placate them, Johnson ultimately agreed to delay consideration of the farm bill for a time — only to reverse himself again after livid ag-state members demanded a vote on the farm bill before the scheduled weeklong recess, leaving the ethanol issue for later.

That in turn enraged hard-liners like Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), who accused Johnson of going back on his word from only a few hours earlier.

In a closed-door meeting just off the House floor Wednesday night, Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-Iowa) complained about how farm-state members always vote in line with GOP leadership only to get jilted on their own priorities.

During a separate “family meeting” in Johnson’s office, Rep. Michelle Fischbach (R-Minn.), who sits in a Johnson-appointed slot on the Rules Committee, asked why they should believe the speaker when he promised a future vote on the ethanol issue. Johnson had already promised the group a vote in late February that did not materialize.

Miller, a former White House aide to President Donald Trump, said he ultimately agreed to vote for the budget measure out of his support for Trump and after Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin personally asked him to. But he said the episode demonstrated why he thinks Johnson is unfit to lead Republicans beyond this Congress.

“It’s pretty debilitating when you’re supposed to follow a guy into battle, and I wouldn’t trust him to get out of a wet paper bag with an M4,” he said.

Johnson was happy to put the 76-day DHS shutdown behind him Thursday, telling reporters that “sometimes it’s an ugly process” but that he has “never broken my word to a single person in this building.”

But the instances of disarray on the floor have piled up in recent months, and not all of them can be attributed solely to the GOP’s tiny majority. Last week, Johnson and other leaders appeared unaware of serious concerns in his conference’s ranks about legislation curbing Endangered Species Act protections. They were forced to postpone consideration of the bill.

The week before that, the House cleared an extension of temporary immigration protections for people from Haiti — the latest instance where a Democratic-led discharge petition had succeeded in commandeering the GOP agenda.

Many Democrats have been happy to watch the internal drama and gloat, mocking the GOP’s disarray and papering over the pains their own caucus experienced when they were in power. But they have insisted the drama of the past few months stands alone.

“First reaction is: ‘Oh, my God, this would never happen under Nancy Pelosi,’” Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) said in an interview, harking back to speakers of the past. “In fact, it probably wouldn’t have happened under John Boehner or Paul Ryan or even Kevin McCarthy.”

Johnson has defenders inside the GOP ranks, such as Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.), who said “he’s doing fine” and “the bills are moving.” He also continued to enjoy the support of the most important Republican — Trump — who has shown no outward sign of dismay with Johnson’s leadership.

“These are complex issues, and sometimes they take more than five minutes to work through,” Lawler said.

Johnson will be tested as soon as lawmakers return from recess. The pro-ethanol Republicans say Johnson pledged to orchestrate a standalone vote on their measure the week of May 12, according to six people involved in the talks. Many Republicans expect it to fail since it will no longer be attached to a must-pass bill.

“Do I believe him? Probably not,” one of the House Republicans involved said about that timeline.

Wagner, when asked whether she had confidence in Johnson and GOP leaders, singled out House Majority Leader Steve Scalise for having “really stood up in the pack” and “gave his word in terms of how we would move forward.”

Even the members who weren’t part of the back-and-forths over ethanol blends or surveillance safeguards or budget priorities this week were dismayed by how it all went down.

Rep. Daniel Webster (R-Fla.), a veteran House member who announced his retirement earlier this week, parked himself on the House floor during part of the meltdown. Asked later what he thought of the interactions, he said, “I just thought we got to get it together.”

“We probably didn’t have it together when we started voting,” he said. “Probably should have waited until we were sure. It’s a lot of wasted time.”

Congress

Some GOP senators are still grappling with the Todd Blanche nomination

Published

6 hours ago

August 4, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Senate Republicans are hopeful they will be able to confirm Todd Blanche as attorney general by the end of the week. But he’s not in the clear yet, as several undecided GOP senators continue to mull it over.

Blanche’s prospects were nonetheless much improved Monday — less than 24 hours after some GOP senators were predicting he was unlikely to get confirmed as a war of words escalated between President Donald Trump and holdout Republicans.

But then Blanche cut a deal with Sens. John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) late Sunday night to clarify a controversial settlement between Trump and the IRS, giving Blanche the votes he needed to get through the Judiciary Committee Tuesday.

