Three More GOP Reps Split From Mike Johnson Over Shutdown

It’s been three weeks since House Speaker Mike Johnson sent lawmakers back to their districts, and Republicans are getting seriously sick of his WFH strategy. 

During a private conference call with House Republicans Thursday, at least three lawmakers raised concerns about keeping the House out of session after it passed a stopgap funding bill that never made its way through the Senate, sources told MSNBC.  

California Representative Jay Obernolte warned that staying home would make it seem like Republicans were “prioritizing politics over government.”

“I think we’re gonna get to a point where it’s damaging to continue to keep the House out of session,” he said. 

Oklahoma Representative Stephanie Bice said she had “concerns” about lawmakers staying in their districts during the government shutdown, and that constituents probably “wonder why we’re not there,” according to one source. She warned leadership to imagine the optics of staying home next week, when lawmakers could just as easily deliver messaging from Washington. 

North Dakota Representative Julie Fedorchak expressed a similar sentiment, arguing that their messaging would be stronger and more consistent if they weren’t all working from home. 

Some Republicans have already voiced their disapproval publicly. 

California Representative Kevin Kiley fumed at the speaker’s comment Thursday, claiming that the House would likely remain out of session for another week because “we’ve already done our job.”

“What the House has done is pass a 7-week Continuing Resolution. The entire reason a CR is necessary is that Congress has not done its job in passing a timely budget,” Kiley wrote on X. “The Speaker shouldn’t even think about cancelling session for a third straight week.”

Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has found herself at odds with party leadership, has slammed Johnson all week for sending lawmakers home.

“I think he should really bring the House back in session for many reasons. We have appropriation bills that need to get passed. There is a new Democrat that’s been elected that does deserve to be sworn in. Her district elected her. We have other bills that we need to be passing,” Greene told CNN Thursday. “Any serious speaker of the House is going to build consensus within his conference behind a plan. It’s not something secret that gets worked on in a committee.”

Earlier this week, Kentucky Representative Thomas Massie suggested that Johnson had scattered lawmakers to the winds to avoid swearing in Democratic Representative-elect Adelita Grijalva, who would be the tie-breaking vote on a petition to discharge the Jeffrey Epstein files in full. When pressed about it on Tuesday, Johnson struggled to explain why he was waiting for the House to be in full session, when she could be sworn in in a short pro forma session. 

Two Republican governors have broken with the Trump administration, condemning the president’s decision to release the National Guard into American cities.

Vermont Governor Phil Scott called it an “unnecessary” and “unconstitutional” move that only “further divides and threatens people.”

“We need stability right now in this country—we don’t need more unrest.… I don’t think our guard should be used against our own people. I don’t think the military should be used against our own people. In fact, it’s unconstitutional,” he told VTDigger on Thursday. “Unless, of course, there’s an insurrection, much like we saw Jan. 6 a few years ago.”

Scott also said he would reject a request to deploy Vermont’s National Guard elsewhere, and that Trump calling for the jailing of Illinois Governor JB Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson was “wrong on many, many different levels.”

Scott did not support Trump in 2016 and called for his removal from office after the January 6 insurrection.

Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt has been much more supportive of Trump than Scott has in the past, attending rallies and receiving endorsements from him since 2018. Even he thinks this is a bit much.

“We believe in the federalist system—that’s states’ rights,” he told The New York Times on Thursday. “Oklahomans would lose their mind if Pritzker in Illinois sent troops down to Oklahoma during the Biden administration.”

“I was surprised that Governor Abbott sent troops from Texas to Illinois,” Stitt continued. “Abbott and I sued the Biden administration when the shoe was on the other foot and the Biden administration was trying to force us to vaccinate all of our soldiers and force masks across the country.… As a federalist believer, one governor against another governor, I don’t think that’s the right way to approach this.”

Stitt, who made the comments shortly before Scott, indicated he isn’t the only Republican governor who disapproves of Trump sending military from other states into the streets of Chicago, Portland, and Washington, D.C.

“Maybe you just haven’t asked the right ones,” he said. Only time will tell.

“This is an achievement of a whole society,” said Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado upon receiving the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday. “I am just, you know, one person. I certainly do not deserve this.”

Donald Trump, on the other hand, did not receive the honor, despite believing—and asserting incessantly—that he deserves it more than anyone.

