This is what happens when you leave huge decisions on reshaping huge swaths of the federal government to the last minute.
Speaker Mike Johnson’s House Republican Conference is in the midst of a low-grade rebellion against the GOP’s reconciliation proposal.
And since Johnson fought to put the entirety of President Donald Trump’s agenda into “one big, beautiful bill,” the competing factions within the GOP conference are fighting like hell to extract every concession they can.
Think of this situation a bit like squeezing a balloon. If you push too hard on one side, the other side bulges out. Johnson faces a similar dynamic.
If the Louisiana Republican gives in too much to the hardline conservatives in the House Freedom Caucus, moderates will bolt. If Johnson tacks too much toward moderates on an issue like SALT, the HFC and the rest of the GOP conference will bolt.
There’s one other factor to consider here: the 2026 midterm elections. This reconciliation package is the centerpiece of the GOP’s efforts to keep the House.
Moderates argue that if they lose out on SALT or Medicaid spending cuts, then it could cost them their seats and end Republican control of the House. “Moderates are the majority makers” is their refrain.
But conservatives are approaching this fight – in some ways – as if the House may already be lost in 2026. Meaning if House Republicans want major legislative wins that reshape the federal government, now is the moment. This is a subtle yet important subtext of what’s happening.
The House Budget Committee is slated to begin their markup of the reconciliation bill at 9 a.m. in Cannon 210. The panel needs to stitch together the reconciliation portions reported out by each of the 11 other House committees involved in the process. That one massive package will then be sent to the Rules Committee, which is to set on Monday to prep the legislation for the House floor.
There are no amendments allowed in the Budget Committee, so this is an up-or-down vote.
Johnson has big problems on Budget. Reps. Chip Roy (R-Texas), Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), Andrew Clyde (R-Ga.) and Josh Brecheen (R-Okla.) have all said they will vote against the bill in committee. This quartet huddled with Johnson and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise off the House floor following Thursday’s votes.
The conservatives are demanding changes to the federal matching portion of Medicaid, as well as immediate enforcement of beefed-up work requirements and a ban on undocumented immigrants. Another must-have – prompt termination of Inflation Reduction Act clean energy credits.
Despite this conservative opposition, GOP leaders assert they’re plowing ahead with today’s markup. Top Republicans believe they can flip the right-wing quartet by further explaining several elements of the bill.
We spoke to Roy and Norman Thursday. They didn’t sound like they needed anything explained to them and are clearly prepared to vote against the measure as it is.
Here’s How Trump Will Get Impeached (Again)
The arguments for the next impeachment of Donald Trump are being tested ahead of the 2026 midterms and they will center, once again, on the possible corruption of the Trump family and its associates through vast sums of Middle Eastern cash. Trump is going to Abu Dhabi today and he seems cock-a-hoop at all the trillions of dollars in Arab investment deals that are coming his way. “I want to thank the media,” he said yesterday, magnanimously, at a meeting in Qatar. “The media, I have to say, has been very fair. They’re having a hard time saying bad because this is a record tour that will raise… it could be a total of $3.5-4 trillion.” Everybody loves big numbers.
But Trump is deluding himself if he can’t see the negative publicity spinning out of his golden grand tour of the Levant. There’s the Qatar Force One story – the news that Trump has accepted a $400 million luxury jet as a gift from the government in Doha. The aircraft is meant to replace the aging Air Force One aircraft and Trump professed himself incredulous as to the outrage over the present. “Only a FOOL would not accept this gift on behalf of our Country,” he said.
But the Israel hawks surrounding Trump are displeased with his new friendship with the Qataris, who are, according to the official line from Tel Aviv, state sponsors of terrorism, the evil Robin to the badman Batman that is Iran. If Trump continues to fall out with Benjamin Netanyahu – and dares to strike some kind of nuclear deal with Tehran – the jet gift story will be pushed as evidence of a sinister “quid pro quo” with the Muslim Brotherhood. Remember it was allegations of a “quid pro quo” offer to Volodymyr Zelensky that caused Trump’s first impeachment in 2019.
But the jet story will be just one arrow in the Resistance 2.0’s quiver. The bigger looming scandal is World Liberty Financial, the crypto business which the Trump sons launched at Mar-a-Lago last September. It hasn’t gone unnoticed that, this month, an Abu Dhabi investment firm used a WLF “stablecoin” to invest $2 billion in Binance, the online crypto platform. WLF’s co-founder is Zach Witkoff, son of Steve, Trump’s Middle East envoy, and the whole enterprise has more than a whiff of Hunter Bidenish depravity about it. Crypto is still the wild west of the digital future and riddled with nefarious operators, some alarmingly close to the First Family. And the WLF story is already being connected to the $Trump coin scandal – the obviously bogus crypto currency that the president helped launch in the week of his inauguration. A number of Trump associates made a lot of very fast money out of that.
