Mike Johnson Says He’s in Control of GOP as Elise Stefanik Beef Grows

House Speaker Mike Johnson is convinced he has a grip on his caucus, even as reports circulate that his control is slipping.

The chief House Republican rebuked comments made by Representative Elise Stefanik, who told The Wall Street Journal Tuesday that the speaker would not have enough support among his caucus to win the speakership if the vote took place this week.

Speaking with PBS Newshour correspondent Lisa Desjardins Wednesday, Johnson insisted that Republicans in Congress were “united” behind him.

“I’m not sure how to comment on what Elise is doing or what the rationale behind this is, but you can talk to Republicans in Congress, 99.9 percent are united, we’re working together to keep delivering our agenda,” Johnson told PBS.

“I talked to Elise late last night. We talked through what I thought were a misunderstanding of the facts,” he continued, making mention of the National Defense Authorization Act. Stefanik claimed victory regarding the bill Wednesday morning, announcing that a provision she wrote related to congressional disclosures would be included in the act after a “productive” conversation with Johnson and Donald Trump.

“I told her, you could have just picked up the phone and called me initially and not had to do all this other stuff,” Johnson told PBS.

But Desjardins underscored that plenty of other members of the caucus had expressed their discontent with Johnson’s leadership.

Just nine representatives of the majority party are needed to trigger a vote of no confidence against a House speaker. Those lawmakers could include Stefanik, as well as Representative Anna Paulina Luna, who on Tuesday openly defied Johnson by introducing a discharge petition that would bypass his direction on a bipartisan bill regarding insider trading. It could also include Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who announced last month her intention to exit office in early January.

The Trump administration is taking aim at the Somali American community in Minnesota with an immigration crackdown, punctuated by President Trump on Tuesday calling Representative Ilhan Omar, a Somali American herself, “garbage,” along with the rest of her community.

Since then, Trump’s staff have been defending his racism. Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin was asked by CNN’s John Berman Wednesday exactly how much of the Somali American community in Minnesota, an estimated 40,000 of whom were born in Somalia, could be considered garbage. Her response was a word salad nowhere near a condemnation.

“John, we’re really looking at the data, the analyses here particularly out of Minneapolis, and other parts of the country where we’re seeing Somalia, there’s widespread fraud, particularly marriage fraud when it comes to immigration, we’re looking at criminality here,” McLaughlin said. Berman then repeated his question.

“My question is, all of them? The president says he doesn’t want them here. He called them ‘garbage.’ Do you consider that to be all of the 40,000 people born in Somalia now living in Minnesota?” Berman asked.

“John, this is not about politics, this is about public safety,” McLaughlin replied, referencing last week’s shooting of two National Guard members, allegedly by an Afghan national, in Washington, D.C.

“That’s what the precipice of this was. That’s why we have to get back to base camp and make sure we are prioritizing the American people’s safety,” McLaughlin added, before criticizing the Biden administration for poor vetting processes.

The Somali community in Minnesota, particularly in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area, has nothing to do with last week’s shooting. But, it’s clear that McLaughlin is speaking not just for DHS, but for the entire administration by failing to address the president calling an entire ethnic group and community garbage.

Instead, McLaughlin is using the shooting to justify an immigration crackdown on Somalis in Minnesota, 58 percent of whom were born in the U.S., with 87 percent of those born overseas being naturalized U.S. citizens, according to Census data. But she’s only following the president’s racist lead, and he was inspired by a story full of holes originating from right-wing media.

A bad week has gotten even worse for Pete Hegseth, as a new watchdog report from the Pentagon inspector general’s office finds that the defense secretary directly endangered U.S. troops when he used the Signal messaging app to discuss sensitive plans to bomb the Houthi rebels in Yemen back in March. 

Sources told CNN that the classified report details Hegseth’s lack of urgency and seriousness in speaking freely on the public messaging app about active U.S. war plans, updates, and even when “the first bombs will drop.” 

It is unclear if any of the information was properly declassified before it was put on Signal—and before The Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg was accidentally added to the chat. As CNN reported, Hegseth claimed he declassified all the info after the messages became public, but no such documentation exists.

