Mike Johnson Complains He’s Tired (the House Isn’t Even Working)

House Speaker Mike Johnson is apparently tired, despite doing little this month during the government shutdown.

Johnson said at a press conference Tuesday that people have been telling him, “You look so tired on TV.”

“I am so tired, because we’re not sleeping a lot. We’re working overtime,” Johnson said, adding that House committees are still conferencing to put together legislation to be ready to go as soon as the House is back in session.

But the House hasn’t been in session since September 19, thanks to Johnson, well before the government shutdown began on October 1. Not only is no legislation being debated or passed, but Johnson has refused to swear in Democratic Representative Adelita Grijalva, who won a special election in Arizona last month.

Johnson has dodged questions about Grijalva, claiming that he’s following a made-up Pelosi precedent and saying she won’t be sworn in until after the shutdown ends. Grijalva would be a deciding vote on whether to release the Jeffrey Epstein files, which could be the real reason for the delay.

Meanwhile, Johnson didn’t claim that he or House Republicans were hard at work negotiating with Democrats, which should be the preeminent concern, with SNAP benefits on the verge of ending thanks to the shutdown. If the speaker and his party are actually working hard, it doesn’t seem to be on reopening the government.

At least one speaker on Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest summit lineup has divided the conservative caucus.

Tucker Carlson, the former face of Fox News and an increasingly critical voice against Israel, has been a thorn in the side of the organization’s fundraising efforts for some time now.

Text message exchanges published by Candace Owens (and later confirmed by TPUSA) revealed that the organization’s founder, Charlie Kirk, was grappling with whether to let Carlson speak at AmericaFest in the days before his assassination.

“Just lost another huge Jewish donor,” Kirk wrote. “$2 million a year because we won’t cancel Tucker.”

The donor was unnamed in the exchange, but The New York Times reported earlier this month that Robert Shillman, a Zionist tech billionaire, axed a $2 million pledge over Carlson’s participation in a previous Turning Point event.

“Jewish donors play into all the stereotypes,” Kirk added in another message.

The decision as to whether to include Carlson in future events has not gotten easier without Kirk’s leadership.

But other anti-Israel voices on the AmericaFest roster are posing their own problems. The inclusion of Steve Bannon and Jack Posobiec, among others, have raised eyebrows in conservative circles wary of challenges to the larger party position, The Bulwark reported Tuesday.

“No, it’s not good that Carlson, Bannon, Posobiec, and [Texas Attorney General Ken] Paxton are speaking at TPUSA’s AmFest in December,” Kimberly Ross, a contributor at the conservative rag the Washington Examiner, tweeted last week. “It’s bad, actually. The cancer should be cut out.”

The organization has less than two months to figure out a solution: AmericaFest is scheduled to start on December 18.

House Republicans have turned their focus back to former President Joe Biden’s “autopen” while regular Americans—particuarly federal workers and SNAP recipients—suffer the consequences of the ongoing government shutdown. 

The House Oversight Committee issued a 93-page report Tuesday on Biden’s use of the autopen, a fairly standard practice among U.S. presidents, and called on the Department of Justice to begin an investigation. The report urges Attorney General Pam Bondi to consider whether the pardons or clemency Biden granted to individuals  are still valid, as well as any “executive actions that were signed using the Autopen.”

The Republican report alleges a “cover-up of the president’s cognitive decline” on the part of Dr. Kevin O’Connor and Biden aides Anthony Bernal and Annie Tomasini. 

“The cost of the scheme to hide the fallout of President Biden’s diminished physical and mental acuity was great but will likely never be fully calculated,” the report reads. “Barring evidence of executive actions taken during the Biden presidency showing that [he] indeed took a particular executive action, the committee deems those actions taken through use of the autopen as void.”

Of course, the GOP’s  probe did not include any evidence that anyone other than Biden made the decisions that his staff later carried out. Rather, it seems like another Trump vendetta, this time during the longest full shutdown in U.S. history.

