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House Speaker Mike Johnson
Johnson avoids government shutdown, sidesteps Trump’s demands
But Donald Trump is unlikely to thank him, as the deal came at the cost of Republicans dropping the SAVE Act, an immigration proposal that included new proof-of-citizenship requirements for voter registration. Trump has told Congress not to pass a spending plan without “every ounce” of the proposal and has yet to comment since it was dropped.
Beyond the presidential election, Johnson was also likely motivated to protect Republicans in down-ballot races in November.
The agreed-upon plan includes “only the extensions that are absolutely necessary” besides an additional $231 million to boost Secret Service protections for the candidates during the upcoming presidential election and into next year.
The deal extends government funding through Dec. 20, all but ensuring that the lame-duck period between the election and the inauguration of a new Congress is engulfed in spending disputes. Just in time for the holidays!
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) speaks during Day 2 of the Republican National Convention (RNC), at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, U.S., July 16, 2024.
US House speaker pulls bill that would avoid a government shutdown
Too clever by half, Mike. With a US government shutdown looming on Oct. 1, and the election to follow in November, US House Speaker Mike Johnson had a plan.
He proposed that a fresh six-month government funding bill be tied to a new election security measure that would require people to provide proof of citizenship in order to vote. That bill grew out of longstanding but unsubstantiated Republican concerns about non-citizens voting in sizable numbers.
Donald Trump, who’s built much of his campaign on grievances about illegal immigration, has called for a shutdown if Congress won’t pass the election security measure.
But that seems to have backfired. Democrats want Johnson to instead work on a bipartisan standalone government funding measure. A handful of GOP lawmakers are also opposed – some because the spending bill doesn’t address their deficit concerns, others because it would freeze Pentagon budgets at current levels, handcuffing defense planners.
Lacking the votes, Johnson pulled the bill ahead of a scheduled vote on Wednesday.
He plans to work on the defectors this weekend and may still go ahead with a vote next week. But with a razor-thin GOP majority, it’s a gamble, which means both parties are engaged in a game of chicken to avoid a deeply unpopular government shutdown just weeks before the election.
U.S. Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA), the latest House Republican nominee for House Speaker, reacts to former Speaker nominee and current House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) voting for Johnson during another round of voting to pick a new Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, U.S., October 25, 2023.
Republicans set sights on divorce laws
A growing cadre of GOP social conservatives as senior as House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senator JD Vancesay no-fault divorce has undermined family stability, and they attribute a litany of social ills to it. Vance told high schoolers in California in 2022 that “even violent” marriages should continue in some cases. Johnson and his spouse, meanwhile, are in a covenant marriage, a rare legal institution available in only three states that essentially waives no-fault divorce rights preemptively.
Ronald Reagan signed the first no-fault divorce law in the US as California’s governor in 1969, allowing one spouse to end a marriage unilaterally. Before then, anyone who wished to end a marriage needed to prove their partner had committed an offense like adultery, abandonment, or abuse. The criteria could be tough to meet — in some places, a woman could prove she had been beaten by her husband, for example, but be forced to stay married if the jury did not find he acted with “cruelty.”
The stats speak for themselves when it comes to women’s safety: Between 1976 and 1985, as no-fault divorce laws proliferated, domestic violence against both men and women fell 30%, while the number of women murdered by partners fell 10%. Research suggests that over an even longer term, suicide rates for women declined between 8 and 16%.
A whopping 81% of Americans say divorce is “morally acceptable,” according to Gallup, but they actually aren’t getting divorced that often: Divorce rates are near 40-year lows. Still, you know, maybe talk to a lawyer if you’re unhappily married before it’s too late.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) talks to reporters after surviving a vote to remove him from the Speaker’s position, Washington, DC, May 8, 2024. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) introduced a motion to vacate the Speaker’s office, which was defeated by a motion to table the issue immediately afterward.
Vibes-based lawmaking isn’t helping us!
With so many problems in the world right now, it seems odd to spend time trying to solve ones that don’t exist.
