All posts tagged "mike johnson"

GOP rep slams own party after being told it's 'willing to sacrifice you'

A GOP member of Congress slammed his own party in an interview with The New York Times' "The Daily" podcast on Friday, responding to claims that "party leaders are willing to sacrifice you."

Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-CA) was elected in 2022 in California's 3rd District and is openly frustrated with his party's handling of the government shutdown and how the House isn’t in session — but that's not all he's upset over.

He’s also against redistricting, which is now endangering his own seat in the House, and called it “incredibly destabilizing" especially when it happens mid-decade.

“I said from the moment this was on my radar that it shouldn’t be happening anywhere. I’m against it in Texas, I’m against it in California. It’s pure political opportunism,” Kiley said.

As a result of Texas redistricting, a demand President Donald Trump made in an effort to keep Republican control over the House, the move could result in Kiley getting drawn out of his own district in California as Gov. Gavin Newsom retaliates to Trump’s order to redistrict in Texas by responding in California.

Kiley still thinks he can win reelection, although his district might look different.

‘It sounds like your party leaders are willing to sacrifice you — in theory — for the party’s ongoing control of Congress and refusing to entertain the idea to introduce a bill that would stop that," host Michael Barbaro said.

“I don’t know what their motivations are, but their inaction is frustrating, certainly,” Kiley said.

Kiley is one of five Republicans in California "who are all but certain to lose their seats in the next midterm elections if voters grant final approval to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s newly drawn congressional districts," according to The Times.

He thinks the Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) needs to bring the House back and has had private conversations with him about it.

"I don't know what his real reason is... I haven't gotten any explanation that makes sense to me," Kiley said.

There's a chilling explanation for why the House went AWOL

A lot of language that never used to be part of America’s political discourse has come into vogue since Jan. 20. Like “Rubicon,” that ancient Roman river that’s come to symbolize a divide between democracy and dictatorship, and has been crossed more times lately than the Hudson on a busy Monday-morning rush hour.

Or this one: “Reichstag Fire.”

On Feb. 27, 1933, less than a month after Adolf Hitler was named Germany’s chancellor, an alleged arson fire destroyed much of the nation’s legislative building in Berlin, the Reichstag. A Dutch Communist was blamed for the blaze, which sparked the ruling Nazis to implement the Reichstag Fire Decree — expelling leftist lawmakers and sending political foes to newly created concentration camps. The now-Nazi-dominated Reichstag soon passed the Enabling Act giving dictatorial powers to Hitler, and so “Reichstag Fire” has come to symbolize a crisis — real or manufactured — used to justify tyrannical rule.

What’s interesting is that the Nazi regime never abolished the Reichstag. It continued to meet — rarely, and as a ceremonial rubber stamp — until Hitler died inside his bunker in 1945. That’s typical under strongman rule to this day. For example, Russia’s Duma continues to meet and pass laws — but only the ones that Vladimir Putin tells them to enact.

Is any of this starting to sound familiar?

In Washington, the House of Representatives has met for only 12 days over the last three months, even as the nation confronts a wave of crises either linked to, or overlapping with, the shutdown of the federal government that began when Congress couldn’t approve a budget bill by the Oct. 1 deadline. After passing its own dead-on-arrival spending plan on Sept. 19, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) — in a measured tone meant to mask the increasing insanity of what he’s saying — keeps find one excuse after another to shut down the branch once dubbed, a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, as “the People’s House.”

The Louisiana Republican has insisted — without any historical precedent — that there’s no point in the House conducting business as long as the gridlocked Senate refuses to pass the lower chamber’s bill to keep the government open. Many cynics have honed in on an alternate explanation — that Johnson is using the shutdown as an excuse not to swear in Democratic Arizona Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva. She would be the 218th vote to force likely passage of a measure to open up the government’s files on the late millionaire sex-fiend Jeffrey Epstein, including its likely references to President Donald Trump.

The cynics are right. The resistance among Trump and his allies to any reopening of the Epstein case is surely a motivation for Johnson’s obstruction — but I also can’t help but wonder whether the flap over the Grijalva swearing in is also a cover for something that is much more deeply disturbing.

