MTG Rips White House Staff—and Mike Johnson—in Private Republican Call

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene is taking shots at Republicans’ lack of action in reopening the government, directing her ire at White House staff and House Speaker Mike Johnson.

Greene expressed her frustrations on a House Republican conference call Tuesday, saying that she was tired of people listening to White House political staff, Jake Sherman of Punchbowl News reported. She also said Senate Majority John Thune should abolish the filibuster to pass a funding bill and reopen the government.

In a post on X, Greene confirmed Sherman’s reporting, and added that she said “I have no respect for the House not being in session passing our bills and the President’s executive orders.” Greene also once again attacked Johnson for failing to produce a single health care plan that would keep costs down for Americans. Democrats have demanded that tax credits for the Affordable Care Act be extended in order to vote to reopen the government, the primary sticking point in the shutdown.

“Johnson said he’s got ideas and pages of policy ideas and committees of jurisdiction are working on it, but he refused to give one policy proposal to our GOP conference on our own conference call,” Greene wrote.

Later, Greene told The Washington Post’s Kadia Goba that she was muted on the call, and then reprimanded by Johnson, who said, “Stop attacking your own party, Marjorie.” A source close to Republican leadership didn’t deny the incident, saying it was standard practice for a third party to mute the line after questions to give leadership a chance to respond.

In recent months, Greene has not hesitated to criticize her own party, calling out Republicans and Donald Trump on everything from the Epstein files to Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Trump has been dumbfounded by the Georgia congresswoman’s turn, asking other Republicans what happened to her. Johnson doesn’t seem to have an answer to her or any of his other critics as the government shutdown stretches to nearly a month.

A federal judge slammed Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino Tuesday for agents terrorizing children at a Halloween parade over the weekend, according to Jon Seidal of the Chicago Sun Times.

U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis was kind enough to walk Bovino through each point of the temporary restraining order he’d allegedly violated. Ellis issued the order restricting federal officials’ use of force against protesters and journalists earlier this month. Bovino was summoned to federal court last week after he was recorded throwing what appeared to be tear gas canisters at protesters.

Referring to videos of multiple incidents with federal law enforcement in Chicago, the judge said that Border Patrol’s use of force did not appear to be justified. “It is difficult for me to see that the force being used is necessary to stop an immediate and serious threat of physical harm to a person,” she said.

This was particularly clear in an incident Saturday, when federal agents tear-gassed multiple costumed school-age children en route to a Halloween parade, Ellis said.

“These kids, you can imagine, their sense of safety was shattered on Saturday. And it’s gonna take a long time for that to come back, if ever,” Ellis said.

It seemed that Ellis tried to give the Border Patrol chief the benefit of the doubt when discussing the multiple blatant violations of her order, claiming that the order was either unclear, not read, or read and ignored. “Given the fact that you and I took essentially the same oath, I know Option 3 is not something—that just wouldn’t happen,” she said.

Ellis spoke directly to Bovino about his own alleged infraction, insisting that he needed to give a clear warning before deploying crowd control tactics. “Again, a warning has to be, ‘I’m going to deploy tear gas, if you do not do’ whatever it is,” she explained.

Bovino refused to answer affirmatively when asked whether he believed the allegations against other agents suggested that they’d violated Ellis’s TRO. “Well, your honor, I believe that each situation is dependent on the situation. And, you know, I’d like to know more about what happened,” Bovino replied.

Ellis asked Bovino to ensure that officers display identifiers in one of two “conspicuous” locations on their person and that all officers, including Bovino, wear a body camera. She also gave Bovino until Friday to procure all use-of-force reports since the beginning of September. Ellis asked that he return to meet her every day until a preliminary injunction hearing next month.

House Speaker Mike Johnson is apparently tired, despite doing little this month during the government shutdown.

Johnson said at a press conference Tuesday that people have been telling him, “You look so tired on TV.”

“I am so tired, because we’re not sleeping a lot. We’re working overtime,” Johnson said, adding that House committees are still conferencing to put together legislation to be ready to go as soon as the House is back in session.