A classified version of the inspector general’s report was sent to Congress on Tuesday, with an unclassified version set to drop on Thursday.  

This report comes in the midst of another controversy for Hegseth in which he is currently attempting to shift blame for a boat bombing double strike that killed two survivors—a potential war crime—away from himself and onto Admiral Frank Bradley. 

At Tuesday’s Cabinet meeting, Hegseth claimed that he didn’t know there were survivors after the first strike, adding that the “fog of war” would’ve made it difficult to determine if anyone had survived—a response both the left and right is finding to be insufficient. 

“This week has made it abundantly clear that Pete Hegseth should not be in charge of the most powerful military on Earth,” podcaster Jon Favreau wrote on X. 

A federal judge on Wednesday shredded the Trump administration’s shallow defense for bragging about its rampant, warrantless immigration arrests.

In an 88-page ruling, U.S. Judge Beryl Howell wrote that the Trump administration had illegally lowered the standard for making immigration arrests when it instituted a policy of “arrest now, ask questions later” as part of the federal takeover of Washington, D.C.

Howell documented how the Department of Homeland Security and Trump officials began to insist on using a standard of “reasonable suspicion” to make arrests, and included a laundry list of official comments claiming that the government did not need to demonstrate probable cause. Howell took issue with the government’s attorneys, who claimed the statements had been made by “non-attorneys” who “don’t necessarily understand” legal terms.

“This is a remarkable assertion. On its face, the government’s defense appears to be that the individuals behind these statements are ignorant or incompetent, or both,” Howell wrote.

For example, chief Border Patrol agent Gregory Bovino told the press, “We need reasonable suspicion to make an immigration arrest,” adding, “You notice I did not say probable cause, nor did I say I need a warrant. We need reasonable suspicion of illegal alienage, that’s well grounded within the United States immigration law.”

White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller was also cited in the ruling as saying, “Just go out there” and arrest people at Home Depots or 7-Elevens.

In June, Miller reportedly told a meeting of dozens of immigration officers that he didn’t want ICE to narrow its field to just undocumented immigrants with criminal records. “Stephen Miller wants everybody arrested. ‘Why aren’t you at Home Depot? Why aren’t you at 7-Eleven?’” an official recalled.

Howell barred the government from making warrantless immigration arrests without obtaining probable cause that the person was in the country illegally and a flight risk.

The Trump administration is releasing “as much” of the Epstein files as it can—at least, the components that are “lawful,” according to FBI Director Kash Patel.

Speaking with Fox News Tuesday evening, Patel insinuated that there were some documents related to the investigation of child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein that can’t be readily released.

“Mr. Director, our viewers also are just—they are chomping at the bit on why it took the Epstein files so long to be released,” said host Laura Ingraham. “Any regrets there? Was that an unforced error, should we have gotten them out earlier? Just get them all out there? Just thought I’d give you a chance to react to that.”

“Yeah, look, this FBI has produced 40,000 pages of documents to Congress. To put that in comparison, [Christopher] Wray put out 13,000 in seven years and [James] Comey put out 3,000,” Patel responded, referring to his two predecessors.

Of course, Wray and Comey were not mandated by a law passed specifically to release the documents. After months of dragging their feet, Republicans in both chambers of Congress passed a bill to release the investigation files related to Epstein and his potential associates. Donald Trump signed the bill on November 19, starting a 30-day timer on the documents’ release.

“We’re committed to transparency. We are putting out as much as we can that is lawful and that is not prohibited by court orders. And those are the things the DOJ is fighting, still, with judges in court to make sure we can reveal everything without breaking the law,” Patel continued.

“That’s what we’re committed to doing. We’re doing it as fast as we can,” Patel added, before abruptly changing the topic.

The House Oversight Committee released more than 20,000 emails last month that it had obtained from Epstein’s estate. The documents included multiple mentions of Trump, such as in a 2011 email, when Epstein expressed he was grateful Trump had stayed quiet about details of Epstein’s life. The “dog that hasn’t barked is Trump,” Epstein wrote, despite detailing how Trump had spent hours at one of Epstein’s properties with a known victim.

