Category: Mike johnson
9 Republicans aid Democrats to advance Obamacare subsidies
Nine Republicans voted to advance the Democrat-led health care bill Wednesday, defying the GOP to extend Obamacare subsidies.
Republican Reps. Nick LaLota of New York, Thomas Kean of New Jersey, Mike Lawler of New York, Ryan Mackenzie of Pennsylvania, David Valadao of California, Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, Max Miller of Ohio, Rob Bresnahan of Pennsylvania, and Maria Elvira Salazar of Florida joined Democrats to bring a vote on the health care subsidies that expired at the end of 2025.
‘DEMOCRATS have increased health care costs exponentially.’
Notably Lawler, Fitzpatrick, Bresnahan, and Mackenzie also signed onto House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries’ (D-N.Y.) discharge petition last month that would have forced a House vote to extend the subsidies.
A final vote on the bill is now expected to take place Thursday.
RELATED: Senate tanks GOP solution to Obamacare subsidy problems
Kent Nishimura/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Lawler defended his vote aiding Democrats, saying the solution to fix the “broken” health care system is “through a bipartisan approach.”
“Republicans and Democrats can agree that our healthcare system is broken and must be fixed through a bipartisan approach,” Lawler wrote. “Enough of the blame game on both sides. Let’s focus on actually delivering affordable healthcare for Americans.”
RELATED: California Republican suddenly dies at age 65
Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has maintained that the Affordable Care Act, especially the COVID-era subsidies, are responsible for skyrocketing premiums.
“Obamacare was created and passed entirely by DEMOCRATS,” Johnson said in a post on X during the 2025 government shutdown. “Since Obamacare took effect, health insurance premiums have SKYROCKETED. The Obamacare COVID-era subsidies were also passed entirely by DEMOCRATS, and set to expire at the end of this year.”
“DEMOCRATS have increased health care costs exponentially, and are now shutting down the government — as they try to cover up THEIR OWN FAILURES and somehow blame Republicans.”
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Nuke the filibuster or brace for the next impeachment campaign
Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) recently sent me a seven-page memo outlining the House Freedom Caucus’ priorities for 2026. It is outstanding.
Nothing in it calls for knock-down, drag-out ideological fights. These are 60%-70% issues with the American public, not just conservatives: secure the border, secure elections, expand health care freedom, cut government waste, and eliminate fraudulent programs.
We still have agency as free Americans — if we choose to exercise it in service of the good, the true, and the beautiful. Hope is an action word. But so is fear.
Depending on what happens with the economy over the next six or seven months, this agenda may represent the GOP’s last realistic chance to hold the House and avoid what betting markets currently put at a 53% likelihood: President Trump facing yet another impeachment next year.
And it will not stop with him.
Democrats will come after War Secretary Pete Hegseth for killing “innocent” drug traffickers. They will target Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for disrupting the childhood vaccine schedule. They will pursue Secretary of State Marco Rubio for alleged “war crimes” in Venezuela.
They will do all of this for one reason: In the end, they are coming after you.
The House alone cannot stop that onslaught. As sensible and popular as the Freedom Caucus’ agenda is — and as eager as Trump would be to sign it — the Senate must also act. And I see no path to real victory unless the Republican Senate finds the clarity and courage to nuke the filibuster.
The alternative is grim. If Republicans refuse to act, Democrats will almost certainly scrap the filibuster themselves within a year to impose their agenda. If that happens, I am not sure the Republican Party — or the country — recovers.
Our side already suffers from a deep demoralization problem. What do you think happens to morale when voters watch their leaders voluntarily surrender leverage to the enemy during what increasingly resembles a cold civil war? The black pill will become a black hole of civic abandonment.
Or we could try something radical: empower a Republican Congress to deliver tangible results — $1.90 gas as we are currently enjoying, lower inflation, and health care costs driven back toward pre-COVID levels. Then watch as figures like Candace Owens and the Groyper gang lose their ability to manipulate a depressed and disoriented base with conspiratorial nonsense about the Jooooooooos.
Money in people’s pockets or more gaslighting?
That should be one of the easiest political choices the GOP has ever faced — especially in an environment where turnout collapses when Trump is not on the ballot. Republicans either go big by eliminating the filibuster, or they go home. And if they fail, some of us may end up facing prosecution while the likes of Tim Walz skate free.
