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THE TOP
Where Johnson is. Where he might go. And can he survive?
Happy Thursday morning.
We wish we could say we didn’t see this coming.
Speaker Mike Johnson’s 1,547-page overstuffed CR officially died on Wednesday, less than a day after the congressional leadership posted it online.
At first, the House Republican Conference was aghast — truly aghast — at the size and scope of the bill. And then Elon Musk, President-elect Donald Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance put the final nails in the coffin, saying the mammoth package was absurd, obscene and must include a hike in the debt limit or else.
Johnson’s months-long effort to craft a CR went up in smoke — quite predictably.
We’re going to explain all the dynamics the leadership in both parties are now facing.
The options and what’s next. At some point today, House Republicans and Democrats will likely have separate party meetings to chart their path forward. Democrats have announced their meeting for 9 a.m. We’ll talk more about them below.
But make no mistake — this is Johnson and Trump’s mess to solve. And we’re inching toward a shutdown as government funding runs out at midnight Friday.
Johnson was mostly MIA Wednesday, holed up in his Capitol office for hours without showing his face. Even the House GOP leadership team felt like they were being kept in the dark about what was happening.
Late in the evening, Johnson met with Vance, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, Reps. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), Chip Roy (R-Texas) and Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.), Appropriations Committee Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) and Rules Committee Chair Michael Burgess (R-Texas). Jordan and Roy are conservative hardliners. Diaz-Balart is a senior appropriator.
As Scalise left around 10 p.m., he told reporters “We’re not there yet” when asked whether the debt-limit boost would be part of any new government-funding plan. “A lot of things have come up,” Scalise added.
A somewhat obvious play may be a funding bill with a two-year debt-limit extension. Why? Because Trump supports increasing the debt limit now. Given how volatile Trump was during his first term, there’s no guarantee he’ll do this again. (For what it’s worth, Biden administration officials estimate the debt limit won’t be reached until sometime next summer. GOP leaders were planning to handle it in a reconciliation bill).
Trump is giving Johnson cover for the time being. It’s limited, however. Because Trump, once again, has put his party in a bind. There are probably dozens of Republicans who have never voted for raising the debt ceiling. Now Trump is forcing them to do so.
Here’s another major sticking point — what happens to the $100 billion in disaster funding and an extension of the farm bill? Good question. Those are pretty much must-pass bills. So Johnson needs to find a way forward on those too.
The key question here is whether Roy and other conservatives are pushing for offsets to the disaster spending. The Texas Republican frequently demands offsets to emergency spending — and those will be a non-starter with Democrats and the Senate. But spending cuts could be attractive to Team Trump.
Johnson has almost no choice in another matter — he’ll probably need to take this bill to the House Rules Committee today. That means whatever Johnson does will have to pass muster with Roy and Reps. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.). Democrats won’t help Republicans at any part of this process. This is all on the GOP now.
And what about the numerous other provisions in the CR package? They’re dead, forget about them. Maybe they can be enacted in the next Congress.
How damaged is Johnson? Let’s start at the beginning. It always made sense for Johnson to clear the decks by passing funding through September 2025. But he didn’t want to. Johnson aides said it would be an untenable play call. Scalise — the most seasoned member of leadership — advocated for a series of minibuses. He lost that argument.
Trump even said Wednesday night that “[e]verything should be done, and fully negotiated” before he takes office. That was the case a lot of people made to Johnson.
Johnson compounded his problems by going the CR route. He turned the CR into a quasi-omnibus by allowing so many different provisions to be included. Johnson insisted on billions of dollars in economic aid to farmers, which opened the door wide open for Democrats to pile on their requests. And Johnson felt like he had to accede to them because the Louisiana Republican knew conservatives would never support anything.
The problem got worse when Johnson didn’t put the CR on the floor Wednesday despite pleas to do so from other members of his leadership team. Democrats and even some Republicans think the CR would’ve passed at that point.
It was obvious to us — and most other members of Johnson’s leadership team — that the speaker badly misjudged the mood of the House Republican Conference. Johnson blindsided members, which is worse. And that’s to say nothing of his miscalculation of Trump’s desires, wants and equities in the fight. And how about Democrats? Can they trust Johnson to do another deal after this episode?
