Speaker Johnson Cancels Thursday House Session, Pushing Hegseth Impeachment Vote Until After Midterms

from AntiWar

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) announced he has canceled a planned House session for Thursday, sending lawmakers for an early seven-week recess and pushing back a vote to impeach US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth until after the midterm elections.

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), who introduced the resolution to impeach Hegseth, suspected Johnson might take drastic measures to avoid the vote, so he didn’t inform GOP leadership of his plan to introduce the resolution, which he did on the House floor on Tuesday.

“And there it is. Just as I predicted. They’re canceling Congress tomorrow to avoid the vote on IMPEACHING [Hegseth]. It will also make it harder for us to reach 218 signatures on the Epstein Discharge Petition before the election. We were at 190+ signatures last night,” Massie wrote on X after Johnson canceled the votes...

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Keeping the House Absent, Johnson Marginalizes Congress and Himself

(Trump says he is both the president and Speaker of the House but he is neither. He's a puppet like every other vainglorious tin-pot dictator we put in power across the world to do the bidding of our 'national interests'  Each of them thought they were something special, just like Trump does. And each one of them got burned in the end, just like Trump will when he has outlived his usefulness.) 

from the New York Times 

It has been over a month since there has been a policy debate or vote on the House floor. Spending legislation is not being considered. Oversight hearings are on hold until further notice.

Speaker Mike Johnson’s decision to put the House on an indefinite hiatus that is now stretching into its second month while the government is shut down is the latest in a series of moves he has made that have diminished the role of Congress and shrunken the speakership at a critical moment.

It’s an approach born of political expedience that could have far-reaching consequences for an institution that has already ceded much of its power to President Trump. And Mr. Johnson, who without the president’s backing wields little influence over his own members, has chosen to make himself subservient to Mr. Trump, a break with many speakers of the past who sought in their own ways to act more as a governing partner with the president than as his underling.

“I’m the speaker and the president,” Mr. Trump has joked, according to two people who heard the remark and relayed it on the condition of anonymity because of concern about sharing private conversations with him.

Mr. Johnson has done little in recent weeks to contest the point...

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Johnson: Not swearing in Democrat has ‘nothing to do’ with Epstein files

from The Hill

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said his delay in swearing in Democratic Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva (Ariz.) is not related to her looming signature on a petition to force a House vote compelling release of files related to Jeffrey Epstein, saying she will be sworn in when the House is back in session.

“It has nothing to do with that at all. We will swear her in when everybody gets back,” Johnson said in a Tuesday press conference.

Asked when her swearing-in will happen, Johnson said: “We’ll schedule it, I guess, whenever she wants. It has nothing to do with it.”

Grijalva won a special election on Sept. 23 for the Arizona seat that was long held by her father, former Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.). But despite decisively winning the seat, she has not yet been sworn in.

The move delays a months-long effort to circumvent House leadership on a bill compelling the Department of Justice to release the so-called Epstein files — with Grijalva being the 218th and final signature needed on the procedural gambit called a discharge petition to force action on the measure. GOP leaders argue the bill is not needed since the House Oversight and Government Reform committee is investigating the Epstein matter... 

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Speaker Johnson Calls Illegally Occupied West Bank 'Integral Part' of Israel

from Common Dreams

House Speaker Mike Johnson on Monday led a high-level Republican delegation on a visit to the occupied West Bank, where the second-in-line to the U.S. presidency told a rapt audience in an illegal Jewish settler colony that they are the rightful owners of the Palestinian territory.

"The mountains of Judea and Samaria are the rightful property of the Jewish people," Johnson (R-La.) said in Ariel, using the biblical name for the West Bank, which includes East Jerusalem. Ariel was built on land stolen from the Palestinian towns of Salfit, Marda, and Iskaka after Israeli forces conquered the West Bank in a 1967 war waged on false pretense of an imminent threat of Egyptian and Syrian attack.

"Judea and Samaria are the front line of the state of Israel and must remain an integral part of it," Johnson added.

The Palestinian Foreign Ministry condemned Johnson's visit, calling his endorsement of Israeli annexation a "blatant violation of international law."

"All settlement activity is illegal and void," the ministry stressed, adding that Johnson's stance "undermines Arab and American efforts to stop the war and cycle of violence, while flagrantly contradicting the declared U.S. position on settlements and settler violence."...

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