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The House’s tenuous facade of functioning
Many House Republicans have been groaning about Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s push to oust Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) from his job. Not because they like Johnson's leadership, but because they don't want the drama so close to an election where control of the House is on the line.
Now that Greene has backed down from her threat to trigger her motion to oust Johnson for at least one more day, Republicans’ fragile facade of functioning continues for another day, too.
Their majority may be dependent on it.
Swing-district Republicans have complained in this space many times that Republicans need to show people they know how to govern. They want voters to think they’re fighting for them, not with each other.
- “I’m very happy the speaker’s trying to work this stuff out and cut the chaos,” Rep. John Duarte (R-Calif.), a freshman whose district President Biden won in 2020. Avoiding a vote on removing Johnson would make it easier for him to win reelection, he added.
And that's a big reason Republicans aren't on board with Greene's quest.
- “I do not support what I’ve described as a foolish, reckless, ill-advised, unhelpful motion to vacate with … the White House, the Senate and the House all at stake in the next six months, I think this will be a very poor decision to do that based on the math and the calendar,” said Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.), chairman of the far-right House Freedom Caucus, who is facing a competitive primary.
There’s not much left to do before the election, anyway. Other than the Federal Aviation Administration reauthorization bill, which is being debated in the Senate, all of the must-pass bills have been completed or are likely to be punted until after the election.
Johnson’s only shot at being speaker
Former president Donald Trump has publicly and privately expressed his support for Johnson, in large part because he also doesn’t want Republican chaos ahead of the election.
If Johnson has any chance of leading the conference after the election (even though most Republicans think his chances are quite small), it would be because he maintained and grew their slim majority.
Johnson brought up his unruly conference while speaking to donors Sunday night. He advocated implementing a rules change in the next Congress enabling the speaker to govern without constant threat of losing his or her job. Johnson also noted that Republicans who refuse to support the party on procedural votes should get kicked off committees, according to a person who heard his remarks and spoke on the condition of anonymity to reveal what was discussed in a private meeting, Leigh Ann and our colleagues Marianna Sotomayor and Mariana Alfaro report.
Even as Johnson insists he isn’t negotiating with Greene and Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), he placated them for now by not ruling out their four demands to:
- No longer send aid to Ukraine this year.
- Only put bills on the floor that a majority of Republicans agree with.
- Move to defund any Justice Department investigation into Trump.
- Pass a dozen individual spending bills or institute a 1 percent cut across government agencies.
Greene and Massie say the ball is in Johnson’s court. He can agree to their “suggestions” or face a vote where he will be severely weakened because he’ll need to rely on Democrats to save him.
This dance between MTG, Massie and Johnson could go on for days.
Discontent
Duarte is not confident that the détente between Johnson and Greene will last because he thinks Greene is seeking attention rather than policy concessions.
- “I think those who have a pattern of attention-seeking over governing are going to continue to have a pattern of attention-seeking over governing,” Duarte said.
And many are not happy with Johnson entertaining Greene and Massie's demands.
“That’s how we got in trouble January 2023, right? We gave away too much and I think we’re paying for it right now. So I would be very careful negotiating,” said Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.).
Put another way, Rep. Carlos A. Gimenez (R-Fla.) said yesterday that a leader should “never negotiate with terrorists” because “if you grease a squeaky wheel, then you’ll end up with a bunch of squeaky wheels.”
But Rep. Kevin Hern (R-Okla.), chairman of the Republican Study Committee, suggested Johnson might be able to accommodate some of Greene’s asks.
“She’s not asking for chairman of a committee or an office in the Capitol, which … becomes problematic,” Hern said. “She’s asking for us to return the conference back to a conservative Republican conference.”
What we're watching
At the White House
This morning Biden is heading to Racine, Wis., where he’ll announce Microsoft will spend $3.3 billion to build an artificial intelligence data center.
Expect Biden to contrast the investment with Donald Trump’s announcement while he was president that the Taiwanese manufacturer Foxconn would create 13,000 jobs in the same community. Foxconn only ended up hiring about 1,000 people there.
Biden will later make a campaign stop to talk with Black voters before heading to Chicago for a fundraiser.
He will also do a rare sit-down interview with CNN’s Erin Burnett, which will air tonight.
On the Hill
We’re watching how lawmakers respond to the expected delay of a report the Biden administration was set to deliver to Congress by today assessing whether Israel is violating U.S. or international law in its conduct of the war in Gaza.
Once it’s delivered, the report could have a big impact on U.S. aid to Israel.
“Were the Biden administration to conclude, for example, that Israel has restricted humanitarian aid from entering Gaza — something U.S. officials have already acknowledged as happening — or that Israel has carried out military strikes on hospitals or aid operations in which the harm to civilians was disproportionate to the importance of the suspected target, the administration could be compelled, under U.S. law, either to suspend weapons transfers or issue a waiver,” our colleague Abigail Hauslohner writes.
In the Senate
There has been some progress on the Federal Aviation Administration Reauthorization bill. Senators agreed to a new version of the bill that was filed last night. Pushed by Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), this version codifies a new Biden administration rule into law, making it easier to receive airline refunds, and removes a watered-down version of the rule.
We’re watching to see if senators can find an agreement on what amendments should be voted on, which is necessary to move the bill more quickly ahead of the Friday night deadline to pass it.
In the House
We’re keeping an eye on a House Oversight Committee hearing this afternoon at which District of Columbia Mayor Muriel Bowser and Police Chief Pamela Smith are set to testify “about why they had previously declined requests from the university to clear a pro-Palestinian encampment from the school’s grounds,” as our colleagues Emily Davies, Peter Hermann and Martin Weil report. D.C. police began clearing the encampment early Wednesday morning after pressure from Congress and university officials.