“Other than the Rigged Presidential Election of 2020, the Biggest Scandal in American History is the ‘AUTOPEN!’ Whoever used it was usurping the power of the Presidency, and it should be very easy to find out who that person (or persons) is,” Trump posted back in May. “They did things that a Joe Biden, of sound mind, would have never done, like, Open Borders, Transgender for everyone, men in women’s sports, and far more. Fear not, however, we will bring America BACK, BIGGER, BETTER, AND STRONGER THAN EVER BEFORE!”

Biden has repeatedly said that he made every final decision in the White House. 

President Donald Trump’s feeble attempts to kiss up to yet another authoritarian leader don’t appear to be working.

Ahead of Trump’s visit to Asia this week, the U.S. president made efforts to meet with Kim Jong Un, suggesting that he could use discussions about sanctions to bring North Korea’s reclusive leader to the table. It seems to have failed.

North Korea released a statement Tuesday that appeared to express support for China in ongoing trade disputes with the United States, according to journalist John Delury. The statement described a spokesperson for the Chinese government’s response to Trump’s recent threat to impose 100 percent tariffs on China starting on November 1.

“It is not a proper way of interacting with China to threaten China with high tariffs rather than reflecting upon themselves, the spokesperson added and urged the U.S. to correct its wrong approach,” the statement said.

Meanwhile, North Korea’s top diplomat Choe Son Hui met with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday, and expressed “invariable sympathy” and support for Russia’s efforts in its military campaign against Ukraine, Delury reported.

“Everything is going according to plan. Please convey my best wishes to him (Kim),” Putin told Choe, according to Reuters. North Korea has deployed an estimated 10,000 troops in Russia’s war in Ukraine, in return for military and economic aid from Russia.

On Monday, Trump met with the families of Japanese citizens abducted by the North Korean government, which Delury suggested meant he may have given up on the hope of meeting with the notorious dictator. It appears that Trump’s disastrous foreign economic policy has only pushed Russia, North Korea, and China closer together.

Zohran Mamdani has been forced to explain what the word “aunt” means in South Asian culture.

On Friday, the Democratic nominee for New York City mayor made a speech about Islamophobia outside of a Bronx mosque. The speech highlighted how Muslims in New York City deal with discrimination and prejudice, especially after the 9/11 attacks. Mamdani spoke of a personal experience where one of his loved ones was fearful of experiencing prejudice in the city.

“I want to speak to the memory of my aunt who stopped taking the subway after September 11 because she did not feel safe in her hijab,” Mamdani said, while getting emotional. “I want to speak to the Muslim who works for our city, whether they teach in our schools or walk the beat for the NYPD.”

But, rather than actually listening to his story or perhaps engaging in some introspection about prejudice others face in America, right-wing media seized upon Mamdani’s mention of his “aunt” to try to claim some kind of gotcha. The Murdoch-owned New York Post and Fox News both claimed to find Mamdani’s actual aunt, who doesn’t wear a head covering.

On Tuesday morning, Mamdani had to clarify what the word “aunt” means in South Asian culture, explaining that he was speaking about his father’s cousin Zehra fuhi, who passed away a few years ago. An “aunt” can refer not just to a sister of a parent but to any elder female relative or even a friend or acquaintance.

Some right-wing commentators then tried to claim “Zehra Fuhi” isn’t a real person, believing fuhi is a surname, rather than a term for paternal aunt in Urdu, Hindi, and Gujarati.

The whole saga is another bigoted attempt to smear Mamdani based on his religion. Mamdani’s opponent Andrew Cuomo, along with right-wing media, has made multiple Islamophobic attacks in a desperate attempt to gain ground on the surging Democratic candidate. Cuomo and the media have tried to claim that Mamdani is pro-Hamas, wants a global intifada, and is close to Siraj Wahaj, an imam in the city baselessly accused of supporting the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. These efforts have only demonstrated how pervasive Islamophobia is in New York and American politics, proving the points Mamdani made in his Bronx speech.