Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) tore into House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) on Friday's edition of MSNBC's "All In" for continuing to keep the House shuttered for business, accusing him of "surrendering" the authority of Congress to President Donald Trump.
Johnson continues to hold the House closed because he wants the Senate to vote on a clean resolution to open the government the Republican majority has already passed. However, some observers have also accused him of engineering the closure of Congress as a ploy to prevent any action on a bipartisan discharge petition to compel the White House to release the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking case files, which are expected to further embarrass President Donald Trump for his role in the scandal.
"I think I just saw that the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, has notified that next week will also be recess, which means I think that's a sixth, is that right?" said Hayes. "That's a sixth consecutive week that he's keeping the House out."
"Yeah," confirmed Raskin. "I mean, he has completely surrendered the legislative power of the people. This is the people's representatives. And so he's just lied, lying down and capitulating completely to Donald Trump and whatever he wants to do. It's a disgrace and an embarrassment that means he will go down in history as the worst speaker in the history of our country for doing this."
"But in any event, we've got emergency conditions in the country because, just like we need to restore food, and not just for November, but going forward, we need to restore the health care of the people," noted Raskin, referencing the shutdown standoff over extending Affordable Care Act subsidies that are vanishing for millions of people.
"So we say to the Republicans, no, don't take a sixth week of paid vacation where you don't come to Washington, you don't come to your offices in the Rayburn Building or the Longworth Building or the Cannon Building, but you stay back home, but you're not even meeting with your constituents because you can't dare to face them because of the shame and the scandal of what the Republicans are doing to America right now," said Raskin.
