Mike Johnson’s Reign of Chaos Could Soon Be Coming to an End

House Speaker Mike Johnson is in a terrible political position, and his caucus knows it.

With a razor-thin margin to spare on any vote, Johnson has spent much of his term either stalling on advancing conservative policy goals or working with Democrats in order to pass anything—much to the chagrin of his party. If Johnson was hoping that last week’s recess would cool in-party tensions and help him rein in his caucus, then his plan hasn’t panned out in the slightest.

“Certainly, the speaker has a tough time right now trying to figure out, sort of, the path forward with the slim majority that we have,” Republican Study Committee Chair Representative Kevin Hern told The Daily Beast.

So far, Johnson has wavered on sending more aid to Ukraine amid its ongoing war with Russia, reauthorizing a surveillance program, and sending articles of impeachment for Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to the Senate. The aide described holding off on sending the Mayorkas impeachment articles as “another example of the clusterfuck that is the House under Speaker Johnson.”

Unfortunately for Johnson, at this point, any decision could be fatal for the speaker’s tenure at the top of the House.

“Look, this is not your father’s Republican Party, as that old saying goes, this is a different breed of cat. This is … Trump runs that party. He maintains a sort of a death grip on it,” President Joe Biden told Univision News on Tuesday, adding that he believes Johnson is “worried about losing the speakership” under the circumstances.

Since taking the gavel in a surprise election that saw more seasoned Republican leaders fail to galvanize the party, Johnson has struggled to carry out even the most basic responsibilities of Congress. It doesn’t help that he inherited a historically divided GOP that, even before he took over, constituted the majority of one of the least productive congressional sessions in U.S. history.

Meanwhile, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene’s effort to remove Johnson from his office looms large. She resumed her attacks against him on Tuesday, issuing a memo to her Republican colleagues in an attempt to curry support for Johnson’s ousting.

“If these actions by the leader of our conference continue, then we are not a Republican Party—we are a uniparty that is hellbent on remaining on the path of self-inflicted destruction,” she wrote. “I will neither support nor take part in any of that, and neither will the people we represent.”

Last month, Greene filed a motion to vacate Johnson after he worked with Democrats and Republicans in the Senate to pass a $1.2 trillion omnibus bill, putting a cap on a half-year ordeal to accomplish one of the legislature’s primary annual responsibilities: funding the government.

But biding time seems to be a winning strategy for the Georgia Republican. As the weeks pass, more Republicans have started to openly voice their frustrations with Johnson, including Representative Thomas Massie, who accused the Louisiana lawmaker of failing to meet conservative goals.

Each dissenting voice is critical. A vote to strip the gavel from Johnson needs just three GOP dissenters under the current makeup of the House, but could drop down to two if Greene decides to wait for Wisconsin Representative Mike Gallagher’s retirement on April 19.

Former Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg, who pleaded guilty to perjury in Donald Trump’s civil fraud trial, was sentenced Wednesday to five months in prison.

Weisselberg admitted to New York City District Attorney Alvin Bragg that he lied under oath in July 2020 about knowing that Trump overvalued his Manhattan apartment. Trump was found to have consistently lied about his fortune to prop up his real estate business.

The Republican presidential nominee recently posted the $175 million bond, with the help of right-wing billionaire Don Hankey, while he appeals the $454 million judgment in the fraud case.

Weisselberg was found guilty of perjury in March. He has been a longtime ally and confidant of Trump’s and was rewarded for his loyalty over the years with under-the-table benefits, including expensive apartments and cars, which also served to mask a massive tax fraud scheme.

This is the second five-month sentence for Weisselberg: He was also found guilty of tax fraud in 2022, having helped the Trump Organization hide unreported income from New York City and state tax authorities. He served 100 days of the original sentence.

Arizona lawmakers were gung ho for banning abortion—until they got what they wanted.

On Tuesday, the state’s Supreme Court decided to revive a draconian ban on the medical procedure. But already, several prominent—and politically vulnerable—Arizona Republicans have come out against it.

Senate candidate Kari Lake, for instance, identifies as “100 percent pro-life” and had previously called the ban a “great law” but suddenly decided it wasn’t her cup of tea once the decision arrived.

“I oppose today’s ruling, and I am calling on [Governor] Katie Hobbs and the State Legislature to come up with an immediate common sense solution that Arizonans can support,” Lake said in a statement. “Ultimately, Arizona voters will make the decision on the ballot come November.”

Two of the state’s GOP representatives, both of whom are facing fierce competition from Democrats in elections this year, also torched the decision. Representative David Schweikert—who has spent the better part of his career working to outlaw abortion with zero exceptions—wrote that he did not support the ruling and that the Arizona legislature should “address this issue immediately.” Representative Juan Ciscomani, a freshman lawmaker representing one of the state’s swing districts, called it a “disaster for women and providers.”

“In Arizona, our 15 week law protected the rights of women and new life. It respected women and the difficult decision of ending a pregnancy—one I will never personally experience and won’t pretend to understand,” Ciscomani wrote in a post on X, formerly Twitter. “I oppose a national abortion ban. The territorial law is archaic. We must do better for women and I call on our state policymakers to immediately address this in a bipartisan manner.”