RELATED: Fraud thrived under Democrats’ no-questions-asked rule
Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
The year 2025 was about pushing back the darkness inflicted by the Biden administration. The year 2026 must be about what we unapologetically replace that worldview with. Standing in the way is the filibuster.
So what are we prepared to do?
No matter how dire things feel, I have seen proof that action still matters. Children’s Health Defense recently exposed a quiet attempt to shield pesticide companies from liability. Within days, that language was pulled from the bill in question.
I also watched Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) abruptly abandon his re-election bid after a single determined individual exposed the massive Somali fraud scandal bleeding taxpayers dry to benefit people who openly despise this country.
That tells me something important.
We still have agency as free Americans — if we choose to exercise it in service of the good, the true, and the beautiful. Hope is an action word.
But so is fear.
And 2026 will force us to choose between them.
Watch Jasmine Crockett Contradict Herself On Mike Johnson As She Insists ‘Final Nail’ In His Coffin Imminent
‘looking really bad for him’
‘Unnecessary and protracted’: Elise Stefanik drops out of New York governor’s race
Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York suspended her gubernatorial campaign on Friday just weeks after joining the race in November.
Stefanik becomes one of many prospective Republican retirees, clarifying that she will not seek to return to Congress either. Stefanik maintained that she would have won the Republican gubernatorial primary but that her candidacy would draw away crucial resources in an electorally “challenging” state like New York.
This is not the first time Stefanik’s career has taken an abrupt turn.
“I am truly humbled and grateful for the historic and overwhelming support from Republicans, Conservatives, Independents, and Democrats all across the state for our campaign to Save New York,” Stefanik said in a Friday post on X.
“However, as we have seen in past elections, while we would have overwhelmingly won this primary, it is not an effective use of our time or your generous resources to spend the first half of next year in an unnecessary and protracted Republican primary, especially in a challenging state like New York,” Stefanik added.
Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images
Stefanik said her family was a big part of her political calculus, saying she would regret taking more time away from being with her young son.
“And while many know me as Congresswoman, my most important title is Mom,” Stefanik said. “I believe that being a parent is life’s greatest gift and greatest responsibility. I have thought deeply about this and I know that as a mother, I will feel profound regret if I don’t further focus on my young son’s safety, growth, and happiness — particularly at his tender age.”
This is not the first time Stefanik’s career has taken an abrupt turn.
RELATED: GOP feud breaks out after Elise Stefanik accuses Speaker Johnson of protecting the deep state
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Stefanik was President Donald Trump’s first pick to serve as ambassador to the United Nations, even forfeiting her leadership position in the House and going through the early stages of Senate confirmation at the beginning of the year. Her nomination was later pulled, with Republican leadership citing the historically narrow House margins. Mike Waltz was instead confirmed to the position.
Stefanik returned to the House and later announced her gubernatorial run in November, before announcing on Friday she would step back from public service altogether.
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Why the post-Pelosi Democratic Party seems directionless
Earlier this month, former Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced her retirement after nearly four decades of public service. As Democrats say goodbye to one of their last remaining operatives to actually effectuate change, the party is left directionless.
The extent of Democratic leadership has now been reduced to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York. Both figures have repeatedly struggled to balance the progressives and the establishment moderates, with the most recent shutdown fiasco serving as a prime example.
‘We all need to take a very big dose of humility.’
Onlookers on both sides of the aisle largely agree that the undisciplined messaging and disorganized strategy would never have taken place when Pelosi held the gavel.
With no obvious leader to follow in Pelosi’s footsteps, the Democratic Party has become more undisciplined and rudderless than ever before.
RELATED: ‘Rebellion’? Democrat lawmakers urge federal agents to resist Trump agenda in cringe video
Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images
“She’s an all-time great speaker because all other tools that speakers had to discipline or motivate legislators were not available to her,” said Dheeraj Chand, a Democratic strategist and pollster with Siege Analytics, of Pelosi.
“She has no whip. She has no carrot. All that she has left is persuasive power, and she held that entire group of imbeciles together using nothing but persuasive power,” Chand told Blaze News. “No small feat.”
The latest instance of intraparty insubordination took place when 23 House Democrats chose to rebuke one of their own. The unusual reprimand came after Democratic Rep. Chuy Garcia of Illinois was censured by nearly all Republicans and several Democrats, with Democratic Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington authoring the condemnation.