But the House hasn’t been in session since September 19, thanks to Johnson, well before the government shutdown began on October 1. Not only is no legislation being debated or passed, but Johnson has refused to swear in Democratic Representative Adelita Grijalva, who won a special election in Arizona last month.

Johnson has dodged questions about Grijalva, claiming that he’s following a made-up Pelosi precedent and saying she won’t be sworn in until after the shutdown ends. Grijalva would be a deciding vote on whether to release the Jeffrey Epstein files, which could be the real reason for the delay.

Meanwhile, Johnson didn’t claim that he or House Republicans were hard at work negotiating with Democrats, which should be the preeminent concern, with SNAP benefits on the verge of ending thanks to the shutdown. If the speaker and his party are actually working hard, it doesn’t seem to be on reopening the government.

At least one speaker on Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest summit lineup has divided the conservative caucus.

Tucker Carlson, the former face of Fox News and an increasingly critical voice against Israel, has been a thorn in the side of the organization’s fundraising efforts for some time now.

Text message exchanges published by Candace Owens (and later confirmed by TPUSA) revealed that the organization’s founder, Charlie Kirk, was grappling with whether to let Carlson speak at AmericaFest in the days before his assassination.

“Just lost another huge Jewish donor,” Kirk wrote. “$2 million a year because we won’t cancel Tucker.”

The donor was unnamed in the exchange, but The New York Times reported earlier this month that Robert Shillman, a Zionist tech billionaire, axed a $2 million pledge over Carlson’s participation in a previous Turning Point event.

“Jewish donors play into all the stereotypes,” Kirk added in another message.

The decision as to whether to include Carlson in future events has not gotten easier without Kirk’s leadership.

But other anti-Israel voices on the AmericaFest roster are posing their own problems. The inclusion of Steve Bannon and Jack Posobiec, among others, have raised eyebrows in conservative circles wary of challenges to the larger party position, The Bulwark reported Tuesday.

“No, it’s not good that Carlson, Bannon, Posobiec, and [Texas Attorney General Ken] Paxton are speaking at TPUSA’s AmFest in December,” Kimberly Ross, a contributor at the conservative rag the Washington Examiner, tweeted last week. “It’s bad, actually. The cancer should be cut out.”

The organization has less than two months to figure out a solution: AmericaFest is scheduled to start on December 18.

House Republicans have turned their focus back to former President Joe Biden’s “autopen” while regular Americans—particuarly federal workers and SNAP recipients—suffer the consequences of the ongoing government shutdown. 

The House Oversight Committee issued a 93-page report Tuesday on Biden’s use of the autopen, a fairly standard practice among U.S. presidents, and called on the Department of Justice to begin an investigation. The report urges Attorney General Pam Bondi to consider whether the pardons or clemency Biden granted to individuals  are still valid, as well as any “executive actions that were signed using the Autopen.”

The Republican report alleges a “cover-up of the president’s cognitive decline” on the part of Dr. Kevin O’Connor and Biden aides Anthony Bernal and Annie Tomasini. 

“The cost of the scheme to hide the fallout of President Biden’s diminished physical and mental acuity was great but will likely never be fully calculated,” the report reads. “Barring evidence of executive actions taken during the Biden presidency showing that [he] indeed took a particular executive action, the committee deems those actions taken through use of the autopen as void.”

Of course, the GOP’s  probe did not include any evidence that anyone other than Biden made the decisions that his staff later carried out. Rather, it seems like another Trump vendetta, this time during the longest full shutdown in U.S. history.

“Other than the Rigged Presidential Election of 2020, the Biggest Scandal in American History is the ‘AUTOPEN!’ Whoever used it was usurping the power of the Presidency, and it should be very easy to find out who that person (or persons) is,” Trump posted back in May. “They did things that a Joe Biden, of sound mind, would have never done, like, Open Borders, Transgender for everyone, men in women’s sports, and far more. Fear not, however, we will bring America BACK, BIGGER, BETTER, AND STRONGER THAN EVER BEFORE!”

Biden has repeatedly said that he made every final decision in the White House.