Republican lawmakers 'unraveling' as Mike Johnson faces 'absolutely brutal week': report

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) was confronted with a “multifront picture of chaos” Tuesday after House Republicans failed to advance a key priority during what Punchbowl News has described as an “absolutely brutal week.”

“This week is already unraveling for House Republicans. And it’s only Tuesday,” the outlet wrote Tuesday in its morning newsletter.

House Republicans are facing a confluence of challenges this week. A law that permits national intelligence agencies to surveil Americans in some instances is set to expire on Thursday, one that President Donald Trump has urged Congress to extend. House Republicans recessed a crucial committee Monday night “without a path forward” on extending that law.

Johnson is also working to get ahead of another deadline that lands on Thursday: funding the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which Congress has left unfunded for 73 days, but has been partially funded through April 30 with executive orders. The Senate passed a bill to fund DHS while excluding two federal immigration enforcement agencies, but Johnson “wants to change” the bill to lump them back in, a challenging prospect given the GOP’s slim House majority.

“All together, this paints a multifront picture of chaos for Johnson and other top House Republicans,” Punchbowl News’ report reads. “It puts new pressure on the Senate. And time is running short before next week’s recess.”

The repeated attempts by House Republican leadership to advance their agenda have frustrated some of its members.

“They keep coming back with the same stuff,” said Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN), Punchbowl News reported.

Donald Trump’s fresh attack on late-night comedian Jimmy Kimmel over a joke he made about the age disparity between the 79-year-old president and his 56-year-old wife Melania did not get a sympathetic ear on “Morning Joe.”

During a roast last Thursday, Kimmel joked about the first lady, calling her an "expectant widow,” which the White House has been trying to link to the assassination attempt on Saturday –– leading to new calls to fire the comedian.

Late Monday night, Kimmel shrugged off the latest assault from Trump, telling his audience, “It was not by any stretch of the definition a call to assassination. And they know that. I’ve been very vocal for many years speaking out against gun violence, in particular.”

“But I understand that the first lady had a stressful experience over the weekend.... And probably every weekend is pretty stressful in that house,” he added.

The panel on “Morning Joe“ agreed, and co-host Jonathan Lemire claimed he thinks the Trump outrage is manufactured for another reason.

“I also will say it speaks a little bit of, I don't know, maybe desperation from the Trump camp to try to grasp something else; some sort of go back to the culture wars where he had some success,” he told guest David Drucker.

“He's had success over his career, he’s had some success last year, but right now that isn't working,” he suggested. “It seems, at least polls would suggest, it's not working because voters? That's not what they're concerned about. They're concerned about the war in Iran. And they're certainly, more than anything, concerned about the economy and rising prices. And it feels like this is one of those issues that's going to stir up that hardcore Trump base and everyone else just isn't going to care. And frankly, might say: you're distracted. Why are you talking about that? Why are you talking about your ballroom?”

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Senate Majority Leader John Thune and House Speaker Mike Johnson are locked in an escalating dispute over a stalled Homeland Security funding bill, with Saturday's assassination attempt against President Trump at the Washington Hilton adding new pressure to resolve the impasse.

GOP senators are urging the House to immediately pass a bill the Senate unanimously approved on March 27 that would fund most of DHS, including the Secret Service, whose officers stopped an armed assailant within feet of Trump during the attack, but House members are balking, reported The Hill.

Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT) called House inaction "ridiculous," emphasizing that funding should have been resolved "well before this even happened" given elevated security threats from the Iran conflict. Sen. Katie Britt (R-AL) warned that Secret Service employees will stop receiving paychecks this weekend after 72 days without mission funding. "We need to make this happen and we need to make it happen this week," she said.

However, Johnson rejected the Senate bill Monday, criticizing it as "haphazardly drafted." The speaker contends the measure's omission of ICE and Border Patrol funding creates a political problem, as it could appear House Republicans voted to defund those agencies, and Johnson proposed amending the bill before sending it back to the Senate.

Senate Republicans view Johnson's position as a semantic quibble that could derail the entire bill. Thune noted the Senate has already twice sent funding legislation to the House and pointed out that ICE and Border Patrol hold over $100 billion in unobligated funding from last year's budget legislation, with an additional $70 billion to $80 billion allocated through ongoing budget reconciliation.

The standoff has become "increasingly embarrassing" for Republicans, according to The Hill, adding that they have primarily blamed Democrats for the Feb. 14 funding lapse, but Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin recently observed that "the standoff is now between the two Republican leaders in the House and Senate."

Johnson previously stated he would not advance the Senate bill until reconciliation funding for ICE and Border Patrol passes.

However, that process remains incomplete, and Thune warned that Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin will exhaust emergency executive authority before the lengthy reconciliation process concludes, creating additional pressure to resolve the dispute.

A prominent advocate for the Trump administration’s Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) initiative expressed outrage Tuesday over what they called the president’s “enormous political misstep,” an executive order that they warned “might cost the midterms for the Republican Party.”

“This was an enormous political misstep in terms of what the administration did... a real slap in the face to MAHA,” said Kelly Ryerson, a prominent MAHA advocate, during an appearance on Fox News.

Ryerson, who’s better known as the “Glyphosate Girl” – glyphosate being a commonly used chemical agent to treat crops that studies have found may carry “long-term risks to public health” – was referencing President Donald Trump’s recent executive order designed to boost the production of glyphosate.

Trump’s executive order, coupled with Republican lawmakers’ recent push to provide a legal liability shield for pesticide makers, was potentially a fatal mistake on the part of the GOP and Trump administration, one that could very well sink Republicans’ prospects come November, Ryerson warned.

“Glyphosate is a banner issue for MAHA. We're very concerned about its impact on the body – it's in the air, it's in the water,” Ryerson said. “That seemed unnecessary and it absolutely lit up [MAHA]. Truthfully, it might cost the midterms for the Republican Party.”

The Supreme Court heard arguments Monday in a case where it’s expected to decide whether federal law preempts state-level lawsuits alleging that glyphosate causes cancer. The case coincides with Republicans’ ongoing efforts to shield pesticide makers from legal liability.