The virtual disappearance of the House for most of three months, and the nagging fears that the body isn’t returning anytime soon (or ... ever?) is looking more and more essential to the authoritarian project of a movement that pleaded for a “Red Caesar“ to crush ”woke“ liberalism with unchecked executive power.

For the Founders who mapped out the American Experiment here in Philadelphia in 1787, the House was central to their vision of what democracy looks like. The idea was based on smaller districts and every-two-years elections that would closely bond its members to the people. It was, in other words, supposed to be the antidote to Western civilization’s monarchy problem.

For Trump, the absence of a functional Congress — despite the need to keep the world’s largest military, essential services like air traffic control, and definitely not-essential services like a masked secret police force running through the shutdown — makes it easier for him to run the country by fiat.

This is not a completely new problem. Over the course of my lifetime, I’ve watched Congress grow from a body fiercely committed to its own power and independence — especially in the early 1970s when the House and Senate went after Richard Nixon’s crimes and passed a War Powers Act aimed at restraining future Vietnams — to only caring about the fate of their party, and its president.

These “lawmakers” aren’t troubled when Trump no longer rules by law but by executive order. I’m pretty sure there’s a word for a would-be strongman who rules by dictate.

“I’m the speaker and I’m the president,” Trump has reportedly said in private conversations, according to inside sources blabbing to the New York Times. And in the supposed speaker of the House, Trump has found the perfect vessel for his ambitions. Johnson — a soft-spoken true believer who acts like he just emerged from a Manchurian cave whenever he’s asked a question he doesn’t want to answer, which is pretty much all of them — seems to love the trappings and the attention of the job, even as he cedes all of the job’s actual power to the president.

This supposed budget impasse isn’t only preventing the House from opening up the Epstein can of worms, but from doing any real oversight of a president who seems to have two or three Nixonian Watergates every week, including his family’s shady crypto deals and even drone consulting work. And that 1973 Wars Powers Act? Trump and his “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth are blowing up boats and murdering persons unknown off the coasts of Latin America, and the castrati up on Capitol Hill are not going to do a gosh-darned thing about it.

With Congress sidelined, Trump — in an extreme flouting of the Constitution — is issuing dictates (that word again) on who’s not getting our tax dollars, including 40 million Americans who depend on food aid to feed their families, and who is. The latter category seems to include the over-the-top drive to recruit 10,000 new masked goons for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and — quite tellingly — supporting the troops.

Earlier this month, Trump announced that, unlike other federal employees, active-duty soldiers would get paid, at least for now, with $8 billion that the regime “found” by killing off research and development projects that had been authorized by Congress. Adding some icing on that cake, the president then claimed that an “anonymous” donor — quickly outed as right-wing billionaire Timothy Mellon — had donated another $130 million toward a few more hours of military paychecks.

It’s probably worth noting that both of these moves are almost certainly illegal — in blatant violation of the “antideficiency” laws that Congress has been passing since 1870 to prevent an administration from spending money without authorization. Trump is clearly banking on popular political support for the troops, but also the neutering of Congress, a Justice Department that works for him and not the citizenry, and a corrupt and compliant Supreme Court will all lead to nobody stopping him.

But what’s even scarier is that Trump surely hopes that by paying the troops, he is also buying their loyalty, which he will surely need as his abuses of power continue to mount. If you study tyrants beginning with Benito Mussolini and Hitler all the way through Putin, you know that strongman rule depends on many things, but especially a rubber-stamp legislature-in-name-only and a faithful military.

So, yes, the House’s endless summer is about Epstein, but it’s about more than Epstein. With Speaker Johnson in Trump’s back pocket, the touring ex-Talking Head David Byrne isn’t the only performer “Burning Down the House” this autumn.

'Who are we kidding?' Fed-up Schumer snaps at right-wing journalist's question

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) snapped at a right-wing influencer, asking, "Who are we kidding here?" over her question about food stamp funding amid the government shutdown as Republicans push to end the program ahead of the Nov. 1 deadline.

