Mike Johnson’s Spending Bill May Have Cost Him His Most Powerful Ally

House Speaker Mike Johnson has begun the steady descent out of Donald Trump’s favor.

A source close to Trump told NOTUS Thursday that the president-elect initially supported Johnson’s plan to keep the government funded, but was surprised to find that the whopping 1,547-page bill was filled with plans to spend billions of dollars on Democratic priorities, farmers, and disaster relief.

Senator Josh Hawley told CNN Wednesday that Trump had said Johnson had not told him everything in the massive spending bill.

Trump has been a staunch ally of the Louisiana Republican, including in May when Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene tried to have him removed from the speakership. Johnson has remained cozy with the president-elect, but all of that could change in the wake of his continuing resolution, which is particularly unpopular with unofficial, unelected co-President Elon Musk.

Trump’s defection could spell trouble for Johnson, who needs to be speedily reelected next year so that Congress can go on to certify the results of the presidential election.

Trump spoke with Fox Digital Thursday and indicated that Johnson would have no trouble getting reelected … so long as he is able to clean up the spending bill.

“If the speaker acts decisively, and tough, and gets rid of all of the traps being set by the Democrats, which will economically and, in other ways, destroy our country, he will easily remain speaker,” Trump said.

Meanwhile, members of Johnson’s own party appear to have already moved on. Representative Thomas Massie said Wednesday night he would not vote for Johnson as speaker in January, and some lawmakers are even suggesting Musk as a potential replacement.

Trump floated completely abolishing the debt ceiling on Thursday, surprising Democrats and Republicans alike.

The shocking demand comes as the president-elect revealed his opposition to the bipartisan spending bill, bringing the federal government another step closer to a shutdown.

Trump told NBC News over the phone that it would be the “smartest thing” Congress could do.

“I would support that entirely.… The Democrats have said they want to get rid of it. If they want to get rid of it, I would lead the charge,” Trump said.

He went on to assert that the debt ceiling is a frivolous, imaginary concept intended to scare people into abiding by it. “It doesn’t mean anything, except psychologically,” he said.

This isn’t necessarily new for Trump, who signed laws to lift the debt ceiling three separate times during his first term while also suggesting the debt ceiling be killed off in 2017. “It complicates things, it’s really not necessary,” he said of the debt ceiling then.

Still, it goes against the rest of his party, as Republicans often campaign against raising the debt ceiling, let alone abolishing it entirely. That’s not the case with Democrats. Pennsylvania Democratic Representative Brendan Boyle has been advocating for his Debt Ceiling Reform Act since 2023, a law that would weaken Congress’s ability to use shutdown as a threat to pass legislation. The bill currently has 55 Democratic Party co-sponsors.

Already, at least one Democrat has backed Trump’s demand.

“I agree with President-elect Trump that Congress should terminate the debt limit and never again govern by hostage taking,” Senator Elizabeth Warren wrote on X.

President-elect Donald Trump and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had a peculiar exchange after the progressive lawmaker lost a bid to become her party’s ranking member on the House Oversight Committee. The interaction appeared laden with sarcasm but perhaps also revealed something deeper about shifts in American politics.

“Really too bad that AOC lost the Battle for the Leadership Seat in the Democrat Party. She should keep trying. Someday, she will be successful!” Trump posted on Truth Social Wednesday afternoon. Ocasio-Cortez replied Wednesday, in a post followed by a laughing-crying emoji, “Damn you know it’s bad when even Trump is feeling bad for me.”

The 35-year-old Ocasio-Cortez lost her leadership bid to 74-year-old Representative Gerry Connolly—whose challenge to the popular young congresswoman was boosted by Democratic power broker former Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Ocasio-Cortez’s loss was, for many, a sign that the Democratic Party learned few lessons from the 2024 election, remaining wedded to the sclerotic old guard and unwilling to embrace the popular change agents for whom America has an apparent appetite.

While Ocasio-Cortez appears to be taking the loss on the chin, a number of MAGA social media users accused her of failing to realize that Trump’s praise was tongue-in-cheek (apparently missing that the congresswoman’s reply was itself sarcastic).

But other users weren’t so sure Trump’s praise was insincere.

Corey Moss-Pech, a sociologist at Florida State University, tweeted, “What Donald Trump understands and Dem elites don’t is young people moving away from Dems is why he won. This is why he said this and why he said Dems couldn’t get student loans canceled. He wants young people disillusioned with Dems. And the party is happy to comply!”

Moss-Pech’s theory seems probable. In 2016 and 2020, Trump attempted to appeal to Bernie Sanders supporters disillusioned with the political establishment by calling the party’s nomination process rigged.

This election cycle, Trump heaped sincere praise on Ocasio-Cortez in a similar manner. And, notably, he chose to do so during what New York magazine called his “Gen-Z pivot.”

