Mike Johnson Blames Shutdown on “No Kings” Protest in Absurd Rant

Republican Speaker Mike Johnson thinks the “No Kings” rally planned for next week is a “Hate America” rally meant to extend the government shutdown—something someone who has never been to a “No Kings” event would say. 

“We’re so angry about it. I’m a very patient guy, but I have had it with these people. They’re playing games with real people’s lives,” Johnson said Friday morning on Fox News, in his usual monotone voice. “The theory we have right now: They have a ‘Hate America’ rally that’s scheduled for October 18 on the National Mall. It’s all the pro-Hamas wing and the antifa people, they’re all coming out. Some of the House Democrats are selling T-shirts for the event. It’s being told to us that they won’t be able to reopen the government until after that rally, ’cuz they can’t face their rabid base. This is serious business hurting real people.… I’m beyond words.” 

The “No Kings” rally is a nationwide action with a very simple goal: oppose the blatantly authoritarian tilt of the Trump administration. The protests are supported by groups like the Human Rights Campaign, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the College Democrats of America, among others. The rallies have been very tame, and I have run into veterans, federal employees, and mostly older, liberal white people who love America but hate what President Trump is doing. No one there is particularly close to being pro-Hamas, and antifa (whoever that is) would likely consider the action to be insufficiently leftist for them. 

But Johnson can say ridiculous things like this because his party can’t fathom that not everyone who opposes them is some militant anarchist with a Molotov cocktail locked and loaded. The government is shut down because Republicans refuse to negotiate with Democrats on extending health care subsidies millions of Americans rely on, not because Democrats want antifa to destroy the government.  

Bari Weiss must have pulled a lot of management inspiration from the Department of Government Efficiency.

The new editor in chief of CBS News issued a memo to staff Friday, ordering them to send her memos by Tuesday denoting how they spend their workdays and what they believe could be improved.

“By the end of day Tuesday, I’d like a memo from each person across our news organization,” Weiss said in a copy of the email obtained by Semafor’s Max Tani. “I’m not looking for a JD or words like synergy. I want to understand how you spend your working hours—and, ideally, what you’ve made (or are making) that you’re most proud of. I’m also interested in hearing your views on what’s working; what’s broken or substandard; and how we can be better.

“Then I’ll use your memo as a discussion guide for when I meet with most of you (ideally, all of you if time permits) in the coming few weeks,” Weiss added.

That strategy is remarkably similar to the one employed by Elon Musk when he ran DOGE. The parallels weren’t lost on CBS staffers, either: One lamented to Status newsletter writer Oliver Darcy, “We just got Elon Musk-ed.”

In February, Musk ordered federal employees across the government to email his office weekly summaries of their achievements. Failure to do so, under Musk’s rule, would be grounds for immediate firing.

The mandate was remarkably unpopular and scantily enforced by agency heads—some of whom butted up against Musk for making demands outside of his purview as a special government employee. The program met its quiet demise in August, when the Trump administration officially axed it—months after Musk was forced out.

Weiss’s version will have her inundated in paperwork. CBS News on its own employs thousands of individuals. A memo from each person on staff would lend itself to a tremendous amount of work.

The anti-woke, pro-Israel grifter became CBS’s newest chief last week. Her far-right, pro-genocide blog, The Free Press, was simultaneously scooped up by CBS’s parent company, Paramount Skydance, for roughly $150 million. It will also be Weiss’s first foray into running a major news operation. The Free Press, by comparison, employed more than 50 people as of last month.

The acquisition—and Weiss’s whopping promotion—mark the beginning of a radical new era for the historically middle-ground, traditional news conglomerate. Weiss is expected to bring a notably right-wing slant to CBS, which has served as the home of some of journalism’s most venerable names, including Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Friday announced the establishment of a Qatari military installation in Idaho.

Seated beside Qatar’s defense minister, Sheikh Saoud bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, Hegseth announced that the United States is “signing a letter of acceptance to build a Qatari Emiri Air Force facility at the Mountain Home Air Base in Idaho.”

The facility, the defense secretary said, “will host a contingent of Qatari F-15s and pilots to enhance our combined training, increase lethality, interoperability”—though he provided little else by way of detail.

The two officials signed a letter green-lighting the move, after Hegseth praised Qatar for its role in securing a peace deal in Gaza. Notably, the announcement also comes from an administration heavily criticized for corruption involving Qatar, a country the president accused of being a “funder of terrorism” in his first term.

The agreement builds on an existing U.S.-Qatari military relationship. Under a $12 billion deal signed in 2017, the U.S. gave aircraft and U.S.-based training to Qatar. In 2022, it was reported that about 170 Qataris were to be sent to train with F-15s at Idaho’s Mountain Home Air Base, which already hosts Singaporean forces and would be expanded to accommodate the new arrivals.

Representative Mike Simpson, a pro-Trump Republican of Idaho, called the development “fantastic news.” But some proponents of the president’s so-called America First cause disagree.

