The Movement: Mike Johnson dodges crosshairs of RINO-hunting online right

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The Movement: Mike Johnson dodges crosshairs of RINO-hunting online right


There’s a major disconnect between the right-wing activist base and Republican mood in Congress that is adding fuel to the pressure cooker for the “one big, beautiful bill.”

Browse through posts on the online right and you’ll see endless complaints about Republicans not doing enough to codify President Trump’s executive orders, accusations that they have not accomplished anything, gripes about lack of judicial impeachment, and even calls to remove Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) over inaction.

Here’s a typical message, as posted by Derrick Evans, a former West Virginia state representative: “Someone needs to make a motion to vacate on Speaker Johnson. Our Republicans in Congress have done NOTHING.”

But on Capitol Hill, House GOP lawmakers are pushing through all-night marathon committee meetings and lengthy negotiations as they hash out sticking points for President Trump’s legislative agenda of tax, energy, and border priorities, which Johnson said Monday “is arguably the largest and most comprehensive piece of legislation that Congress has worked on in, probably, generations.”

The chatter is a headache for Republican lawmakers and aides who see it as misinformed at best or a bad-faith bid for engagement at worst. There’s nothing that riles up the GOP base more, after all, than thinking a Republican might be lying to them.

And it’s Johnson rather than Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) who is the target of outrage perhaps because the action on the major legislation is in the House right now — or maybe because the conservative base has some muscle memory about how to oust a Republican speaker.

Frustration about codifying Trump executive orders, to be fair, has been fueled by some House Republicans. Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) this month led a letter of 17 GOP members asking Johnson to advance more legislation codifying Trump’s executive orders, Breitbart’s Bradley Jaye reported. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) has made major pushes for the House to vote to codify many of Trump’s orders — such as the Gulf of America renaming measure, which passed the House earlier this month.

Johnson earlier this month pointed to votes the House has already taken to codify executive orders, such as the SAVE Act requiring proof of citizenship to vote, and a bill to sanction the International Criminal Court. But the trouble is what happens to the bills in the Senate, where most legislation needs at least 60 votes to pass. In a display of that challenge, the Senate rejected a bill to ban transgender athletes from women’s and girls’ sports earlier this year.

On the matter of impeaching judges who have blocked Trump actions, Johnson has also pointed to the near-zero chance of the Senate meeting the two-thirds threshold to convict any judges that the House impeaches, while noting that the House passed legislation to restrict the ability of judges to block the administration’s actions. 

Evans, the former West Virginia lawmaker, isn’t satisfied by those explanations. He elaborated to me: “Since Mike Johnson and the House Republicans have failed to pass Trump's and Elon's DOGE cuts, they've failed to impeach any of the judges or indict any of the criminals who weaponized the U.S. Government against Donald Trump, and they've failed to pass a clean budget, House Republicans should absolutely make a motion to Vacate the Chair.”

In the political messaging battle, though, whether the assessment of a do-nothing Congress and Speaker is true or not is beside the point. What matters is showing major movement in advancing Trump’s priorities.

That’s why the chatter is adding to the pressure for Republican leaders to pass the “one big, beautiful bill” — which can pass the Senate along party lines and not be subject to the 60-vote rule — or risk even more outrage.

And here’s an under-the-radar dynamic to watch if Republicans can indeed pass the major legislation: Trumpeting the bill as a win for the president’s efforts to codify executive orders.

“Many elements of executive orders would be funded in reconciliation,” a House GOP leadership aide told me when asked about the push to codify executive orders. 

Johnson alluded to that as well in a recent press conference. 

“We're going to codify dozens more of President Trump's budget-related executive orders, spending-related executive orders, through the budget reconciliation process,” Johnson said.

It could be hard to push that message right now, though, due to the sensitive nature of ushering the bill through the Senate parliamentary process, which requires budget reconciliation bills to stay focused on fiscal and budgetary issues rather than other policy and lawmaking areas.

The high expectations of the online right also showcases the shifting dynamics for GOP communications strategies.

A GOP communications staffer not in a leadership office told me that monitoring online chatter and potential viral tweets about their boss has become an increasingly large part of their job — as is battling to correct any skewed or spun messages.

