Speaker of the House

Former congressman Matt Gaetz kicked off the 119th Congress by not showing up and taking the Capitol Hill press corps to school. After weeks of drama, Mike Johnson was reelected as speaker of the House on the very first ballot — exactly as Gaetz predicted. Some Hill reporters, such as Punchbowl’s Jake Sherman, and even Congressman Thomas Massie, had tweeted in response to Gaetz’s declarative prediction that he was wrong. Heading into the vote, everyone knew that Massie was implacably opposed to Johnson — but everyone else’s opposition proved to be quite placable. The drama kicked off almost immediately, when Democratic congressman Hank Johnson failed to show up before roll was called.

If a motion to vacate the speaker of the House fails resoundingly, does it make a sound?The answer is, of course, yes — with a Capitol Hill press corps that loves nothing more than pitting all-too-willing Republicans against one another. Next week, Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene is poised to finally pull the trigger on her quixotic quest to oust Speaker Mike Johnson — but she’s likely to be left holding a bag of small-dollar donations and press clippings, which is what her detractors think she is actually motivated by.On one side of the push to oust Johnson is a trio of Greene, Thomas Massie and Paul Gosar.

It took a few weeks, but Republicans got their act together and did the impossible: elected a new speaker of the House, Louisiana’s Mike Johnson. Johnson and his team have an incredible amount of work ahead of them — from funding the government to fundraising for House Republicans. What’s particularly noteworthy to me in the hours ahead of Johnson becoming speaker is the all-out effort Democrats and their media mouthpieces are making to define him — mostly by spreading provable misinformation.  Johnson’s Democratic counterparts on the Judiciary Committee immediately lashed out at him for being a member of the Freedom Caucus, which is an outright lie.

Welcome to Thunderdome, where a week and a half after the chilling attacks on Israel, the American people have had time to digest the scenes from across the world — from the Middle East and fiery scenes at embassies, to protests on campuses and now on Capitol Hill, fueled by lies from progressive Democrats — and their concern is enormous. The polls show 85 percent of Americans are concerned the Israel-Gaza conflict will erupt into a wider war in the Middle East. And while supermajorities of Republicans, Democrats and Independents still believe it's important to support Israel, Republicans approve of sending Israel weapons by a roughly twenty points more than other factions. (The Quinnipiac numbers are here.