Garcia, a retiring Democrat, was censured after he set up his chief of staff to be the lone Democrat on the primary ballot to succeed him in his deep-blue district, a move which Gluesenkamp Perez called “election subversion.”
“Both parties are finding it increasingly difficult, if not impossible, to lead their respective caucuses in the traditional hierarchical manner,” Len Foxwell, a Democratic strategist based in Maryland, told Blaze News. “We see the example with Representative Garcia as emblematic of the challenges that Democrats face with breakaway members, and we saw during the attenuated leadership tenure of Kevin McCarthy how virtually impossible it is for establishment Republicans to contain the Freedom Caucus.”
“When there’s no leader, it’s not only that there’s no opinion, but there’s nobody calling the shots,” Chand told Blaze News. “When there’s nobody calling the shots, it’s hard to feel like you are playing for a team that can protect you.”
RELATED: Democrat lawmaker faces censure for ‘colluding’ with Epstein during congressional hearing
Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
In both cases, neither party had a political north star to follow. With former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, President Donald Trump’s command of the party slipped away after former President Joe Biden was declared the winner of the 2020 election. In the case of Democrats today, the party is still on the back foot following the colossal electoral rebuke they endured in November 2024 after Kamala Harris stepped in to replace Biden at the top of the ticket.
Some party moderates still believe that “a lot of Democratic voters didn’t come out because they were appalled at the vice president just getting to step in for the president, even though that was her job! Another perceived coronation, from her eyes, is just going to exacerbate the brand problem,” Chand suggested.
“Without a leader, every legislator is responding to what they think is the reason for the loss,” he told Blaze News.
“The Republican leadership chain is much more vertical and much more linear because the party is still led by Donald Trump,” Foxwell told Blaze News. “It is still absolutely Donald Trump’s party, and Mike Johnson toes the Donald Trump line, period full stop. It’s easy when you have an outsized leader at the top to set the substance, the tone, and the stylistic direction of the party.”
“We don’t have that, and we haven’t had it in more than a decade, even with the four-year interim with Joe Biden,” Foxwell added. “He was not what one would consider a strong party leader.”
RELATED: Hakeem Jeffries’ campaign allegedly solicited money from Jeffrey Epstein
Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
The shortcomings of the directionless Democratic Party culminated on November 4, 2024, when Trump swept all seven swing states and secured impressive electoral gains across nearly every demographic.
“Exit polls are something like tabular tarot cards — you see what you want to see in them. They reveal more about you than they do the world,” Chand told Blaze News. “It’s unreasonable to rely on them too much, but post-election surveys are very, very revealing. This kind of loss is a catastrophe that is decades in the making. It’s bigger than one candidate in 100 days or one term. We lost share with everyone except affluent white people. That’s a Reagan-level defeat [over Walter Mondale], for similar reasons.”
“Right now our party is in the midst of one of its periodic transitions in which the establishment wing is in a battle for primacy with its progressive insurgent wing. It’s taking on philosophical overtones, but also generational ones,” Foxwell told Blaze News. “It’s not just that the old-school leadership represented by Pelosi was perhaps philosophically out of sync with some of these younger, more progressive insurgents, but she also came from a different generation.”
While Republicans comfortably dominate the political landscape, Democrats are trying to find their own identity. New York progressives like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani have emerged as rising stars in their party and as a rebuke to establishment figures like Schumer and even Pelosi. Other figures, like Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom of California and even failed candidate Kamala Harris, seem to be scoping out the competition.
Even with a range of politicians to choose from, the first step Democrats need to take is zoom out and understand their electoral failures.
“Nobody sees this coming,” Chand told Blaze News. “I think we’re going to lose until we win. And when people figure out what it takes, we will win. I think we all need to take a very big dose of humility.”
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With Trump’s blessing, House approves resolution to release the Epstein files: ‘We have nothing to hide’
After months of pushback, the House passed a resolution to release the highly anticipated Epstein files.
Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Democrat Rep. Ro Khanna of California co-authored the resolution to release the Epstein files and forced the House vote Tuesday using a discharge petition. Lawmakers forced the floor vote after the petition secured 218 signatories last week, including Republican Reps. Nancy Mace of South Carolina, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Lauren Boebert of Colorado, and Massie.
‘Of course we’re for maximum transparency.’