Schumer and other Democrats held a news conference on Wednesday when a journalist from Lindell TV, founded by MyPillow CEO and President Donald Trump ally Mike Lindell, asked a question that included misinformation about the multibillion-dollar pool used for emergencies to fund the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, including government shutdowns.

The exchange was shared by the company on X.

"Wait a minute. Excuse me. It is not a dispute. It is fact they can use it and the Republicans say it," Schumer said.

"OK but there's only $5 or $6 billion to administer..." right-wing journalist Alison Steinberg responded, repeating Republican talking points about removing the program.

A testy Schumer shot back, "It does not cost $5 or $6 billion to administer."

"There's enough money to start feeding people right away, $6 billion is lot of money and they're using it for other things — $20 billion for Argentina, hundreds of millions for Kristi Noem's plane — who are we kidding here?" Schumer said.

"The bottom line is they can fund it just as in 2019, just as in other shutdowns, for a long period of time," he added.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) chimed in that the government could use the contingency fund of nearly $6 billion, which would give about three weeks of funding for SNAP, and that the Senate could have enough votes to pass bills from Sen. Ben Ray Luján (D-NM) and Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) — both of which Democrats support and would have about 60 votes for, she said.

"Why aren't they calling it up? They're not calling it up because the House isn't here to pass it. That's the way it works. The House would have to come here. They probably would have to vote on the Epstein files. But they're choosing to let kids go hungry instead of having to vote on the Epstein files. There's no doubt about it. They have been out for six weeks on vacation," Klobuchar said.

"Just think if they have all this money for Argentina, and all this money other things, they have enough money to keep funding SNAP and they know it," Schumer added. "And I just want to say what Luján said. [Speaker of the House Mike] Johnson just lies. He lied about immigration and the undocumented. He's lying about this. He just outright lies, plain and simple. It is not illegal and his own president has done it."

Dozens of states — both Republican and Democratic — are suing the Trump administration over the SNAP food stamp freeze.

🚨 @SenSchumer SNAPS When Pressed on SNAP Lies and Shutdown Math 🚨

LindellTV reporter asked:
If the @USDA fund doesn’t cover a full month of SNAP, why pretend it solves the shutdown?@SenSchumer spiraled. Raised his voice. Blamed @POTUS. Then ranted about Argentina,… pic.twitter.com/JEMIFgJPlh
— LindellTV (@RealLindellTV) October 29, 2025

Thanks to one man, Trump has successfully mounted a coup

“No political truth is of greater intrinsic value, or is stamped with the authority of more enlightened patrons of liberty: The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands … may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”
—James Madison, Federalist 47

“All the powers of government, legislative, executive, and judiciary, result to the legislative body. The concentrating of these in the same hands, is precisely the definition of despotic government. An ELECTIVE DESPOTISM was not the government we fought for; but one ... in which the powers of government should be so divided and balanced among several bodies of magistracy, as that no one could transcend their legal limits, without being effectually checked and restrained by the others.” (emphasis Jefferson’s)
— Thomas Jefferson, commentary on Federalist 48

Speaker Mike Johnson, presumably on the orders of Donald Trump, has unconstitutionally shut down the House of Representatives for over a month. The result is that Trump can now do pretty much whatever he wants without restraint.

He’s effectively King of America, at least for the moment. No limits, no constraints, no oversight. It’s the coup that finally worked.

If there is any one principle the Founders of this nation agreed on, it was that the first and primary function of Congress is to prevent a president from seizing king-like powers. It’s repeated over and over throughout their writings and carved into the Constitution itself.

That historical reality notwithstanding, “King” Donald has decided, all by himself, to demolish a large chunk of The People’s White House and replace it with a replica of Vladimir Putin’s Winter Palace’s Grand Throne Room so he can entertain billionaires with large, high-dollar fundraisers at the taxpayers’ expense without having to travel all the way to Mar-a-Largo.