The campaign
Spartz fends off primary challenge in Indiana
Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-Ind.), who said last year that she wouldn’t run for reelection before reversing herself in February, narrowly won her primary in the Indianapolis suburbs. She defeated state Rep. Chuck Goodrich, who attacked Spartz as a flip-flopper, 39 percent to 33 percent.
State Sen. Mark Messmer easily won the Republican primary for retiring Republican Rep. Larry Bucshon’s seat, defeating former congressman John Hostettler and several other opponents. Super PACs with ties to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and the Republican Jewish Coalition together spent more than $2.5 million to prevent Hostettler from winning — a rare intervention in a Republican primary.
And Nikki Haley, who dropped out of the Republican presidential primary more than two months ago, won 22 percent of the vote in Indiana. While Haley has been receiving as much as 17 percent of the vote in many other primary states, this is the highest share of the vote she’s won in any state since dropping out, in a potential warning sign for Trump’s campaign.
Trump’s social media amplifiers
Donald Trump’s promotion of election misinformation got him banned on major social media platforms after the Jan. 6, 2021, storming of the Capitol. While Trump and his supporters claimed the former president was being silenced, analysis from our colleagues Sarah Ellison and Clara Ence Morse shows that despite Trump's limited personal reach, his remarks still get out on social media thanks to how widely shared they are.
After being banned by Twitter and Facebook, Trump created his own social media platform, Truth Social. While Truth Social has a substantially smaller user base, it has become popular within the MAGA movement and remains Trump’s sole social media platform.
Analysis of 14,101 of Trump’s Truth Social posts between Nov. 15, 2022 and March 15, 2024 found the posts were then amplified by Trump supporters on other social media platforms and through other media, including cable news. Those supporters include prominent conservative media figures like radio host Mark Levin and cable news personality Sebastian Gorka.
Trump himself has noticed the phenomenon, saying in a recent post on Truth Social: “When I put out a statement or message, it is SPREAD all over the place, fast and furious. EVERYBODY SEEMS TO GET WHATEVER I HAVE TO SAY, AND QUICKLY.”
Chris Stirewalt, politics editor at NewsNation, called it a “steroidal version of political messaging.”
“Trump says or does something egregious and the people who are currying favor with him say, ‘Well, let’s workshop this,’ and they share his message on their own account, but add their own twist,” said Stirewalt.
From the courts
Stormy Daniels’s testimony prompts cursing from Trump
New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan ordered Donald Trump’s attorney to stop his client from “cursing audibly” and “shaking his head” during adult-film actress Stormy Daniels’s testimony at Trump’s hush money case yesterday.
- “It has the potential to intimidate the witness and the jury can see that,” Merchan told attorney Todd Blanche during a sidebar. “I am speaking to you here at the bench because I don’t want to embarrass him.”
Trump wasn’t the only one upset by Daniels's testimony — his legal team took such issue with the level of detail she was permitted to share they called for a mistrial, our colleagues Devlin Barrett, Tom Jackman, Shayna Jacobs and Marianne LeVine report.
On Tuesday, Daniels described her alleged first sexual encounter with Trump in 2006, saying that she felt an imbalance of power during the encounter and blacked out. Daniels clarified that she was not drunk and that she had not been drugged.
- “All of this has nothing to do with this case, is extraordinarily prejudicial and the only reason why the government asked those questions, besides pure embarrassment, is to inflame this jury to not look at the evidence that matters,” said Blanche.
Merchen responded that while Daniels had shared more than he would have liked, the defense failed to object to her testimony enough.
Prosecutors insisted the description was necessary to understand why Trump would pay to cover it up.
Daniels is expected to continue her testimony when court reconvenes Thursday.
Some major news broke in another Trump case Tuesday as well, when U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon delayed Trump’s classified documents case indefinitely. Cannon said the delay was caused by the need to consider how to best handle classified evidence in a public trial, our colleagues Perry Stein and Devlin Barrett report.
The Media
Must reads
From The Post:
- Biden and Trump’s day of contrasts marks a surreal campaign. By Matt Viser.
- For college faculty, supporting protesters is a new job — and risk. By Kyle Melnick and Danielle Douglas-Gabriel.
- RFK Jr’s ‘history lesson’ on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine flunks the fact test. By Glenn Kessler.
- U.S. delays arms shipments to Israel amid Rafah tensions. By John Hudson.
- U.S. signals optimism for Gaza cease-fire as Israel moves into Rafah. By Karen DeYoung and Yasmeen Abutaleb.
- Conservative judges say they will boycott Columbia University students. By Tobi Raji.
- Stormy Daniels testifies and Trump curses in an angry day in court. By Devlin Barrett, Tom Jackman, Shayna Jacobs and Marianne LeVine.
- Judge indefinitely delays Trump’s classified documents trial in Florida. By Perry Stein and Devlin Barrett.
From across the web:
- When Conservative Parents Revolt. By the Atlantic’s Mike Hixenbaugh.
- Evangelicals Hate Stormy Daniels But Love Trump. Here’s Why. By Politico's Dylan Jones.
Viral
UK diplomat in Moscow told me one morning, hung over, she found a saucepan with the bottom burned off it on the stove. She wrote a note to the watchers, saying “you went a bit too far here…”
— Andrew Walker (@_AWalker) May 6, 2024
She came back later to a second note next to hers: “YOU left it on, WE turned it off” https://t.co/J8X7PXJhhW
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