He still needs to get through the full Senate, where he can only lose two Republican votes given likely unified opposition from Senate Democrats and Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell’s absence.

Several GOP senators who raised alarms last week about Trump’s public threats to rekindle the “Anti-Weaponization Fund” Cornyn and Tillis worked to kill declined to say Monday how they’d vote on Blanche.But in a positive sign for the acting attorney general, several are looking to Tillis and Cornyn, who are now supporting him, as a lodestar for their own deliberations ahead of likely floor votes later this week.

“I think certainly the fact that he has signed this order, basically disbanding [the fund] — that’s a pretty good step,” said Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), before adding that she would “like to find out a little bit more about the negotiations.”

Murkowski said she plans to speak with Tillis and Cornyn.

“I’m curious about what went on over the weekend,” she said.

Blanche has made efforts to ingratiate himself with Murkowski. In July, he trekked to Alaska, in part at Murkowski’s urging, to better understand public safety and tribal jurisdiction matters. He recently announced a nine-figure settlement benefiting Alaska natives’ health care that Murkowski was pleased with.

“I just appreciated the fact that he went to the state,” Murkowski said. “He was only there for two days, but I had asked him in my initial meeting to go up to the state.”

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), who like Cornyn lost his primary earlier this year to a Trump-backed challenger, declined to discuss Blanche Monday. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) added that she also wanted to talk to Tillis and Cornyn and read the agreement they struck with Blanche.

“Until I do that, I am not going to make a judgement,” Collins said.

Another Republican who hasn’t yet committed to supporting Blanche is Sen. John Curtis (R-Utah). He met with Blanche last week but hasn’t yet weighed in since Sunday night’s agreement. He had indicated before Sunday’s deal that he would be closely tracking Tillis and Cornyn during Tuesday’s Judiciary Committee meeting.

Getting Blanche’s nomination on a trajectory to pass the Senate this week would relieve some of the pressure on Senate Republicans, who are juggling a long to-do list and a shrinking runway to get it done. Trump, amid last week’s standoff, demanded that Senate Republicans confirm Blanche, including warning during a Cabinet meeting that they “will never get anybody like him.”

Tillis told reporters Monday that “the back-and-forth over the weekend was not helpful” but that the talks “ended up at an acceptable place.”

If Blanche gets out of the Judiciary Committee Tuesday as expected, the soonest the Senate could confirm him as attorney general is Saturday unless Democrats unanimously agree to help speed up a final vote.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Monday that he’s hopeful the Senate will be able to confirm Blanche but didn’t give an ironclad guarantee as the remaining undecided members review the agreement and talk to Tillis and Cornyn.

“I’d like to figure out a way, a path forward to get him done,” Thune said.

Democrats are likely to use Tuesday’s Judiciary Committee meeting, and the days leading up to a full Senate vote, to hammer Republicans over the deal Cornyn and Tillis struck. Many predicted Monday that Trump wouldn’t stick by the agreement that limits the scope of the IRS settlement and nullifies the $1.8 billion payout fund.

“There are so many loopholes. I wouldn’t be surprised if the president went ahead with the program,” said Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee.

Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) warned the remaining undecided Republicans about the deal: “I don’t think that that commitment is worth what it’s written on.”

While Democrats can drag Blanche’s confirmation into the weekend, they aren’t able to prevent him from being confirmed if at least 50 GOP senators support him. But they are determined to use the debate to hit at one of their central midterm campaign messages — corruption — with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer calling Blanche the “architect of Trump’s grifts.”

Tillis suggested Monday he still has questions about who in Trump’s orbit played a role in the roller coaster negotiations over the past week. While the retiring senator is prepared to support Blanche, he said that he’s “not done analyzing the anatomy of this deal and who played a role in there.”

“I’m not going to speak for other members, but I think that it’ll be a solid vote,” he added about Blanche’s chances of being confirmed.

Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.), who appeared skeptical during a Sunday morning talk show interview that Blanche would get through the Senate, did a 180 Monday when asked whether he would get confirmed: “Yes, I do.”

Jennifer Scholtes contributed to this report.

Congress

‘He should quit’: Republican senators sound alarms about Max Miller accusations

Published

8 hours ago

August 3, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Multiple Senate Republicans joined Sen. Bernie Moreno in calling for Rep. Max Miller to step down from office Monday amid domestic abuse allegations from the Ohio senator’s daughter.