More ground prep from USA Today: Trump’s Jet and the Emoluments Clause
James Comey Wants Trump Dead
I mean, that’s what this means obviously. Politico:
James Comey posted, and then deleted, a social media message about President Donald Trump that sparked outrage among Republicans and federal scrutiny of the former FBI director.
Comey shared a photo Thursday of the numbers “8647” spelled out in seashells on a sandy beach, along with the phrase “cool shell formation on my beachwalk.”
Republicans quickly condemned the message as a threat to Trump, interpreting the numbers “86” as suggesting he should be killed, though the phrase means “eject, dismiss or remove” or “get rid of” someone in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary.
“DHS and Secret Service is investigating this threat and will respond appropriately,” warned Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in a post on X.
FBI Director Kash Patel also weighed in, saying his agency was in touch with the Secret Service and would “provide all necessary support.”
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard told Fox News she believes Comey should be put in jail for the post.
“I’m very concerned for the president’s life,” she said in an interview. “We’ve already seen assassination attempts. I’m very concerned for his life. And James Comey, in my view, should be held accountable and put behind bars for this.”
Comey took the Instagram post down within hours. He issued a statement saying he assumed the shells conveyed a political message without realizing “some folks associate those numbers with violence.”
More here:
The Emotional Power of Andor
My review in The Spectator:
Tony Gilroy’s Andor, having concluded its second season on Disney+ this week, stands as a monumental achievement given the pressures of Disney-era Star Wars leadership and its Kathleen Kennedy authoritarian “The Force is Female” complex.
The excellence seems almost accidental, a trick of timing and opportunity. With Gilroy exercising the authority of an auteur director from outside the world of science fiction, equipped with sensibilities derived from corporate thrillers and conflicts that pit differing clans of elites against one another, the series is the standout of an otherwise unmemorable or eagerly forgotten era of Star Wars creations. If The Acolyte is Kennedy’s vision for DEI-laden Star Wars, written and directed via the behind-the-scenes machinations of Harvey Weinstein’s secretary and starring her wife, then Andor is what happens when you wrest a galaxy away from the compelled corporate matriarchy to just tell a great story.
Even more surprising is that such a story could be told in the context of a known ending. Without a retcon available, Andor accelerates toward an end that makes certain moments more haunting and portentous, the viewer armed with knowledge the characters do not yet have. In the hands of a lesser filmmaker, this would be squandered – but Gilroy makes the most of it, with scenes and character conclusions that always feel earned by what leads up to inevitable death and destruction – or, surprisingly, rebirth.
None of the previous Star Wars entries have worked in this fashion. There are no Jedi. There is no Skywalker family drama. The Force is only present on the edges, as a ludicrous old fable of a lost religion, not an abiding faith. This is a story about rebels becoming soldiers becoming a revolution, not a plucky fantasy where all the Stormtroopers miss and no one ever gets just straight-up murdered. The casting, particularly of Imperials Denise Gough and Kyle Soller, injects a resonance into the series for understanding the true nature of evil and how it overtakes its human cogs and collapses their misgivings. And Gilroy’s choice to use as many physical settings as possible – casting aside the Unreal Engine Volume for Britain as the cold emotionless Coruscant and Spain as the gorgeous but decaying Republic – makes the whole series feel more grounded, a human drama where otherworldly things exist, but are not the focus of the plot.
There’s always an inclination to assign current politics to Star Wars, whether in the context of the George W. Bush years or the current anti-Trump moment. But what Gilroy manages in this series is to show this clash instead as one between elites. This is no Occupy Wall Street rebellion. Instead, it is an authoritarian empire which creates nothing that must lie, steal and disrupt peaceful people in order to grasp the wealth and political freedom of a capitalist class of traders and merchants. It is a militarist state that takes from those who grow, build and create by force of arms, because that is all they have. Yes, they are stronger – but their hubris leaves the villains vulnerable to the machinations of those who actually know how to build, how to create, and how to hide the key to the Empire’s destruction in plain sight.
Whatever comes next for this saga, if the cost of three increasingly ridiculous sequel movies was getting the Gilroy vision of Star Wars, it was absolutely worth it.
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The Spectator: Has Trump’s Kennedy Center Overhaul Worked?
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National Interest: Post-Sindoor — A New Reality for India and Pakistan
Washington Examiner: Pope Leo’s Push for Russia-Ukraine Peace Talks
1945: Turkish vs. Israeli Jets Over Syria — A New Crisis Brews
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NY Post: Supreme Court Considers Judicial Power Over President
Law & Crime: Barrett Enrages MAGA Over Birthright Citizenship
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