Politics
Speaker Mike Johnson adds to his list of avoidable embarrassments
After voters handed Republicans a narrow majority in the House of Representatives, GOP leaders had high hopes. The party and its members appeared convinced as this Congress got underway that Republicans wouldn’t just rack up victories, they’d also impress the public with their vision and legislative prowess.
So much for that idea.
The GOP-led House has generated one fiasco after another. Resignations in the chamber have reached a generational high. Legislative progress has slowed to a pace unseen in nearly a century. Lawmakers have struggled mightily to complete basic tasks. In the spring, House Speaker Mike Johnson organized a retreat focused on unifying his conference, and most of his members didn’t show up.
Soon after, one of the party’s most radical members launched an effort to oust the incumbent House speakerwhich comes six months after the previous ouster of the last House speaker. It was around this time when a Punchbowl News report concluded, “This is the most chaotic, inefficient and ineffective majority we’ve seen in decades covering Congress.”
Can things get worse. Of course they can. NBC News reported:
Speaker Mike Johnson on Wednesday yanked a government funding bill off the House floor hours before an expected vote after a growing number of disgruntled Republicans vowed to tank the measure.
The beleaguered House speaker’s original plan was to pass appropriations bills months ago that would fund the government through the next fiscal year. That plan collapsed in July when Johnson’s own members balked.
As members returned to Capitol Hill from their August break, the GOP leader embraced a new plan: The House would, at Donald Trump’s direction, push a temporary spending bill that included cuts and a far-right election scheme called the Save Actwhich would require proof of citizenship to register to vote.
If Democrats opposed the scheme, Johnson said, then Republicans would allow the government to shut down at the end of the month.
The House speaker’s plan faced swift and bipartisan opposition, but he said he was pushing forward anyway. Johnson was backed by his party’s former president, who published thoughtful messages onlineincluding one that said, in reference to federal operations, “CLOSE IT DOWN!!!”
Johnson said he’d bring his plan to the House floor on Wednesday. Then he came to terms with the fact that too many of his own members refused to support his bill — at which point the speaker pulled his bill and scrapped his plans.
No one seems to have any idea what GOP leaders will do next. If the Louisiana Republican continues to insist on pushing a far-right spending bill, filled with radical and unnecessary anti-election measures, he’ll certainly make Trump happy, but Johnson won’t have a bill that can pass either chamber.
If the House speaker backs down and agrees to a clean, bipartisan bill, he’ll prevent a shutdown, but he’ll be dependent on Democrats to save his skin — again — and further weaken his standing within the GOP conference he ostensibly leads.
Complicating matters, Johnson’s latest embarrassment comes on the heels of several months’ worth of similar setbacks.
“Extreme MAGA Republicans have been in the majority for over 18 months,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said in a statement in July. “Can anyone name a single thing extreme MAGA Republicans in the House have done in order to make life better for the American people? A single thing that they have done? You can’t. … They are incapable of governing.”
Two months later, the New York Democrat’s assessment continues to ring true.
Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an BLN political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”
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Politics
Trump wants the Postal Service to radically overhaul mail voting. But ballots are already going out.
President Donald Trump’s controversial demands for the Postal Service to overhaul and monitor millions of mail ballots hit another snag on Friday, when North Carolina became the first state in the nation to start sending out ballots for the November election.
In March, Trump signed the initial executive order, which aimed to crack down on mail-in voting — which he regularly alleges without evidence is a vector for widespread voter fraud — and assert an unprecedented amount of federal control over the upcoming elections.
Under this order and the subsequent rule drafted by the U.S. Postal Service, the USPS would refuse to deliver ballots to states that failed to provide lists of eligible mail voters or did not adhere to an approved envelope design style.
Since then, the order has faced legal challenges, and it remains paused by a federal judge’s orders. But the Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to allow the new rule to proceed — something current and former election officials from both parties say would be both a legal nightmare that oversteps the federal government’s traditional role in elections and a logistical one that is happening far too close to the November election to implement even if they agreed with it.
“Why the hell are you rocking the boat this late in the game?” said Stephen Richer, a former Republican recorder of Maricopa County, Arizona, who has clashed with Trump allies for defending the security of the 2020 election.
Still, election officials are trying to project a sense of normalcy for voters, particularly in North Carolina, which serves as a test of whether established local election systems can operate normally amid intensifying federal scrutiny.