So how damaged is Johnson? The speaker election is in 15 days. There are members — more than a dozen — who assert that Johnson won’t be the speaker in the next Congress. It’s early. Let’s see how Johnson gets out of this mess.
And how about Trump? This is how Trump governs. Nothing is agreed to until he signs a bill into law. But let’s just say that the core of Trump’s frustration — that Congress was leaving him to handle a debt-limit increase next year — isn’t absurd. The GOP leadership should’ve always tried to deal with the debt limit in the lame duck.
— Jake Sherman, Melanie Zanona and John Bresnahan
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HOUSE DEMS
Jeffries, House Democrats face big moment on gov’t funding showdown
The collapse of the bipartisan CR deal is a major test for House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer — but especially Jeffries.
In repeated statements on Wednesday, the New York Democrat hammered Speaker Mike Johnson — who Jeffries helped keep in office earlier this year — for reneging on a bipartisan agreement despite weeks of closely held negotiations.
Jeffries and top House Democrats also declared their members would only vote for the bipartisan CR package that’s already been unveiled. If Johnson wants to pass a revised CR with a debt-limit increase — as President-elect Donald Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance have demanded — then he’s going to have to do it with GOP votes alone. And that means dozens of Republicans who’ve never voted for a debt-limit bill are going to have to do so now.
“House Republicans have been ordered to shut down the government and hurt everyday Americans all across this country,” a defiant Jeffries told reporters after Johnson pulled the plug on the CR deal. “House Republicans will now own any harm that is visited upon the American people that results from a government shutdown or worse.”
In some ways, this lame-duck drama is the best thing that happened to Democrats — although maybe not the country — since Election Day. A demoralized Democratic Party has been grappling over its failed campaign messaging, pointing fingers at President Joe Biden and wondering whether it can still connect with blue-collar Americans.
But after Wednesday’s CR implosion, Johnson and the House GOP Conference are in disarray, with the speaker facing questions over whether he can survive this debacle. Trump is threatening to primary Republicans who don’t vote for a debt-limit increase. And Democratic lawmakers are looking to hype up a rivalry between Trump and mega-billionaire Elon Musk, who spent all day trashing Johnson’s CR plan before the president-elect joined in as well.
The House Democratic Caucus will meet at 9 a.m. to discuss what comes next.
State-by-state impact. Rep. Rosa DeLauro (Conn.), top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, will circulate a brand-new chart detailing on a state-by-state basis how much federal aid will be lost if the bipartisan CR package is derailed by Republicans. You can see the chart here, first in Punchbowl News.
There’s more than $100 billion in disaster funding included in the bipartisan package, plus $30 billion in aid for farmers and an assortment of other provisions. Johnson may strip all this out under pressure from Trump, Musk and conservatives.
According to Democrats, Florida will lose out on $10.8 billion in new aid, North Carolina $9.3 billion, California nearly $7.1 billion, Texas $5.4 billion, Virginia $3.7 billion and South Carolina $2.3 billion, among others.
“It is dangerous for House Republicans to have folded to the demands of the richest man on the planet, who nobody elected, after leaders in both parties came to an agreement to fund the government and provide this disaster aid,” said DeLauro, who also slammed “President Musk.”
— John Bresnahan and Max Cohen
Weekday mornings, The Daily Punch brings you inside Capitol Hill, the White House, and Washington.
Listen NowINTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE
Johnson weighs pair of GOP women for House Intel
The Republican Steering Committee may have finished populating all the standing House committees this week, but Speaker Mike Johnson still has some major decisions of his own to make, including filling three open seats on the Intelligence Committee.
Some names in the mix for the coveted committee slots include GOP Reps. Claudia Tenney (N.Y.) and Laurel Lee (Fla.), we’re told. Johnson is still weighing his picks and isn’t expected to make an official decision until the New Year.
Lee, a former federal prosecutor who was previously passed over for a spot on the panel, told us she’d be interested in serving on the committee but had no insight as to whether she’d make the cut. Tenney didn’t return a request for comment.
The secretive panel, ground zero for some significant partisan clashes in recent years, oversees the entire U.S. intelligence community. Its members receive some of the most sensitive information about the United States and its allies, so there’s always a lot of internal jockeying to get on the committee.
