Rand Paul Brutally Shreds Mike Johnson Over Spending Bill

House Speaker Mike Johnson is facing the fury of his Republican colleagues over yet another delayed and outsize spending bill.

Conservative lawmakers took to social media to publicly vent their dismay with the 1,500-page continuing resolution, torching the massive omnibus for failing to meet their party goals. At least one member of the upper chamber—Kentucky Senator Rand Paul—took that critique to the next level, outright questioning Johnson’s strength as a party leader.

“I had hoped to see @SpeakerJohnson grow a spine, but this bill full of pork shows he is a weak, weak man,” Paul posted on X early Wednesday. “The debt will continue to grow. Ultimately the dollar will fail. Democrats are clueless and Big Gov Republicans are complicit.

“A sad day for America,” Paul added.

The stopgap spending measure will fund the government through March 14, giving conservatives a chance to organize and reassess their spending priorities once their Republican trifecta takes effect.

The resolution was intended to be a “very skinny, very simple” stopgap solution, but what was ultimately presented to House lawmakers late Tuesday was a thick 84-day measure riddled with unrelated policies, including disaster relief needs related to the devastation caused by Hurricanes Helene and Milton, an extension on the farm bill, health care policy, and, naturally, a raise for members of Congress.

Lawmakers have only until Friday to iron out their disagreements with the package and pass a version of the bill, or the government will enter a shutdown that will last through the holiday season.

Before the text of the continuing resolution was released on Tuesday, several other lawmakers hurled their own fire at the bipartisan effort, arguing that the three-month spending solution will only add to the federal deficit.

“Since we’ve been given the majority again, we’re adding $30 billion in literally totally unpaid-for additional deficit spending, just since November 5—in 45 days,” Texas Representative Chip Roy told C-SPAN. “I don’t see how that’s doing what we’re supposed to be doing.

“The conference itself owns this. The conference needs to decide whether we’re actually serious about spending.… We’re just fundamentally unserious about spending,” Roy continued, highlighting the fact that his party intends to shift cash away from Social Security, shrinking the time before the program goes bankrupt. “As long as you got a blank check, you can’t shrink government. If you can’t shrink government, you can’t live free.”

Elon Musk’s shady behavior has gotten him and SpaceX flagged for federal review three times, according to reporting from The New York Times. Musk has reportedly failed to cooperate with security clearance reporting rules, hiding info on things like meetings with foreign leaders.

According to disclosure stipulations, Musk is required to report details of his international meetings and travels as well as any drug use. He has apparently shirked that responsibility since at least 2021, according to four people with knowledge of SpaceX, putting his ability to handle highly classified information into question.

Musk, who currently has top secret clearance, gets access to classified information on the U.S. military. But in 2023, the Air Force rejected his request for an even higher level of security clearance, known as Special Access Program. A Pentagon official told the Times that Musk was rejected due to a “lack of explanation” for some of his meetings with foreign leaders.

Without access to the clearance, Musk should theoretically be blocked from joining certain meetings between SpaceX and the Air Force on extremely sensitive classified information. But the Times reported Pentagon officials are concerned Musk is still joining many of those conversations anyway. 

No formal accusations have yet been leveled at Musk, and it is unclear how the reviews will impact the SpaceX CEO, if at all. Donald Trump could unilaterally grant Musk security clearance after his inauguration.

“To have someone who has major contracts with the government who would be in a position to pass along—whether deliberately or inadvertently—secrets is concerning,” Senator Jeanne Shaheen told The New York Times. The New Hampshire Democrat requested that the Air Force and the Defense Department’s Office of Inspector General investigate Musk for having inappropriate talks with foreign leaders, like Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The world’s richest man and incoming Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, co-chair has continuously blurred the lines between civilian and elected official—especially as he cements himself further into Trump’s inner circle after stumping for the president-elect all election season.

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene really wants you to know that she wants to shoot at the drones.

In a post on Truth Social Tuesday, Greene declared that she was too smart to follow hypothetical government safety guidance related to the recent drone sightings along the eastern states.

“I’m going to tell you right now that if they try to tell us all to stay inside, stay home, shelter in place ‘FOR OUR SAFETY’ from the drones, there is no way in hell I will comply with that absolute bullshit,” Greene wrote. It’s worth noting that the National Security Council has said the drones do not pose a threat to public safety and given no indication it would issue such instructions.