He didn’t bother to get permission from the National Trust for Historic Preservation, nor did he submit plans for what people are now calling the “Epstein Ballroom” to the National Capital Planning Commission as any other historic building in D.C. would do. Loopholes in the law apparently allowed him to do this, however, because previous generations of lawmakers never imagined a president would be so insane as to one day demolish parts of the White House without consulting Congress or the people, so they saw no need to forbid it.

Which leaves only Congress as the single agency that could have thwarted Trump’s imperial plans. As any Constitutional scholar will tell you — as would Declaration of Independence author Thomas Jefferson or Father of the Constitution James Madison — that’s at the foundation of their job.

Congress is supposed to have oversight over the president, to constrain him with laws, budgets, and hearings, and keep his behavior within the law. Like they did when Richard Nixon was bugging the Democratic National Committee, or when Bill Clinton tried covering up his affair, or George W. Bush engaged in illegal torture after lying us into two wars.

They should be demanding answers about Trump’s lawless “murders” (quoting Colombia’s president) of people in the Caribbean, his imposing tariffs in violation of Article I of the Constitution, or his ICE agency’s brutality and illegal warantless arrests.

But to do that — even to have prevented his unilateral tearing down part of the White House — the House of Representatives would have to convene oversight hearings and create such a public uproar that Trump would back down, and there’s a real possibility that could have happened, particularly as Republicans like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Rep. Thomas Massey (R-KY) are starting to stand up to Trump.

The only problem is that Congress is on vacation. Apparently because Trump ordered it: we all know that if he wanted the House open, it would be open today.

Johnson has shut down the House by sending everybody home and then dragging out the recess. The growing concern is that he’s doing this at Trump’s demand in order to eliminate congressional oversight and thus enhance his now-near-dictatorial power.

Johnson has kept the chamber in indefinite recess during a government shutdown — the first Speaker in history to do so — while refusing to hold even pro forma sessions, seat a duly elected member (Adelita Grijalva, of Arizona), or allow continuing resolutions to reach the floor.

This is against the law — the supreme law — of the land. There is no joint resolution with the Senate allowing for a recess longer than three days, nor has the Senate passed such a standalone resolution. Article I, §5, cl.4 of the Constitution reads:

“Neither House, during the Session of Congress, shall, without the Consent of the other, adjourn for more than three days, nor to any other Place than that in which the two Houses shall be sitting.”

Congress didn’t even suspend its functioning for weeks like this during the Civil War or WWII; it’s literally never happened before.

So why would Johnson take this unprecedented step? What’s the emergency that’s greater than the War of 1812, WWI, 9/11, or any other crisis?

One possible answer is that it’s all about increasing Trump’s power as potentate, so he can do whatever he wants — like demolishing part of the White House — with no criticism or examination, no hearings or testimony, no experts or historians, from the House of Representatives.

By halting committee work, freezing discharge petitions through this naked (and unconstitutional) calendar manipulation, and withholding any date for Congress to reconvene, Johnson — obviously fulfilling Trump’s demand — has placed the entire legislative branch into a political form of suspended animation.

Why does Trump want this? Why does he care about the House of Representatives enough to put Mike Johnson in this difficult, illegal situation? This threat to Johnson’s legacy as Speaker?

The House, which only “exists” as a functional body when formally in session (normal or pro forma), has been rendered incapable of introducing bills, issuing subpoenas, or performing any oversight whatsoever of the executive branch, from Trump to Stephen Miller to Russell Vought, Kristi Noem, Pam Bondi, Kash Patel, or anybody else.

And even if the Senate were to step in and “legalize” Johnson’s recess, his dragging it out this long or longer would still have the same impact on weakening what’s left of our democracy and handing more and more uncountable power to Trump.

What Johnson has pulled off is a “procedural” coup: he (with Trump) now controls whether Congress exists at all. His keeping the House in recess concentrates extraordinary power in the Speaker’s office and, by extension, in Trump, whose directives Johnson slavishly follows.

With the calendar erased and committees paralyzed, transparency and accountability over the executive and judicial branches has disappeared; the public can’t track missed votes, can’t demand action, and federal agencies like Vought’s CBO and Noem’s ICE can operate entirely unchecked.