Laura Loomer, an informal Trump adviser and frequent purveyor of Islamaphobic hysteria, decried the administration’s decision. “What the hell is going on? Why are we trying to train more Muslims how to fly planes on US soil? Didn’t we already learn our lesson?” she wrote, saying it would allow “the Islamic enemy to gain so much ground in our country.”

Energy Secretary Chris Wright and White House Budget Director Russell Vought are reportedly at odds over massive cuts to clean energy projects, Politico reported.

One senior administration official told Politico Thursday night that the White House Office of Management and Budget was annoyed that Energy Department senior staff had prepared a broad list of clean energy projects the agency hoped to target without sharing its contents with the White House. The list was the product of nearly 100 DOE staffers working to identify potential cuts, with a committee of roughly eight making selections and Wright making final determinations, people familiar with the process said.

That senior administration official said there was some friction within factions at the DOE, and that a “Colorado and DOGE crew” that lacked experience in government wasn’t interested in running decisions by the White House. “The tension is between the people who worked in government before and this other team who worked in the private sector and don’t think they need to follow processes or rules and think they can turn things on their heads,” the official told Politico.

Another person with direct knowledge of the discussions told Politico that Wright’s office was ready to drop the ax on a whopping $30 billion in funding awards but was told to wait so that OMB could use the funds as leverage against states.

Cut to last week, when OMB Director Russell Vought—not Wright—declared that the Trump administration would cut $8 billion in lawfully approved funding for energy projects, targeting 16 Democratic-led states. At the same time, a copy of the complete list began to circle around the Capitol, alarming energy advocates and lawmakers, including Republicans whose districts could be affected by the cuts. The fate of the remaining $22 billion, which is mostly earmarked for Republican districts, remains unclear.

Politico reported that the White House had forced Wright’s hand on the timing of the announcement. “Timing of announcements, I don’t control that always, but these decisions are made all in the Energy Department, all based on facts,” Wright told CNN last week.

There seems to be even more infighting at the DOE, but it’s not totally clear why. Two people told Politico that the DOE was looking to oust Undersecretary Preston Griffith Wells III. “It’s toxic af over there,” one person who works with senior DOE staff texted POLITICO. “The boys are fighting.”

But another person said that Wright had a good relationship with Griffith.

Donald Trump did not win the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize, so his GOP allies in the House are working to slap together the next best thing: a resolution to get him one.

Speaking with Fox Business Friday morning, Representative Buddy Carter said that (instead of working to end the government shutdown) he and his colleagues were going to file a resolution “today” to honor the president with the Nobel Prize.

“[Donald Trump] deserves the Nobel Peace Prize,” Carter told the network. “That’s why I’m introducing a resolution today for a sense of Congress today that will honor him with the Nobel Peace Prize.

“If need be, we’ll call for a discharge petition on that. I hope we can work with the speaker though and get it on the floor for a vote,” Carter added.

That would imply that congressional Republicans would rather scratch Trump’s back than chip away at their actual jobs, which includes urgent work such as ending the government shutdown, passing appropriation bills, and swearing in Democratic Representative-elect Adelita Grijalva.

But simply asking for one is not how winning the Nobel Peace Prize works. Speaking with reporters on Friday, Norwegian Nobel Committee Chair Jørgen Watne Frydnes explained that Trump’s covetous, multiyear campaign to snag the prize had no impact on the judges’ deliberations.

“In the long history of the Nobel Peace Prize, I think this committee has seen many types of campaign, media attention,” Watne Frydnes said. “We receive thousands and thousands of letters every year of people wanting to say what, for them, leads to peace. This committee sits in a room filled with the portraits of all laureates, and that room is filled with both courage and integrity. So we base only our decision on the work and the will of Alfred Nobel.”

It’s no secret that Trump has pined for the international honor: The ego-driven U.S. president even phoned Norway’s Finance Minister Jens Stoltenberg “out of the blue” back in July to inquire about the possibility of acquiring the prize, using tariffs as a cover for their discussion.

Trump has complained for years that his name has not yet been added to the ranks of prize recipients, who span some of the greatest figures of the last century, including Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King Jr., Mother Theresa, and Malala Yousafzai.

Part of the contention could be that four other U.S. presidents have received the award, including Trump’s political nemesis, former President Barack Obama.

Trump’s obsession with obtaining the prize has led to some odd boasts over the last several months, including that he has resolved eight wars around the globe within the span of his second term. Trump has so far claimed responsibility for peace between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Republic of Rwanda, between Cambodia and Thailand, between Israel and Iran, between India and Pakistan, between Serbia and Kosovo, between Egypt and Ethiopia, between Armenia and Azerbaijan, and for “doing the Abraham Accords,” all while complaining about a lack of recognition by the Norway-based judges’ panel.

As Zeteo’s Mehdi Hasan pointed out last month, practically all of Trump’s war-solving braggadocio is “demonstrably untrue,” to the extent that several of the listed examples were never even at war.