Bernie Moreno — father of Miller’s ex-wife, Emily Moreno — said in a statement Sunday that Miller should not serve in the House soon after the House Republican did a livestream video attempting to defend himself from abuse accusations.

Many of Bernie Moreno’s GOP colleagues were quick to back him following the statement.

“I don’t know [Miller]. I haven’t read a whole lot about him, but if [Moreno] thinks he ought to resign, I’m supportive of that,” Sen. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia said in an interview.

Miller has denied the allegations, which include pouring hot water on his ex-wife and holding a gun to her head. He has also denied accusations from his ex-wife that he broke his daughter’s collarbone.

Sen. Roger Marshall of Kansas condemned Miller, adding, “He should resign. He should quit.”

“I don’t know Mr. Miller’s story, but I trust Bernie so much as a good friend, and his family has such high values,” Marshall said in an interview. “I couldn’t imagine them wanting this out in public. So to go through with this, it makes me think that they’re telling the whole truth and nothing but the truth.”

The surge of support from Bernie Moreno’s Senate colleagues marks the first significant crack in a wall of GOP silence regarding the allegations against Miller. The skepticism from Miller’s own party will almost certainly weigh down the congressman’s already floundering campaign as he battles Democratic candidate Brian Poindexter to keep his Cleveland-area House seat.

Miller has until Wednesday to withdraw from the ballot and allow a crash primary to select a replacement.

Some Republican lawmakers stopped short of calling on Miller to withdraw or resign while expressing grave concern about the allegations.

“The accusations are very serious, and if there is truth to them, I am one who says that our elected officials need to be held to high standards,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska said. “And certainly, when it comes to allegations of domestic abuse, child abuse, that’s not what we want in our lawmakers.”

A spokesperson for Miller did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In response to Moreno’s statement, Miller said on Sunday, “If my daughter said the same thing to me, I personally wouldn’t wait two years before holding him accountable.”

“You know this isn’t true and the only reason you are speaking out now is to hide from your own media circus,” he added in the post on X.

Notably still silent was GOP Sen. Jon Husted, Ohio’s other senator, who while leaving the Capitol Monday did not respond to reporters’ questions about whether Miller should resign.

Other Republicans in the Ohio House delegation are also staying quiet for now. Almost every House Republican from the state either declined to comment or did not respond to requests for comment on Moreno’s statement.

The exception was Rep. Jim Jordan, who brushed off questions in a Thursday CNN interview about Miller but noted he was “a good man” and was recently campaigning for him.

Asked Monday if Miller should still serve in Congress following Bernie Moreno’s statement, spokesperson for Jordan Stefanie Farrell said, “As Mr. Jordan has said, it’s up to the voters of Ohio’s 7th District.”

Back in the Senate, other Republicans who were unaware of the situation declined to weigh in on the incident.

“I am not aware of the situation, so I don’t have a comment right now,” said Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), who has been a leading GOP voice on domestic violence issues within the military.

But a steady drip of Republican senators said Monday evening they trusted Bernie Moreno.“It would surprise me if Bernie were being untruthful,” Sen. Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming said. “I guess I was surprised that it bubbled up to the public sphere, but I suspect that Bernie has got a beat on the situation.”

Sen. Jim Justice of West Virginia said he was unaware of the details of the allegations but that “Bernie’s a pretty level-headed guy.”

“I don’t know enough about the allegations, but like Bernie said, it sounds like he thinks he needs psychological help,” Sen. Rick Scott of Florida said, adding, “I trust Bernie.”

Chris Marquette contributed to this report.

Congress

Budget Republicans to meet

Published

9 hours ago

August 3, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Senate Budget Committee Republicans will meet Tuesday morning to talk about advancing a fiscal blueprint for a new party-line spending bill.

Chair Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) declined to say , in an interview Monday if he plans to introduce a resolution this week, noting that he was “working with leadership” and that the “first priority” is to pass a stopgap spending bill. Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.), a panel member, said he didn’t expect the Senate to take up a budget resolution this week because “I don’t think my leadership wants to do it.”

Senate Majority Leader John Thune hasn’t ruled out taking up a budget resolution but has been frank about the challenges it faces among GOP senators.