In his appearance on internet personality Adin Ross’s livestream in August, Trump was asked his opinion on a number of celebrities and politicians. When it came to Ocasio-Cortez, he initially said, “Fake,” but quickly changed course, veering into praise and comparing her favorably to former Argentine first lady Eva Perón.

“But in all fairness, look, but she knows it. She’s got a thing going. It’s a good thing—good thing for her,” Trump told Ross. “She’s got a spark that’s pretty amazing, actually. She’s got a good spark. So, I’ll change it. I’ll say spark.… She’s got a lot of sizzle.”

Following Election Day, Ocasio-Cortez solicited the opinions of voters who supported both herself and Trump in the 2024 election, seeking to understand split-ticket Trump-AOC voters. Many respondents indicated that they liked Trump and Ocasio-Cortez because both, to them, signified real change.

Rand Paul thinks the richest man in the world should be speaker of the House.

The Republican senator suggested on X that Musk take the position, after he helped kill Speaker Mike Johnson’s spending bill, pushing the federal government closer to shutdown.

“The Speaker of the House need not be a member of Congress,” Paul posted on Thursday. “Nothing would disrupt the swamp more than electing Elon Musk … think about it … nothing’s impossible. (not to mention the joy at seeing the collective establishment, aka ‘uniparty,’ lose their ever-lovin’ minds).”

The speaker of the House does not need to be an elected official, although it always has been in the past. Still, the likelihood of this MAGA fantasy coming to fruition seems low, as President-elect Trump himself told Fox News Thursday that Johnson would remain speaker so long as he “acts decisively and tough” on the upcoming spending package.

Even without the speakership, Musk’s influence on the president-elect and the greater Republican Party is undeniable. He has already been appointed to co-lead the Department of Government Efficiency and has been a constant presence at Mar-a-Lago. His oversize role was called into question recently after he and Trump publicly disagreed on raising the debt ceiling.

“It’s not Donald Trump asking for this, it’s very clearly President Elon Musk asking for this,” Representative Dan Goldman told The Last Word With Lawrence O’Donnell. “The fact that Donald Trump has been completely AWOL during these negotiations to the point where only after Elon Musk publicly tweets about his displeasure about this budget deal, all of a sudden, Donald Trump, chief of staff to Elon Musk, comes trotting in and blows up the deal.”

Georgia’s Court of Appeals disqualified Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis Thursday from prosecuting the 2020 election interference case against Donald Trump and his co-defendants over a conflict of interest. 

Willis’s office filed a notice Thursday afternoon indicating that it intends to appeal the court’s decision, which, if taken up, would move the case to Georgia’s Supreme Court. 

Trump and eight of his 18 co-defendants filed an application with Georgia’s appeals court in March, asking it to reconsider Judge Scott McAfee decision to allow Willis to continue to prosecute the case after she was accused of having an improper relationship with her special prosecutor, Nathan Wade. McAfee had allowed her to stay on the grounds that she cut ties with Wade.

“After carefully considering the trial court’s findings in its order, we conclude that it erred by failing to disqualify DA Willis and her office,” Judge E. Trention Brown wrote in the appeals court majority opinion. 

“The remedy crafted by the trial court to prevent an ongoing appearance of impropriety did nothing to address the appearance of impropriety that existed at times when DA Willis was exercising her broad pretrial discretion about who to prosecute and what charges to bring.”

“While we recognize that an appearance of impropriety generally is not enough to support disqualification, this is the rare case in which disqualification is mandated and no other remedy will suffice to restore public confidence in the integrity of these proceedings,” Brown wrote. 

The court affirmed, however, that the indictment against Trump should not be dismissed. 

“The appellants contend that the trial court erred in denying their motions to dismiss the indictment. The State responds that the appellants have failed to show that the trial court erred in finding that the appellants had not shown ‘that [their] due process rights have been violated or that the issues involved prejudiced [them] in any way,’” Brown wrote. 

He noted that dismissing the indictment would be an “extreme sanction” and should only be used for “unlawful government conduct.”

The Fulton County district attorney’s office indicted Trump, alongside 18 others, in 2023 on felony charges in a large-scale racketeering case for attempting to interfere in Georgia’s state election. It’s unclear what exactly Willis’s disqualification will mean for the case.

Trump’s lawyers had argued in a legal filing two weeks ago that the case ought to be tossed “well before” he was sworn in as president, and that both the state and district court “lack jurisdiction to entertain any further criminal process against President Trump as the continued indictment and prosecution of President Trump by the State of Georgia are unconstitutional.”

Fulton County Chief Senior Assistant District Attorney F. McDonald Wakeford hit back at the lawyers’ request, arguing that the “Appellant does not specify or articulate how the appeal—or indeed, any other aspect of this case—will constitutionally impede or interfere with his duties once he assumes office,” implying that the case would proceed regardless of Trump’s return to the White House.  

This story has been updated.