There are going to be three vacancies on the Intel panel because House GOP Conference Chair Elise Stefanik and Rep. Michael Waltz (R-Fla.) are leaving Congress for Trump administration jobs, while Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio) is retiring. With Stefanik’s departure, there would be no Republican women serving on the panel. Tenney, also a New Yorker like Stefanik, is seen as very likely to land a spot on the committee.
As speaker, Johnson gets to make unilateral decisions about who serves on the committee. But Johnson’s choices have also landed him in hot water in the past. Johnson came under scrutiny earlier this year for blindsiding House Intel Committee Chair Mike Turner (R-Ohio) with two controversial picks for the panel: Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), who had his phone confiscated by the FBI as part of the probe into the Jan. 6 insurrection, and Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Texas), a former White House doctor who was once the subject of a scathing inspector general report.
– Melanie Zanona and Jake Sherman
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CHINA POLICY
Moolenaar pushes trade panel to ban Chinese BOE screens
Rep. John Moolenaar (R-Mich.) is urging the International Trade Commission to ban imports of certain screens from the Chinese firm BOE after the company was found to be infringing patents from Samsung.
Moolenaar, who chairs the House’s select committee on China, told ITC Chair Rhonda Schmidtlein in a letter that in failing to put in place a ban, “BOE’s IP theft will continue to benefit the [People’s Republic of China’s] military-civil fusion strategy.”
Advanced LCD and OLED display systems are known for their presence in televisions and other consumer products. But Moolenaar has previously argued that the displays are also of strategic importance because of their role in weapons systems “from Javelin missiles to drones.”
“BOE’s growing dominance in the display industry will leave the United States overly reliant on the PRC for an advanced technology critical to military applications,” Moolenaar wrote in the letter, which was sent Wednesday.
Moolenaar’s committee is poised to take an increasingly prominent role in congressional technology policy. Up until now, lawmakers have focused on the supply chain for advanced semiconductors, as well as TikTok, as ways of pushing back against China.
With President-elect Donald Trump’s administration likely to be even more hawkish, Moolenaar has aimed to crack down on China’s role in multiple American supply chains.
Moolenaar’s recent proposal to withdraw permanent normal trade relations with China listed several pages of industries that should be targeted with extensive tariffs because of their strategic significance, including displays, cloud storage, medicines, batteries and energy production.
The letter is part of a request for public comment on an initial ITC determination that BOE infringed on Samsung’s patents, but that BOE’s actions don’t sufficiently impact U.S. industry to warrant a ban. Samsung is based in South Korea.
“The Committee urges the Commission to impose a wide-ranging remedy in this investigation that will protect U.S. national security interests,” Moolenaar wrote.
And there’s more: We asked Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) if he learned anything from his Take It Down Act making it into the CR when other bills to tackle social media failed. The measure seeks to make it easier to have revenge porn and deepfake nudes removed from social media.
Of course, landing in the CR is no longer the win it seemed earlier this week — and the bill’s fate is now up in the air as Congress scrambles to come up with a new strategy to avoid a government shutdown.
But it does teach us a little bit about Cruz’s approach as he prepares to chair the Senate Commerce Committee next Congress.
Cruz suggested that dealing with very targeted problems was the key to making it into the original CR.
“When there’s a specific problem, we should legislate to address that specific problem, but we shouldn’t get in the way of the innovation and productivity and job creation that AI promises,” Cruz said.
— Ben Brody
… AND THERE’S MORE
Habitat for Humanity has hired Cozen O’Connor Public Strategies to lobby on “issues related to affordable housing.”
— Jake Sherman
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MOMENTS
ALL TIMES EASTERN
10 a.m.
President Joe Biden will get his daily intelligence briefing.
4:40 p.m.
Biden and First Lady Jill Biden will depart Wilmington, Del., en route to the White House, arriving at 5:30 p.m.
CLIPS
NYT
“Europe Has a Leadership Vacuum. How Will it Handle Trump?”
– Mark Landler in London and Jim Tankersley in New York
Bloomberg
“Elon Musk Taps Loyalists to Boost Staffing for DOGE Effort”
– Shirin Ghaffary, Gregory Korte and Sarah McBride
FT
“Donald Trump’s pledges seep into Federal Reserve’s outlook”
– Colby Smith
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