It turns out that Donald Trump’s tariffs aren’t good for private-sector jobs.

A new report from payroll processor ADP found that private employees lost nearly 32,000 jobs in November, far off analyst projections that they would add 10,000 jobs. The data is a sharp decline from October, when businesses overall added 47,000 jobs, according to the ADP’s revised estimate.

“Larger companies are still hiring,” wrote Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union, on X. “Smaller firms (under 50 workers) are doing the layoffs. It’s been a very tough year for small biz due to tariffs and more selective spending from lower and middle-class consumers.”

Indeed, smaller employers seem to be taking the biggest hit, having lost 120,000 jobs. Medium firms added 51,000 jobs, whereas the largest businesses added 39,000 jobs. To the Trump administration, though, it’s all the fault of the government shutdown and Democrats, as Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutink said on CNBC Wednesday.

“No, no, it’s not tariffs,” Lutnik said, in response to a question from CNBC’s Sara Eisen. “Remember, you had the Democratic shutdown, right, and what do you think happens to small business, the people who do business with the U.S. government, they know they’re not getting paid, so they slow down their projects.

“Remember, as you deport people, that’s gonna suppress private job numbers of small businesses. But they’ll rebalance, and they’ll regrow, so I think this is just a near-term event, and you’ll see as the numbers come through over the next couple of months, you’ll see that all pass,” Lutnick added.

But Lutnick’s only doing damage control. Domestic manufacturing, as measured by the Institute for Supply Management Manufacturing index, fell for the ninth month in a row, showing that the tariffs are hurting an area that Trump boasts they will improve. And private companies, including wholesale retailer Costco, are suing the government to get a refund of the tariffs they’ve paid.

Trump has made erroneous claims that tariffs are paid by other countries, not companies or consumers, and that they are bringing in a windfall in revenue that is diminishing the need for any other taxes. That is demonstrably false. All of this shows that tariffs are not helping but hurting the American economy and American workers.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth doesn’t think he’s the most problematic member of Donald Trump’s Cabinet.

Hegseth said Tuesday that he wouldn’t trust deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller to babysit his kids, when asked about it on a podcast hosted by Miller’s wife.

“Who would you trust to babysit your kids?” Katie Miller asked. “This can only be another member of the Cabinet.”

“I mean, not your husband or Marco,” Hegseth said, to laughs. “I would trust the vice president. I mean, I’ve known Sean Duffy for years. I would trust him.”

Hegseth was seated beside his own wife, Jennifer Rauchet, who interjected that Duffy “would just call one of his kids.”

“I would trust Brooke Rollins or Pam. Tulsi’s incredible,” Hegseth added, referring to the agriculture secretary, the U.S. attorney general, and the director of national intelligence.

Hegseth then extended his playful lack of faith, saying that he believed Miller would be most likely to need help in an emergency.

“Who is the most likely to call you after hours in an emergency?” asked Katie Miller.

“Stephen Miller,” Hegseth responded, without missing a beat.

“One hundred percent,” added Rauchet.

“Stephen, you know it’s true. You know it’s true,” poked Hegseth, looking directly at the camera. “There’s others on the list, but he’s on top of the mountaintop.”

“It is true,” Katie Miller relented.

Hegseth, meanwhile, is under fire from practically every element of government for a wide array of scandals that range from reports of alcoholism to Nazi accusations and allegations that he has violated international human rights law in the Caribbean.

Hegseth’s careless, monthslong killing spree against small boats in international waters has claimed the lives of at least 83 people, and has pushed congressional Republicans to consider whether Hegseth should be stripped of his position altogether.

GOP-led panels in the House and Senate dialed up their scrutiny of the Pentagon this week, demanding a full account of a double tap that took place on September 2, mercilessly killing survivors of a U.S. drone strike.