Welcome to The Movement, a weekly newsletter looking at the influences and debates on the right in Washington. I'm Emily Brooks, House leadership reporter at The Hill. Tell me what’s on your radar: ebrooks@thehill.com.

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Programming note: The Movement will hit your inbox on Wednesday morning next week.

MAGA LASHES OUT AT FBI OVER EPSTEIN SUICIDE 

Actually, it looks like the late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein probably did kill himself, FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino said on Fox News’s Sunday Morning Futures.

“I have seen the whole file. He killed himself,” Bongino told host Maria Bartiromo.

Patel added that based on his experience, “You know a suicide when you see one, and that’s what that was.”

That assessment is infuriating conspiracy theorists who were hoping that the new Trump appointees would uncover the truth that they were sure was being hidden, CNN’s Brian Stelter reports.

It’s certainly not a popular position. A pair of 2019 polls from Certus Insights and Emerson College found that only around a third of Americans believe Epstein died by suicide. 

Now, those on the right who count themselves as supporters of the FBI heads are calling for more details to be released. Conservative commentator Glenn Beck is calling for unredacted autopsy reports, surveillance footage, and “Most of all: what changed Patel and Bongino's minds?”

The Epstein theories didn’t end with Bongino and Beck. ZeroHedge’s Liam Cosgrove got the “new media” seat in the White House press briefing on Monday and asked about the “Clinton body count,” in reference to a video that Trump posted on Truth Social and got a write-up in the Washington Post.

As my colleague Dominick Mastrangelo reports, Cosgrove called Epstein’s death “the most-famous Clinton-related death” before asking White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt when the Department of Justice planned to release more files on Epstein’s case. Leavitt, for her part, deferred to the Department of Justice.

Further reading: Can Team Trump’s most MAGA members end Jeffrey Epstein talk? by Ben Domenech in The Spectator World

EMMER REVEALS MAJOR OUTSIDE COALITION EFFORT FOR TRUMP BILL

News: House Majority Whip Tom Emmer’s (R-Minn.) office will debut a webpage this morning showcasing the major coalition effort to pass the “one big, beautiful bill” that displays just how broad and far-reaching it is. 

More than 100 outside groups have signed on to say they support final passage of the bill so far — ranging from predictable low-tax organizations like Americans for Prosperity and reliable conservative partners like March for Life Action to a smattering of corporations like Uber, Chevron, and Verizon. Many more are on record supporting individual portions of the bill – but the office worked to gather the partners’ support for the full package (which is about to undergo some last-minute tweaks) just since Friday. 

GOP leaders, of course, hope that the broad support from outside groups and companies helps corral the fractious slim majority to get the votes for final passage later this week.

Emmer said in a statement: “House Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill has earned historic support because it delivers real results for every corner of America. From securing the border to cementing the 2017 Trump Tax Cuts, this landmark legislation promises a stronger future for all Americans.”

ON MY CALENDAR

THREE MORE THINGS

  1. Trumpworld is trying to thread the needle as they take digs at former President Biden’s fitness for office in the wake of his prostate cancer diagnosis,my colleague Alex Gangitano reports. Trump himself first went to wish Biden a quick recovery — and then later questioned why the cancer wasn’t caught and disclosed sooner.
  2. Scott Adams, the cartoonist who created the Dilbert comic strip and is a vocal commentator on the right, revealed he has prostate cancer and expects he could die this summer. “I have the same cancer that Joe Biden has. I also have prostate cancer that has also spread to my bones,” Adams said in a live stream on Sunday. “But I’ve had it longer than he’s had it — well, longer than he’s admitted having it. So, my life expectancy is maybe this summer. I expect to be checking out from this domain maybe sometime this summer.”
  3. America First Policy Institute was “born from failure,” but turned into a White House-in-waiting for the second Trump administration. “Over 86% of the 196 federal policies that AFPI drafted and recommended in 2022, while Republicans were still in the wilderness, have been advanced or enacted during the first 100 Days of the Trump administration,” Real Clear Politics’s Phil Wegmann reports in his story about the organization.

WHAT I'M READING


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