Just two years ago, Ciscomani described himself as “proudly Pro-Life” and cheered the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Former Republican Governor Doug Doucey also lamented the decision, even though he was responsible for appointing four of the justices who contributed to the court’s majority opinion.

“I signed the 15-week law as Governor because it is thoughtful policy, and an approach to this very sensitive issue that Arizonans can actually agree on,” Ducey said in a statement. “The ruling today is not the outcome I would have preferred, and I call on our elected leaders to heed the will of the people and address this issue with a policy that is workable and reflective of our electorate.”

The flip-flopping is no coincidence, especially as abortion has become a losing issue for Republicans nationwide. The Supreme Court’s decision to overturn nationwide abortion access proved disastrous for Republicans last November, resulting in major losses in districts where abortion was a key talking point. Postelection, those raw numbers turned into some stunning platform reversals for the conservative party, with GOP consultants referring to the turning tide on the issue as a “major wake-up call.”

Ousted House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has a theory as to the motivation behind the motion to vacate filed by Florida Representative Matt Gaetz. And it has little to do with policy differences.

In an interview Tuesday at Georgetown University, McCarthy, sounding Not Mad, said it was a “misnomer and a lie” that alleged concessions to congressional Democrats during debt-ceiling talks were behind his removal. He offered to set the record straight about why he was removed as speaker.

“I’ll give you the truth why I’m not speaker. It’s because one person, a member of Congress, wanted me to stop an ethics complaint because he slept with a 17-year-old. An ethics complaint that started before I ever became speaker, and that’s illegal, and I’m not going to get in the middle. Did he do it or not? I don’t know, but Ethics is looking at it. There’s other people in jail because of it. And he wanted me to influence it,” McCarthy explained.

That one person? Gaetz, the ringleader of the successful effort to vacate the speakership.

It’s an explosive, if not exactly new, allegation by McCarthy. Gaetz, who is scheduled to be deposed in June as part of a civil defamation suit, is accused of several child sex crimes. One of the “other people in jail” to whom McCarthy is referring is convicted sex trafficker Joel Greenberg, who has alleged that Gaetz paid him via Venmo to have sex with a 17-year-old girl. Greenberg is cooperating with the House Ethic Committee, which is investigating the allegations. Gaetz is separately accused of paying another woman for her participation in alleged drug-fueled sex parties.

Gaetz, for what it’s worth, has corroborated McCarthy’s theory, at least behind closed doors. The Daily Beast reported that the Florida congressman has privately admitted that the move to oust McCarthy was revenge for McCarthy’s refusal to squash the ethics probe, not a stand against bipartisan negotiation.

McCarthy, who has endorsed convicted rapist Donald Trump for the presidency, became the first speaker of the House in American history to be removed through a motion to vacate. Still, he claims he’d “do it all over again.”

Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has personal reasons for wanting to defend the January 6 rioters: At least one of his staffers may have been among them.

The campaign has attempted in recent days to distance itself from its New York state director, Rita Palma, since she claimed the campaign’s real goal was to act as a spoiler to President Joe Biden.

“The only way that Trump can even, remote possibility of taking New York is if Bobby is on the ballot. If it’s Trump versus Biden, Biden wins. Biden wins six days, seven days a week. With Bobby in the mix, anything can happen,” Palma said in a meeting with New York Republicans.

But it has since become clear that Palma has deeper ties to Donald Trump. In social media posts analyzed by CNN, the staffer has repeatedly called the GOP presidential nominee her “favorite president,” said she would vote for him in 2024 while also suggesting a 2028 run, blamed the “rigged election” for the violence on January 6, and even admitted to being in attendance on the day that Trump supporters seized the U.S. Capitol.

“Jan 6 was not a riot. A small group of people were trouble. It was 99.9 peaceful, respectful. I was there,” she wrote.

Over the last week, Kennedy’s campaign has flip-flopped more than once on its January 6 messaging. On Thursday, the independent presidential candidate issued a fundraising email referring to the rioters as “activists.” The next day, Kennedy claimed that particular language was made in error but he still didn’t believe the event amounted to a “true insurrection” since the rioters didn’t wield weapons—though that is completely false, since the rioters did wield weapons and can be seen doing so in mountains of recorded video from the day.

The rioters attacked Capitol Police officers with firearms, knives, stolen police shields, stun guns, fire extinguishers, and even used hand-to-hand combat, which sent more than a dozen officers to the hospital.

Then, on Monday, Kennedy appeared to backtrack again on the correction. Appearing on NewsNation, the 70-year-old claimed that his campaign had made “a couple of mistakes” in issuing the revised statement while again insisting that the events weren’t an insurrection.

“I think that there were people who were there who wanted to obstruct the peaceful transfer of power from one administration to another. I would say it was a very traumatic day in our nation’s history and people committed criminal acts. Those people deserve to be in jail,” Kennedy said.