But that’s exactly what happened this week when House Speaker Mike Johnson proposed a new law to crack down on non-citizens voting in US federal elections.
The legislation, known as the SAVE Act, would outlaw non-citizen voting – which is already illegal – and require proof of citizenship in order to register to vote.
Now, some people, mostly Republicans, say it’s not unreasonable to expect adults to produce ID before making a decision about who should lead the “free world.” Others, mostly Democrats, point to evidence that voter ID requirements – particularly for passports or birth certificates – tend to suppress eligible voter turnout, particularly for minority voters. There are fair arguments on both sides.
The Supreme Court, for its part, has struck down a state-led requirement for citizenship documents, and a North Carolina court is weighing the issue of voter ID more broadly as we speak.
But leave all that aside for a moment. There’s a more fundamental problem with Johnson’s bill. It’s aimed at ghosts.
Asked about the scale of the problem of non-citizen voting, Johnson said:
“The answer is that it’s unanswerable.”
“We all know intuitively,” he explained, “that a lot of illegals are voting in federal elections.”
This vibes-based intuition parrots a longstanding talking point of GOP boss Donald Trump, who has complained – falsely – that voter fraud cost him the popular vote in 2016 and the election itself in 2020. With just six months until his rematch with Joe Biden, Trump and his allies are keen to seed the idea that voter fraud – particularly among the rapidly rising undocumented migrant population – will decide the outcome. With 60% of Republicans worried about the credibility of the electoral system, Trump knows his audience.
But the question for Johnson is not unanswerable. The answer is that there is, in fact, no evidence for these claims.
In 2017, for example, the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU looked closely at the 2016 election, a contest in which Donald Trump claimed he had lost the popular vote because 3-5 million illegal immigrants had voted for Hillary Clinton.
After reviewing 23 million voter names, in 42 precincts, in 12 states, how many instances of non-citizen voting did the Brennan study find?
Thirty. That’s 0.0001% of the votes.
It turns out non-citizens, in perpetual danger of deportation, aren’t eager to write their names down on a voting register, leaving indelible evidence of a federal crime.
This tracks with other studies of voter fraud, nearly all of which show that it’s exceedingly rare. The state of Georgia, for example, conducted a review of its voter rolls in 2022 and found that of the four million votes cast by Georgians in the midterms of that year, there were 17 instances of voter fraud.
That’s not to say there aren’t real concerns about the election. How might AI distort voter perceptions of the candidates? Will foreign powers try to sway voters’ choices? Will election workers be safe? Nearly 40% of them say they have experienced threats, violence, or harassment, in part by people riled up with false narratives about fraud.
But instead of addressing those serious worries, the Speaker of the House is proposing to Make Illegal Things Illegal Again™, based on information he does not have, about a phenomenon that doesn’t exist.
This kind of vibes-based lawmaking isn’t going to SAVE us from anything.
What's next after MTG fails in bid to oust House Speaker Mike Johnson
Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington, DC, shares his perspective on US politics.
This is what we're watching in US Politics this week: More turmoil in the House.
Georgia member Marjorie Taylor Greene, who's made quite a name for herself as an outspoken opponent of Republican leadership and a prolific fundraiser online, this week triggered another motion to vacate the speaker. The second this year. Only this time it was against Mike Johnson, the speaker who replaced Kevin McCarthy after he was removed during a motion to vacate earlier in the year.
The big change this time was that Democrats rallied to Johnson's side, defending him against the Republicans that tried to take him out and resoundingly defeating the measure, which really takes a lot of the wind out of the sails of future rebellions against the Republican speaker at least for the rest of 2024. Democrats and moderate Republicans are both tired of this level of chaos and want to defang the Republicans, who want to make life harder for the leader of the House of Representatives. That doesn't mean they're all allies now however. Mike Johnson is going to spend the rest of the year pushing very partisan measures across the floor of the House of Representatives in order to draw a contrast between Republicans and Democrats that voters understand when they go to cast a ballot in November. There will be a very small number of must pass legislation coming up.