“I want to emphasize this point because there has been a lot of outside noise: Our county workers are ready,” Sam Hayes, a longtime Republican lawyer in the state and now executive director of the North Carolina State Board of Elections, said in a Thursday afternoon press conference.
He added, “All we can do is what we’re doing. … It is business as usual as far as I’m concerned.”
Despite the legal challenges, the Trump administration has continued to press the courts to let it proceed. The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to lift an order from a Massachusetts judge which temporarily prevents the USPS from enforcing their rule. It is the second time the Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to step in, after winning an earlier victory in which the high court dismissed an earlier hold on the rule as premature.
“The uncertainty is coming from a single activist judge who continues to try and obstruct President Trump from implementing commonsense measures to protect the security of mail-in ballots and ensure only Americans vote in American elections,” White House spokesperson Lauren Bis said in a statement. “These safeguards for mail ballots were proposed months ago giving election officials ample time to prepare for the 2026 election.”
The USPS did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Election officials said that if the rule goes into effect this close to November, it would cause chaos and place added strain on the USPS and election officials. And an anonymous federal whistleblower said in a report circulated earlier this week by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) that the USPS was moving forward in a “secretive, rushed, chaotic, and fundamentally flawed process” to try to implement the new system ahead of the midterms.
In the coming weeks, states across the country will follow North Carolina’s lead. Nine other states will begin mailing ballots in the next two weeks, according to a tracker from the National Conference of State Legislatures — with the biggest day for mailing coming 45 days before the election in mid-September.
“It would be so outrageous to try to let this go into effect. It’s hard to even imagine,” said Ben Hovland, a senior fellow for democracy at the progressive think tank Center for American Progress and former Democratic commissioner with the Election Assistance Commission who was fired by Trump in July.
He added, “It would be a break-glass moment for our democracy.”
The rule would require meticulous changes to ballot handling and tracking practices that Hovland said are impossible to implement before Election Day in about two months, effectively disenfranchising millions of voters.
“Ballots are printed. Envelopes are printed. You can go on and on with all the practical reasons that show that implementing something like this at this time is not feasible,” he said.
Richer said he doubted the new rules would bring about more security. Even if the USPS received lists from the states, according to the postal service’s final rule, it would not do any additional vetting of the list, Richer said.
“It’s just that the mail ballots have to be on that list, and I don’t see what added value for election integrity that does,” he said.
He added, “It creates a lot of administrative burden, and I think it creates a lot more opportunity for error.”
While a decision looms in the courts, election officials and experts cast doubt on the likelihood of the rules going into effect before November. A more pressing issue, they said, is the confusion and uncertainty surrounding mail-in ballots, which could subvert and change the behaviors of voters.
“It makes things seem messy or difficult, and it can dissuade people from participating or coming out to vote,” Hovland said. “It certainly also helps establish a pretext to make bad faith claims about election results.”
Hovland said that while none of these claims of voter fraud are backed up with facts, they could cause Americans to lose faith in the voting process.
Still, some current officials contended they were well-prepared for whatever happens — and that they’d be able to communicate effectively with voters who have become increasingly buffeted by dramatic rhetoric about the once-unmentioned nuts and bolts of actually running an election.
“There’s always a lot of noise around elections, that’s not going to change, and it can be hard to differentiate that from what’s actually going on on the ground,” said Jason Tyson, director of external affairs for the North Carolina State Board of Elections.
As Election Day approaches, Tyson and election officials said they urge voters to check their registration status and make a plan to vote.
He added, “I think we’ve got a really well-trained, solid staff who are ready, and who have gone through all of the checks and balances and points of contact that we need to do to get to where we are.”
Missouri’s Supreme Court suspended a congressional map that state Republicans drew last year that would have netted the GOP an additional House seat, likely keeping the seat in Democratic hands this November.
The court ruled unanimously on Thursday that a referendum petition organized by Democrats to put the new congressional maps to a vote was incorrectly deemed insufficient by Republican Secretary of State Denny Hoskins, and ordered that the gerrymandered map be put to a vote in the fall.
Voters will ultimately decide the fate of the new lines in November. But in the meantime, it cannot be in place for the midterms, meaning Rep. Emanuel Cleaver’s original Kansas City-based district will likely stay in Democrats’ hands this fall.
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