Border Czar Tom Homan suddenly has no oversight. Whatsoever. Ditto for Bondi, Noem, FCC Chair Brendan Carr, Patel, Miller, etc.

They can do whatever they damn well please, particularly since they appear to believe they’ll get pardoned if they get caught breaking the law.

Furthermore, the longer this paralysis continues, the more it normalizes an unbalanced government in which the president acts without legislative restraint.

If this continues, or Johnson falls into a pattern of repeatedly recessing Congress whenever Trump requires him to, Trump might as well declare himself king.

Without the House, even the Senate can’t act in a meaningful way; the Constitution requires that all legislation involving money — including any laws or resolutions that may tie Trump’s hands (since virtually all actions must be paid for) — must originate in the House. (Article 7, Clause 1: “All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives…”)

Without ever proclaiming it out loud, Mike Johnson has accomplished what open insurrection never could: the methodical, bureaucratic nullification of Congress itself, eliminating its ability to perform oversight over Trump.

All without even a peep or notice from the mainstream press, who are instead fixated on the government shutdown, seemingly thinking it’s the same thing as, or part of, the House recess.

If Johnson doesn’t back down, or if he does temporarily but this becomes a regular thing, our republic will have been really and truly turned into a kingdom — complete with a massive new throne room — before our very eyes.

'A disgrace': Mike Johnson busted over latest excuse for not swearing in Dem lawmaker

CNBC host Andrew Ross Sorkin called out House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) after he delayed swearing in Arizona Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva (D).

During a Thursday interview, CNBC host Joe Kernen noted that Johnson refused to seat the lawmaker after she said she would be the final vote needed to force the release of files on sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

"Okay, this is so absurd, and I've answered it so many times, but I'll do it again," Johnson complained. "I'm following the Pelosi precedent. She was speaker here a long time. She did this many times."

According to the speaker, former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) took 25 days to swear in Rep. Julia Letlow (R-VA) after her special election.

"Rep.-elect Grijalva can work for her constituents right now," he insisted. "Constituent services answering the phone. She has computers and 16 employees, and there's no excuse for it."

"The Epstein files are being released," he continued. "43,000 pages now. There was another batch of documents dumped on Friday of last week, which included Epstein's personal ledgers, his financial ledgers, his daily calendar, his flight logs, all the things that people have been saying they wanted. It's all coming out."

Sorkin pointed out that former Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R) had disputed Johnson's position.

"He made an interesting point, though, about what you're describing, which is that it is politics," the CNBC host remarked, "and I'm not suggesting it isn't. When you even look at what Nancy Pelosi did — we could, we could just, if we wanted, together, we could say this is a disgrace and condemn the fact that politics are taking place here and that there is a precedent."

"But I think rather than look to that, the question is, it doesn't have to be this way," he added. "This is a choice that's being made. And I think that is the issue here."

For his part, Johnson defended his refusal to reconvene the House during the shutdown.

"I mean, look, the CR that we sent over is a totally clean nonpartisan document," he argued. "This is the first time in American history that any party has had the audacity to shut the government down over a clean, nonpartisan CR."

In a lawsuit filed this week, Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes (D) noted that Pelosi had sworn in Letlow at a time of her choosing.

"[T]hen-Speaker Pelosi communicated with Dr. Letlow immediately after the election, and the swearing in was scheduled at a time convenient for all parties," the lawsuit stated. "Ms. Grijalva would be delighted if Speaker Johnson would contact her to commit to a mutually agreeable time, as Speaker Pelosi did for Dr. Letlow."

Why this agonizing government shutdown is absolutely, definitely, completely Trump's fault

Since there is a lot of confusion surrounding the shutdown, I thought it would be useful to go over some of the main points as I understand them. I will not pretend this is a comprehensive account, but there are some issues that are reasonably clear.