Republican Rep. Clay Higgins of Louisiana was the lone no vote.
Although only four Republicans signed onto the petition, initially bucking their party, President Donald Trump changed course and encouraged rank-and-file GOP members to vote in favor of the resolution. Republican leadership later followed suit, with Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) confirming Tuesday that he would vote in favor of the resolution.
RELATED: Mike Johnson changes course ahead of key Epstein vote
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“As I said on Friday night aboard Air Force One to the Fake News Media, House Republicans should vote to release the Epstein files, because we have nothing to hide, and it’s time to move on from this Democrat Hoax perpetrated by Radical Left Lunatics in order to deflect from the Great Success of the Republican Party, including our recent Victory on the Democrat ‘Shutdown,'” Trump said in a Truth Social Post Sunday.
Johnson echoed Trump’s message for transparency but mentioned several “dangers” in the current resolution he hopes will be amended in the Senate, including concerns for victims’ privacy and inadequate handling of child sexual abuse materials.
“There’s a handful of Republicans, Judiciary Committee members, and a few others who are really struggling, as I have been, about whether or not they can even vote yes today because of this,” Johnson said during a presser Tuesday. “Because we don’t have an absolute guarantee that this will be fixed in the Senate.”
RELATED: Democrat lawmaker faces censure for ‘colluding’ with Epstein during congressional hearing
Graeme Sloan/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Despite these concerns, Johnson urged the conference to “vote their conscience.”
“Having now forced the vote, none of us want to go on record and in any way be accused of not being for maximum transparency,” Johnson said. “So the only intellectually consistent position to have right now … is to allow for everyone to vote their conscience and to go on record to say, ‘Of course we’re for maximum transparency.'”
The resolution is now headed to the Senate. If it passes, Trump confirmed that he would sign the resolution into law.
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Mike Johnson changes course ahead of key Epstein vote
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) is following in President Donald Trump’s footsteps ahead of the House vote to release the Epstein files.
After months of pushing back on Kentucky Republican Rep. Thomas Massie’s Epstein discharge petition, Trump changed course and encouraged House Republicans to vote in favor of the resolution Tuesday.
‘We have nothing to do with Epstein.’
“As I said on Friday night aboard Air Force One to the Fake News Media, House Republicans should vote to release the Epstein files, because we have nothing to hide, and it’s time to move on from this Democrat Hoax perpetrated by Radical Left Lunatics in order to deflect from the Great Success of the Republican Party, including our recent Victory on the Democrat ‘Shutdown,'” Trump said in a Truth Social Post Sunday.
Rank-and-file Republicans followed suit and began to embrace Massie’s petition publicly, and Johnson, who previously expressed misgivings about the discharge petition, later announced that he will vote for the resolution.
However, there are a few caveats.
Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Johnson conceded that he would vote in favor of the resolution but maintained that there were several “dangers” regarding victim privacy, inadequate handling of child sexual abuse materials, and the lack of protections for whistleblowers.
“There’s a handful of Republicans, Judiciary Committee members, and a few others who are really struggling, as I have been, about whether or not they can even vote yes today because of this,” Johnson said during the presser. “Because we don’t have an absolute guarantee that this will be fixed in the Senate.”
Despite these “dangers,” Johnson said he has a “high degree of confidence” that the Senate will implement the necessary changes, allowing him to vote yes on the resolution.
“Having now forced the vote, none of us want to go on record and in any way be accused of not being for maximum transparency,” Johnson said. “So the only intellectually consistent position to have right now … is to allow for everyone to vote their conscience and to go on record to say, ‘Of course we’re for maximum transparency.'”
RELATED: ‘Temporary crumbs’: Out-of-touch Democrat gives stunning rebuke of Trump’s ‘No Tax on Tips’ policy
Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
Massie and Democrat Rep. Ro Khanna of California co-led the discharge petition, securing 218 signatures Wednesday to force a vote on the House floor. All 214 Democrats signed on to the petition alongside four Republicans: Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Nancy Mace of South Carolina, and Massie.
Although the petition received the support of only four Republicans, the vote is expected to pass with overwhelming GOP support after Trump gave the conference the green light on Sunday.
He also confirmed Monday that he would sign the resolution once it passes Congress.
“We have nothing to do with Epstein. The Democrats do,” Trump said from the Oval Office. “All of his friends were Democrats.”
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