Right now, Congress is working on reauthorization of the FAA. Later in the year, they're going to have to once again pass a budget bill to keep the government funded. Those will probably be very bipartisan measures. And one of the big ironies of the extreme polarization that's happening in the House, including within the Republican faction, is that the House is now effectively functioning more like the bipartisan Senate, which requires a supermajority of 60 senators, and which is always a bipartisan coalition in order to get almost anything done.
That's now the situation that the House finds itself in. The House is typically the significantly more partisan body. But because of the Republican dissenters against Johnson, they've turned the House into a much more bipartisan place, which really won't get much done this year. So one lesson from Marjorie Taylor Greene this week is that if she comes to the king, she better not miss, she came for the king and she missed. And now she's going to find herself on the outs with the Republicans, probably for the rest of the year.
Thanks for watching. Tune in next week.
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House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) speaking at a press conference at the U.S. Capitol.
Mike Johnson’s seat is still hot
But that doesn’t mean Johnson can relax. A strong majority of Democrats provided the votes that spared him, and a number of them, including Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), said this week that Johnson can’t count on them to save him from future challenges.
In addition, Donald Trump, who didn’t favor Johnson’s decision to give US aid for Ukraine a House vote, isn’t offering Johnson any guarantees either. Following Greene’s failed insurrection, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee posted on Truth Social that “this is not the time” for conservative Republicans to defenestrate Johnson. “We’re not in a position” to vote him out, but “at some point, we may very well be.”
The bottom line: Both Democrats and Trump will continue to press Johnson for concessions at every turn. His position remains safe for now, but the speaker of the House is still waiting to exhale.Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Mike Johnson (R-La.) attends a news conference at Columbia University. April 24, 2024.
Chaos on Campus: Speaker Johnson's visit fans the flames at Columbia as protests go global
“There are so many cameras on campus my mom is going to find out I vape on the cover of the New York Times,” said a senior at Columbia University who I shall keep anonymous for her mother’s sake. But her remark accurately summarizes what it's like on campus these days.
On Tuesday, the cameras were out for House Speaker Mike Johnson and several other GOP lawmakers, who held a press conference about antisemitism on the steps of Columbia’s iconic Low Library.
Johnson demanded that the White House crack down on campus protests and called for the resignation of Columbia President Nemat "Minouche" Shafik.
“If these threats and intimidation are not stopped,” he warned, looking out at the two dozen or so tents of the Gaza Solidarity Encampment erected a week ago, “there is an appropriate time for the National Guard.”
Down below, hundreds of students booed and chanted, “Mike, you suck!”
“All students deserve protection, but Jewish students need to be able to go to class,” said House Education Committee Chair Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., in an interview with GZERO following the press conference. “Congress is investigating to see if further government action is necessary to ensure the encampment is cleared.”
With the end of the semester just days away, many Jewish students have left campus early or are participating in classes online because the protests on and outside of campus have made them feel unsafe.
The night before, the university had, at the last minute, extended by 48 hours a deadline for protesters to clear the encampment or face possible police action after organizers had agreed to take down several tents and remove non-Columbia people from the encampment.
But the protesters continue to demand three things: that the university’s endowment divest from all companies and organizations that do business with Israel or are profiting from the war, that the university publish a list of all its investments, and that the school grant amnesty for the student protesters who have been suspended in earlier crackdowns on Gaza-related protests.
“We need the university to meet our demands. That is the only way the encampment will be moved,” said students representing the protesters during a press conference. The students have vowed to stay at least through graduation on May 15 if their demands aren’t met.
Outside of Columbia, the encampment and arrests have inspired student protests around the globe. Twenty protesters were arrested at the University of Texas campus in Austin, as new protests continued erupting in places like Pittsburgh and San Antonio. Solidarity encampments have sprung up at over 40 colleges in the United States and as far afield as universities in Cairo, Paris, and Sydney, Australia.
Tomorrow brings what could be a sizable pro-Israel protest led by several prominent Christian conservative activists in the early evening and then another tense night of negotiations for the encampment.