First, when Republicans claim that they are proposing a “clean” continuing resolution, they are ignoring a trillion-pound elephant in the room. In the past, when Congress passed a continuing resolution, it meant that the money appropriated in the resolution would be spent on the designated items. Under President Donald Trump, this is no longer true.

Trump has decided that because he was elected with a huge mandate (almost as large as Hillary Clinton’s in 2016) normal rules don’t apply to him. He has decided to unilaterally refuse to spend money appropriated by Congress.

He has done this through two routes. The first is through the recission process. Under this process, Congress can vote to reverse appropriations that were made in prior spending bills. Under the rules of the Senate, a recission bill cannot be filibustered so it can pass with just 50 votes. This was the process that Trump used to eliminate much of the foreign aid budget, as well as funding for public broadcasting.

The use of the recission process strips the Democrats of the filibuster power they hold with normal appropriations. The process had rarely been used in prior decades because it effectively means undermining the deals that were made to get an earlier budget bill approved.

But the situation gets even worse with the newly invented “pocket recission.”

With a pocket recission, Trump effectively just refuses to spend appropriated money and then tells Congress towards the end of the fiscal year, “What do you know, I never got around to spending the money you appropriated in this or that area.” Congress never gets a chance to vote since the fiscal year is reaching its conclusion. It would have to reappropriate new money in the next fiscal year if it wanted the money to be spent.

In the old days, this pocket recission likely would have been ruled unconstitutional, since it makes a mockery of Congress’ power to spend, but it’s not clear what this Supreme Court would say. At this point, Trump has gotten away with pocket recissions covering several billion dollars of spending. There is certainly no guarantee that he will not do pocket recissions again in the new fiscal year.

Trump’s recent decisions to “cancel” items like a train tunnel between New York and New Jersey would also fit into this category of pocket recission. The possibility of a pocket recission means that any deal on spending with Trump is pointless, since any time he gets angry about something he can totally ignore his commitment, sort of like his trade deals.

This is why it is disingenuous to say that what the Republicans are offering is a “clean” continuing resolution. If there is no commitment not to reverse appropriations through recission, and to prevent Trump from doing pocket recissions, Democrats cannot prevent any item in the continuing resolution from being subsequently cut. This means that they effectively have no control over the budget once the continuing resolution is approved.

The treatment and rules on recissions would ordinarily be the sort of thing that would be negotiated prior to the approval of a continuing resolution, but there were no negotiations.

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) sent the House home shortly after July 4, in large part to avoid any vote on releasing the Epstein files, and Trump ordered Republican senators not to negotiate. There was only one negotiating session involving the congressional leaders and Trump one day before the end of the fiscal year. When no agreement was reached, we got the shutdown.

The Republicans had obviously prepared for the shutdown. They immediately started screaming about how the shutdown was because Democrats wanted to spend trillions providing Obamacare to “illegals.” They knew this was a lie but apparently hoped they could sell it anyhow. (Undocumented immigrants do not qualify for health care coverage, except through a Reagan-era law requiring that emergency rooms treat anyone in need of care. This obviously is not the issue, since Republicans have not even proposed repealing this law.)

It seems they have mostly given up on the lie, which Speaker Johnson bizarrely claimed to have in writing, and instead are harping on how Obamacare has been a disastrous failure. This also flies in the face of reality. The share of the population that is uninsured fell from 18 percent in 2010 to around 8 percent at present.

More importantly, the ACA ended the ability of insurers to discriminate based on preexisting conditions. In the pre-ACA insurance market, people with serious health conditions, like cancer or heart disease, would have to pay ridiculous prices for insurance, or were unable to get coverage at all. The ACA changed this, requiring that all people within an age group were charged the same.

This change is a huge deal not only for the people who directly benefit by now being able to get affordable insurance, but really the entire pre-Medicare age population. In the pre-ACA world, most of the working age population got insurance through their employer. This meant that even people with serious health issues could get insurance in their employers’ pool.

But if a heart attack or some other health problem prevented them from working, they would be forced to get individual insurance as a person with a serious health condition. The ACA effectively provides insurance that people can get insurance.