The Republican chairmen of the Senate and House Armed Services committees are both demanding audio and video of the incident. “We’re going to conduct oversight, and we’re going to try to get to the facts,” vowed Senator Roger Wicker Monday.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is planning to court-martial Democratic Senator and military veteran Mark Kelly for saying—nearly verbatim—the same thing he himself said about soldiers not having to follow “unlawful orders” almost a decade ago. 

On Tuesday, Kelly posted a clip of the defense secretary giving a speech in 2016, when he was still an anchor for Fox News. 

“I do think there have to be consequences for abject war crimes. If you’re doing something that is just completely unlawful and ruthless, then there is a consequence for that. That’s why the military said it won’t follow unlawful orders from their commander-in-chief,” Hegseth said in the video, which was first reported by CNN’s KFile.

Hegseth’s statement is nearly identical to the one Kelly and five other Democratic members of Congress and military and intelligence veterans made in a video last month, in which they stated that “this administration is pitting our uniformed military and intelligence community professionals against American citizens” and that “our laws are clear. You can refuse illegal orders.”

This very measured video led the president to call for the “seditious six” to be hanged, and Hegseth to threaten to court-martial Kelly. 

“The video made by the ‘Seditious Six’ was despicable, reckless, and false. Encouraging our warriors to ignore the orders of their Commanders undermines every aspect of ‘good order and discipline,’” Hegseth wrote on X last month. “Mark Kelly (retired Navy Commander) is still subject to UCMJ—and he knows that. As was announced, the Department is reviewing his statements and actions....  Kelly’s conduct brings discredit upon the armed forces and will be addressed appropriately.” 

The hypocrisy here is obvious. Of course Hegseth has a clip of him agreeing exactly with what Kelly and the other members of Congress expressed because refusing to carry out unlawful orders from the president is a very rational and widely accepted concept. Hegseth’s issue is that the president is his boss, and he wants nothing more than to be the best lackey he can be. 

“I think he’s correct, and it’s exactly what we said,” Kelly told CNN on Tuesday. “But when we said it, Pete Hegseth now … says what we said was false and reckless. And I think it begs the question—what has changed? And it’s pretty obvious. What has changed is we have an unqualified secretary of defense who only cares about sucking up to this president, and loyalty to this president. That’s the difference.” 

A prominent cardiologist is calling bullshit on President Donald Trump’s MRI story.

Speaking to CNN’s Jake Tapper Tuesday, Dr. Jonathan Reiner, who served as a cardiologist for the late Vice President Dick Cheney, dismissed the White House’s outrageous explanation for the 79-year-old Trump’s repeated visits to the doctor.

A recent memo from Dr. Sean Barbabella, physician to the president, disclosed that Trump had received a chest and abdominal scan as a “preventative” measure for men in his age group.

“There’s no chance that this was just sort of routine preventative care. First of all, it’s not part of routine preventative care,” Reiner explained. “There aren’t patients who come to see me or any of my colleagues who we say, ‘Let’s just scan your whole body!’”

Reiner noted there was a lot of information missing from the doctor’s memo. “The president’s doctor didn’t even disclose what kind of scan. The president said MRI, all that the president’s physician said was advanced imaging. Did he have an MRI? Did he have a CT? Did he have both?” Reiner said.

“And what he didn‘t say is whether the president had a scan of his brain. He didn’t say he didn’t, he just included some data from the chest and abdominal scans. So it’s not plausible or really credible to believe that they just decided to do some preventative screening for a third time this year.”

Trump’s October visit to Walter Reed came six months after his annual physical exam. For days afterward, the White House refused to explain the reason for his second visit. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt claimed it was his “routine yearly checkup,” but clearly that wasn’t true. Meanwhile, anyone with eyes can see signs that the president has diminishing mental faculties. It appeared that he could barely stay awake throughout a lengthy Cabinet meeting Tuesday, and when he spoke, he was incoherent and confused.

Trump has repeatedly claimed he had no idea why he got an MRI scan or what part of the body the doctors were even looking at. Still, he claimed his results were “absolutely perfect.” Barbabella’s memo detailing Trump’s October visit to Walter Reed said that the president “remains in excellent overall health.”