“Not doing it. No way,” she wrote. “I’ll shoot the drones down myself along with every other red blooded freedom loving American.”

As genuinely dangerous as it is for an elected official to declare that they would not follow guidance from the government, Greene’s phony pontificating is nothing more than right-wing cringe.

Luckily for the trigger-happy MAGA lawmaker, D.C. airspace is far more restricted than others around the country, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. Desperate to distinguish herself from the establishment she embodies, Greene likely would just as soon start shooting at red traffic lights trying to tell her to stop. One tweet from November already claims she doesn’t obey stop signs.

Greene has seemingly been driven to madness by the recent spate of reported drone sightings over New Jersey and other states, claiming that the U.S. government was responsible for the drones appearing and that U.S. citizens are not safe.

The Des Moines Register, which published the infamous Selzer poll, has responded to Donald Trump’s lawsuit against the paper.

“We have acknowledged that the Selzer/Des Moines Register pre-election poll did not reflect the ultimate margin of President Trump’s Election Day victory in Iowa by releasing the poll’s full demographics, crosstabs, weighted and unweighted data, as well as a technical explanation from pollster Ann Selzer,” a spokesperson for the Register said, according to CBS’s Jennifer Jacobs. “We stand by our reporting on the matter and believe this lawsuit is without merit.”

Trump on Monday sued The Des Moines Register as well as veteran pollster J. Ann Selzer over a preelection poll that showed him losing the state to Kamala Harris.

“I’m going to be bringing [a lawsuit] against, uh, the people in Iowa,” Trump announced earlier on Monday. “Their newspaper, which had a very, very good pollster who got me right all the time … then just before the election she said I was going to lose by three or four points, and it became the biggest story all over the world,” the president-elect said. “It was fraud, and it was election interference.”

The Selzer poll, published on November 2, shockingly predicted Harris would win Iowa by three points. Trump ended up easily winning Iowa by 13 points, a glaring mistake for the respected pollster. Seltzer retired shortly after, although she had been planning to do so regardless of the election’s outcome.

Trump’s lawsuit is overindulgent, at best, and most legal experts don’t expect it to stick.

“This absurd lawsuit is a direct assault on the First Amendment,” Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression chief counsel Robert Corn-Revere told CNN. “Newspapers and polling firms are not engaged in ‘deceptive practices’ just because they publish stories and poll results President-elect Donald Trump doesn’t like. Getting a poll wrong is not election interference or fraud.”

Despite spending the week courting lawmakers, Robert F. Kennedy’s nomination to lead the Department of Health and Human Services is looking increasingly precarious.

The virulent conspiracy theorist reportedly only has 18 lawmakers clearly favoring his nomination, according to The Washington Post’s Dan Diamond. That’s an equal amount to the number of lawmakers who oppose him, leaving 64 lawmakers still undecided on Kennedy’s future in Donald Trump’s forthcoming administration.

Kennedy’s confirmation is likely to be an uphill battle given his raucous lifestyle that included dumping a dead bear cub in Central Park, unscientific beliefs that include theories that AIDS is not caused by HIV, a vaccine misinformation campaign sparked by his nonprofit that sent Samoa’s vaccination rate plummeting amid a measles outbreak, and claims that he allegedly groped his children’s babysitter in the late 1990s.

He’ll also have to convince lawmakers that his agenda, which opposes vaccine mandates for school-aged children and includes appointing someone who has filed a petition with the FDA to end the approval and “pause distribution” of 13 vaccines, isn’t at odds with the future of America’s health.

If no Democrats side with Kennedy, the “Make America Healthy Again” politico will only be able to afford to lose three Republican votes in the Senate.

Some of Donald Trump’s most faithful MAGA acolytes have already voiced their strong opinions in favor of Kennedy’s nomination. After meeting with Kennedy on Tuesday, Florida Senator Rick Scott described the conspiracy theorist as “very impressive” and claimed that he was “pro-vaccine.”

And despite the tough road ahead, Kennedy appeared decidedly optimistic as he navigated the Hill on Tuesday. While heading into Senator Tommy Tuberville’s office, Kennedy told Diamond that the meetings were going “really good.”