The ACA also sharply slowed health care cost-growth. The cost of Obamacare, Medicare, and Medicaid in the years since the ACA passed came in far below projections. The Republicans are obviously hoping that people either do not remember or do not know about the state of the insurance market before the ACA. Few who do would want to go back to that world.

The other game that Republicans are playing is the claim that they would be happy to negotiate, once the Democrats pass the continuing resolution. This is a silly game, since there is zero reason to expect Republicans to negotiate in good faith, once the Democrats have no leverage. They had all summer and September to negotiate but refused to do so.

In fact, there is absolutely no reason they can’t negotiate now. In prior shutdowns both parties had no problem carrying on negotiations. Trump himself even negotiated in the 2019 shutdown, the longest in history. If there is some principle about not negotiating during a shutdown, the Republicans have just invented it now.

Anyhow, it appears the shutdown will continue until there is a major reversal of positions by one side or other. In the Democrats’ case, it would mean giving up any leverage they have on spending. In the Republicans’ case, it would mean agreeing to negotiate.

Dean Baker is the co-founder and the senior economist of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR). He is the author of several books, including "Getting Back to Full Employment: A Better bargain for Working People," "The End of Loser Liberalism: Making Markets Progressive," "The United States Since 1980," "Social Security: The Phony Crisis" (with Mark Weisbrot), and "The Conservative Nanny State: How the Wealthy Use the Government to Stay Rich and Get Richer." He also has a blog, "Beat the Press," where he discusses the media's coverage of economic issues.

'Little doubt': Mike Johnson directly accused of silencing Epstein victims to cover Trump

An analyst says House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) is using the government shutdown to cover for President Donald Trump's fears over the Epstein files, saying there is "little doubt" that Johnson wants to silence the survivors.

Salon's Amanda Marcotte writes Monday, as the government shutdown hits its 20th day, that it's still unclear "the full extent of the information the FBI collected on Epstein and his buddies, Trump’s determination to bury the evidence shows he’s deeply worried about the truth getting out.

"There can be little doubt that Johnson knows he’s covering for a sexual abuser. This has been adjudicated twice by civil courts, with juries finding that Carroll told the truth when she said Trump sexually abused her in a department store dressing room. There is also a tape of Trump bragging about grabbing women by the genitals in a way that directly echoes Carroll’s experience."

Johnson has "has already gone to great lengths to make sure FBI files chronicling the alleged misdeeds of Epstein and his associates never see the light of day," Marcotte writes, describing some of the backlash to the #MeToo movement.

"The purpose is silencing the victims of infamous child sex predator Jeffrey Epstein and his alleged fellow abusers," Marcotte writes. "Worse, it’s all done to protect President Donald Trump, a man who was already found by a civil jury in New York to have sexually abused journalist E. Jean Carroll in a department store dressing room."

Questions have also risen after Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) asked Attorney General Pam Bondi during a Senate hearing this month about “photos of President Trump with half-naked young women.” She refused to answer the question.

He has also refused to reopen the House of Representatives to swear-in Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva (D-AZ). She has said Johnson may be blocking her to prevent the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files.

Democrats have speculated that Johnson is trying to prevent her from signing on to a discharge petition circulated by Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) to force a vote on releasing evidence from Epstein's sex trafficking case, and Grijalva agreed that's possible.

"Johnson has denied the charge, but his pattern of behavior is clear," Marcotte writes. "He knows that if Trump turns against him, he would likely lose the speakership. Hiding the Epstein files appears to be Johnson’s first priority, even above reopening the government so federal employees can be paid."

'Truth leaks out': Mike Johnson buried for 'Freudian slip of the century' on Nazi ideology

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) was hounded on social media for an "epic Freudian slip" he made while attempting to distance the Republican Party from Nazi ideology.

The Louisiana Republican was asked to comment on the U.S. Capitol police investigation of a swastika spotted on a Zoom call in a cubicle used by Angelo Elia, a staffer for Rep. Dave Taylor (R-OH), and Johnson insisted the GOP stood against Nazism.