One thing is for sure: The cameras will only multiply as this standoff comes to a head — so students who don't want their parents to catch them vaping should probably stay home.
Why the US is sending aid to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi, everybody. Ian Bremmer here. And a Quick Take to kick off your week. A big $90 billion package that has been approved by the US House of Representatives, going through the Senate shortly after months of debate and, all of the package, all three major pieces of it, have some significant, complicated features.
First of all, the biggest piece for Ukraine, $60 billion, massive military support.
They had been in danger of losing significant more territory. This certainly shores them up. It helps the Ukrainians. It makes the Europeans panic less, but, you know, can they longer term hold on? What is the end game? The Ukrainians are, of course, running short not just of material to fight, but also air defense capabilities and, critically, people, soldiers. It's much harder for them to get people for the front lines than it is for the authoritarian, and much larger populated Russia. And so, the intention is that the Ukrainians don't fall apart, but of course, longer term, the idea that the US will continue to be able to provide 60 billion in support year after year. Certainly not true if Trump becomes president, probably not true if Biden wins a second term. What you really want to do is try to find a way to get them in a better position so that negotiations, inevitably, that need to occur with Russia, can be more productive and more constructive from the Ukrainian side, from the European side, from the NATO side. The US kick the can on this last year when the Americans, were in much better position supporting Ukraine. Now it's harder. Always is the case is that you think that things are going to get better. You don't feel like taking the political risk and as a consequence you extend and pretend. And now they're in a worse position. So I'm glad that the money came through. I'm glad the Ukrainians, are still fighting courageously and want to fight courageously. But of course, longer term, this war leads to some degree of partition where the Ukrainians are losing their land.
Israel, closest ally of the United States in the Middle East. Some 17 billion in military support for Israel, also some 9 billion in humanitarian aid in Gaza in this plan.
But, of course, increasingly, the United States does not support Israel continuing to fight against Hamas in Gaza. They want to see a lot more protection for Palestinian civilians, which the Israelis have been reluctant to put in place. They don't want to see a ground offensive into Rafah. Over a million Palestinians shelter in there. The Israelis are fully intent on continuing with that, proceeding with it. They did want to see a cease-fire that was linked directly to a hostage release. Now, increasingly, the US is talking about those two things as critical but delinked. And at the same time as the US is providing all this money, you have sanctions being placed by the United States on battalions of the Israeli Defense Forces engaged in human rights violations. This shows just how impossible this position is for President Biden to maneuver domestically, not to mention internationally. The US is overwhelmingly, the one country that is most supportive of Israel. Biden is overwhelmingly the political leader that is most supportive of Israel. But most of his constituents are not. And this is absolutely going to hurt him, even though it's a foreign policy issue and they don't usually play that heavily in recent decades in the election coming up in November. And you’ll see it, of course, across campuses all over the country, including my own at Columbia.
And then finally Taiwan. And this is in a sense the least controversial, because everyone on the Democratic and Republican side pretty much supports more support for Taiwan, is opposed to China. It's very easy to get lots of legislation that makes life more difficult for China. At the same time, though, the long term strategy of the United States is to make Taiwan less important, less important for the Americans in making sure that semiconductor production, moves from Taiwan to the United States, to other allies, not just a few miles off of the mainland Chinese coast, but also export controls that prevent the Chinese from getting advanced semiconductors from Taiwan as well. In other words, the big US strategy is not just arming the Taiwanese and helping them defend themselves, but also making Taiwan fundamentally less important to mainland China. and one of the main reasons that the Chinese would not be interested in attacking Taiwan long term or squeezing them hard economically long term, is because they're so indispensable to the Chinese economy. This is not going to be the case long term.
In all three of these areas, you've got the United States with friends, but they are less aligned with strategically than they are tactically. And that means that this money that we see going forward is all about kicking the can on short term gains that make sense politically for the US right now. But long term do not resolve the challenges that exist for the US with these countries.
That's it for me and I'll talk to you all real soon.
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