The White House on Friday lamented that the prize was not bestowed upon the man who felt the most entitled to it: “President Trump will continue making peace deals, ending wars, and saving lives,” wrote Steven Cheung, the notoriously feisty White House communications director, on X. “He has the heart of a humanitarian, and there will never be anyone like him who can move mountains with the sheer force of his will.”

“The Nobel Committee proved they place politics over peace,” Cheung continued, in a seeming slight to Machado, whom Trump has previously praised for her pro-democracy activism and resistance to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

Trump and his team have vociferously campaigned for the award in recent months, spuriously claiming the president has ended eight wars during his second term. In August, the president reportedly called Norway’s finance minister, Jens Stoltenberg, “out of the blue” to say “he wanted the Nobel Prize.”

World leaders seemingly caught on to Trump’s yearning for a Nobel as a way to the president’s heart, with the rulers of several countries, such as Pakistan, Israel, Guinea-Bissau, Gabon, Azerbaijan, and Armenia, scoring points with him by stating publicly that he deserves it.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. added to his repertoire of controversial, unsubstantiated claims about causes of autism at a Thursday Cabinet meeting, where the health secretary linked circumcision to autism.

President Donald Trump was repeating his administration’s hotly contested claim that Tylenol during pregnancy increases the risk of autism when Kennedy cut in to offer an example of “confirmation studies” to that effect.

“There’s two studies that show children who are circumcised early have double the rate of autism,” he said. “It’s highly likely because they’re given Tylenol. So, you know, none of this is dispositive, but all of it is stuff that we should be paying attention to.”

Kennedy did not specify the research he was citing, but one high-profile study that matches his description is a heavily criticized 2015 study that found, in a subgroup of a larger cohort of Danish children, “risk of infantile autism in circumcised boys was twice that of intact boys.” Notably, experts have warned against drawing sweeping conclusions from that study, which was “observational,” not “causal,” and did not account for myriad possible “confounding variables,” such as “cultural or social factors affecting the likelihood of an (early) autism diagnosis.”

It also did not investigate the use of acetaminophen.

Kennedy’s remark came just after he flipped the scientific method on its head by announcing his effort to “make the proof” for the administration’s unproven Tylenol-autism connection.

A federal judge in Illinois has ordered the Trump administration to stop beating, shooting at, and generally using violence against journalists and peaceful protesters.

The Thursday ruling comes as ICE and the National Guard tear through the streets of Chicago, shooting at and arresting journalists, protesters, and immigrants alike.

Judge Sara Ellis, the Obama appointee overseeing this case, has suspended federal agents from “using riot control weapons,” “firing [tear gas] canisters,” “using force, such as pulling or shoving a person to the ground, tackling, or body slamming an individual,” “striking any person with a vehicle,” and more abuses of power. The order applies to all agents from the Department of Homeland Security, including ICE and Border Patrol.

Federal agents have done all of that in recent weeks. In September, an ICE agent shot a pepper ball inside CBS News Chicago reporter Asal Rezaei’s car completely unprompted, in just one of many recent attacks on journalists. Also last month, ICE shot Reverend David Black in the head with a pepper ball while he was praying outside of an ICE facility in Broadview. In yet another incident caught on camera, a CBP agent shot a woman five times, and then arrested her.

“Federal agents have responded with a pattern of extreme brutality in a concerted and ongoing effort to silence the press and civilians. Dressed in full combat gear, often masked, carrying weapons, bearing flash grenades and tear gas canisters, and marching in formation, federal agents have repeatedly advanced upon those present at the scene who posed no imminent threat to law enforcement. Snipers with guns loaded with pepper balls, paintballs, and rubber bullets are stationed on the roof of the Broadview ICE facility with their weapons trained on the press and civilians,” read the original complaint, made on behalf of the Chicago Headline Club, Block Club Chicago, and Chicago Newspaper Guild Local 34071, among other local media organizations.

Judge Ellis also noted that federal agents “must have visible identification (for which a unique recognizable alphanumeric identifier sequence will suffice) affixed to their uniforms or helmets and prominently displayed, including when wearing riot gear,” although she did not say they couldn’t still wear masks.

The Temporary Restraining Order will last for 14 days, after which the case will move forward.