"That is not the principles of the Republican Party," Johnson said. "We stand for the founding principles of America – want me to articulate them for you right now? Individual freedom, limited government, the rule of law, peace through strength, fiscal responsibility, free markets, human dignity – the things that lead to human flourishing."

"We have stood against that, we have fought against the Nazis," Johnson added, and then apparently misspoke before insisting Nazi sympathies were a problem in both parties. "We defended that evil ideology. We roundly condemn it, and anybody in any party who espouses it, we're opposing that."

Johnson did not catch his apparent gaffe and attempt to correct it, but social media users certainly noticed.

"Epic Freudian slip," posted The Lincoln Project.

"Freudian slip of the century," said the House Majority PAC. "Mike Johnson says 'we've defended that evil ideology' while talking about Nazis."

"Lord, the Freudian slippage was so loud, I think it caused a sonic boom," agreed X user medbeds & ballyhoo.

"Mike Johnson accidentally said 'defended' instead of 'defeated' when talking about the US fighting Nazis in WWII in response to a question about the group chat," reported HuffPost correspondent Arthur Delaney, referring to a newly revealed group chat where Young Republicans leaders used racial slurs and praised Adolf Hitler.

"Speaker Mike Johnson is accidentally honest," added Melanie D'Arrigo, executive director for the Campaign for New York Health.

"Mike Johnson says they defended that evil Nazi ideology. Rapid-fire lies jam the tongue, and the truth leaks out," said Bluesky user Tom Wellborn. "The GOP plays freedom hymns while winking at Nazis, swimming in racist group chats. The mask slips, the brownshirt shows. Evil spreads."

"'We defended Nazi ideology.' -Mike Johnson. 'Stop attacking pedophiles!' - Ted Cruz. 'The President has plenary authority.' - Stephen Miller," noted X user Geoff Geoff on Thursday. "They're just as bad at keeping their agenda hidden as they are at being a functional government."

Mike Johnson and Hakeem Jeffries agree to jointly appear on C-SPAN program

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) have agreed to a joint appearance on C-SPAN.

The network announced on Wednesday that both leaders had said they would appear together on C-SPAN's Ceasefire program. No formal date was set for the joint appearance.

While speaking to C-SPAN earlier this month, Johnson said he was willing to "sit down with Hakeem Jeffries, my counterpart."

Jeffries later accepted the challenge.

"I look forward to that," the Democratic leader said Tuesday, according to The Hill. "We’re going to try to get it scheduled, absolutely."

Johnson has previously refused to debate Jeffries.

"We don't need to waste time on that nonsense, those debates have been had," Johnson said following the government shutdown. "I respect him, but we all know what he's trying to do there."

Mike Johnson defends 'faithful colleague' who was accused of 'beating a girlfriend'

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) praised Rep. Cory Mills (R-FL) after a judge issued a restraining order against him under Florida's "dating violence" law.

At a Wednesday press conference, Johnson feigned ignorance after multiple reporters asked him about the restraining order.

"A judge in Florida issued a restraining order against Cory Mills for threatening, harassing behavior from an ex-girlfriend," the reporter noted. "And according to these court documents, he also instructed a congressional staffer to reach out to her after that initial temporary restraining order was found."

"Do you think this is an ethical violation, and do you think any disciplinary action is warranted?"

"I have not heard or looked into any details of that," Johnson insisted. "We have a House Ethics Committee; if it warrants that, I'm sure they'll look into that."

"Mr. Speaker, it's been reported for a while," a second reporter observed. "Cory Mills was accused of beating a girlfriend in his D.C. apartment. He was accused of stolen valor by the people that he claimed to have saved on the battlefield that have been on the record said that he did not save them."

"I mean, this has been happening since the beginning of the year," she added. "Are you concerned about these allegations against Cory Mills?"

"Look, you have to ask Representative Mills about that," Johnson shrugged. "I mean, he's been a faithful colleague here. I know his work on the Hill."

"I mean, I don't know all the details of all the individual allegations and what he's doing in his outside life," he remarked. "You have to ask him about that. Let's talk about the things that are really serious."